|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: AUSTINMarch 19, 2016Karen AstonAriel AtkinsEmrpess DavenportAustin, Texas Texas 86 - Alabama State 42 COACH ASTON: Very pleased to get our first win under our belt. I thought our team was really ready to play, and our starters got us off to a good start. Maybe I subbed a little bit too quick, but also, I think it took us a half to sort of calm down from the excitement of playing. I actually cut our shootaround short today because I could tell we were extremely anxious and I thought they were going to kill each other just going through some simple stuff in shootaround. So I could tell we were ready to play. It took us I think a half to sort of settle into the discipline of the game and not just run around because you're so excited to be here, and once we did that, I thought we played pretty good basketball. Again, I thought our starters played really well. Empress got us off to a great start, and I thought they had a good rhythm the entire evening. Pleased. Q. What happened in that third quarter where you kind of turned it on? Did they get fatigued or change something you were doing? ARIEL ATKINS: I think in the third quarter we collectively came together. We told ourselves that we needed to be disciplined and get down and play our type of basketball. Q. Was anything that the Coach affect them? ARIEL ATKINS: Well, yes, she got on to us pretty hard. Q. What exactly did she say? ARIEL ATKINS: I'll sum it up: She basically said, get it together. Q. Did you take that to heart? ARIEL ATKINS: Yes. Q. Empress, you became very intent at the very start of the game, last time you will play at home the next game. Jumped off to a 17-4 lead, did that come too easy, do you think, and you all relaxed a little bit? EMPRESS DAVENPORT: Like Coach said, we were very anxious to play, so everybody's intensity was very high. And I guess we hit a wall, which let them back in the game. At halftime, we had -- we were always up four rebound. So Coach made a good point that we were only up by four and we should have way more rebounds than we were having. So I think just the halftime talk and us coming together, we have to realize that we didn't play our best basketball in the second quarter. Q. In the second half -- EMPRESS DAVENPORT: Yes, indeed. I feel like we came out and we played our basketball and we locked down defense and we got rebounds, so that's the mind-set that we had. Q. Were you worried at all in the first half, they were able to come back at you? EMPRESS DAVENPORT: Worried, no. Our team tries to stay calm, if anything happens, getting worried is not what we focus on. We try to just identify the problem and eliminate it. Q. Was the coach -- EMPRESS DAVENPORT: Yes. Q. Did either one of you guards get a chance to look at Missouri? EMPRESS DAVENPORT: Yes. Q. And see who you're playing? EMPRESS DAVENPORT: Yes, we watched the first half of the game. Q. What is your assessment? EMPRESS DAVENPORT: Me personally, I think they are a big team and I think they play a good defense and they shoot a lot of threes. So us guarding the transition threes will be a huge focus for us. Q. Ariel, if you guys play like you did the second half tonight, in the future, how difficult will it be to beat you? ARIEL ATKINS: I just think we have to take it one game at a time. The second half of this game was pretty good, but we have to focus on taking it one quarter at a time against any team. Q. How much fun was the second half? ARIEL ATKINS: It was fun. It was fun playing. I was so excited to play right now. Everything's new and exciting to me. Q. Is there a tendency to maybe tense up because there's so much on the line, and maybe you all relaxed as a team the second half? ARIEL ATKINS: I don't think we're tense. Like Coach said, we're more anxious than tense. I think we are just so excited to play and just to be in the tournament and to do what we feel like we need to do. Q. Were emotions running that high during the shootaround like Coach said? ARIEL ATKINS: Yeah, we were supposed to be walking but we started to play -- EMPRESS DAVENPORT: Game speed. Q. Empress, their coach made a point of saying you've got -- the best unit Texas had tonight were the guards, gave props to Imani and so forth and the bigs, paint 40-4, how do you feel about the guards right now collectively how they are playing? EMPRESS DAVENPORT: I think that we have a lot of depth, so if one person is not getting it done, we have a lot of people to look to. We just try to lift each other up and play like we know how. I think our guards were great and we just feed off of our post players and they feed off of us. Q. For either of you, is there any explanation for beating a team 40-4 in the paint? That's complete dominance. You're not going to see them again. ARIEL ATKINS: I think we made it a point to, because they were all -- their tallest player is probably 6-2 at most. So I think we kind of made it a point to try to get points in the paint and not shoot so many outside jumpers and just be disciplined to take what we could. Q. Their best player is Britney Wright, who went 2-for-9, total of seven points. Did you make a concerted effort coming in, we have to stop that one player? EMPRESS DAVENPORT: I think in any scout, when you hone in on their leading scorer, and sometimes we may lose sight of other players and I think we did that tonight. I know we may have limited her to seven points, but we let No. 2 get off with a lot of threes. So it's give and take and we just have to lock down on defense. Q. Empress, you mentioned Missouri's size, every one of their starters is over six feet; what kind of challenge will that be? EMPRESS DAVENPORT: Challenge, I mean, I don't know, we're just going to try to play our game, get out quick, run in transition and just try to get rebounds. Q. Did this do a lot for your confidence? You won so easily, does it affect your confidence at all going into Monday's game? EMPRESS DAVENPORT: I wouldn't say easily. We are still working on things we need to sharpen up. I think every game is an opportunity to get better. Q. What did you say at the half? COACH ASTON: They summed it up. Q. X-rated? COACH ASTON: No, no, it wasn't. I was disappointed because we weren't doing some of the simple disciplined things that have to do with being a solid basketball team. Some of it was things that we had been working on all week. And so that was the party was a little disappointed in check heck is that we had spent a week working on particular things, and we weren't doing those. But again, when I look at the last couple of days, I cut yesterday short, and I cut our shootaround short because they were going, it sounds crazy to say that they are going so hard, but I could tell that they were chomping at the bit to play, and the first half looked like it. And especially, I think you were the one that said it came easy in the very beginning and all of a sudden it was like, okay, I guess we can do whatever we want, shoot whatever shot we want, and not rebound and not guard, and all of the sudden we get kind of caught up in a little bit of that. And again, I subbed too quick, but I was trying to get a couple of people in there that I thought had really had good weeks of practice, and I probably messed our flow up a little bit. But they regrouped at the half. Q. How important is it, because everybody in the country compares scores, that you get that 47-point win out there, to not just impress the fans, but to impress yourselves to know that you're among the elite out there? COACH ASTON: Well, I hope it's all over the front page of the Statesman tomorrow, because, hopefully someone will see in this city that wasn't planning on coming Monday night, and we have a full house, because we need it. And it's our last time to play in the Erwin Center on Monday night, so that's the only thing that I'm interested in. I don't think anybody cares and I promise you, Missouri doesn't care, how many points we win by. But I do hope that it Sparks some interest in somebody getting in their car and coming down here at 8:00 Monday night because we need a crowd. Q. Speaking of Missouri, you were scouting till almost the very end. Is that unusual that you would be out on the floor scouting the next opponent? COACH ASTON: I like to watch the games. I felt like that old saying, I'm a country girl: When the hay was in the barn, there wasn't much more I could do in the back. So I thought it would be good for me to sit out there and see as much as I could of both of those teams. I thought they were both good, and I anticipated that being a pretty good game and it was. Q. What impressed you about Missouri? COACH ASTON: Their toughness. I think that would be the first thing that would come right off the top of my head is that they seem like a very tough basketball team. They have played in the rigors of the SEC, so nothing is going to surprise them or intimidate them. They do shoot the ball well and I think that's what everybody talks about them a lot, and that's what I had heard along the way. But I think I was more impressed with their toughness. Q. What about their guards, too -- your guards are big, do you look at that as a huge component Monday? COACH ASTON: Well, we have played big guards. We've played -- that's the thing that I love about the Big 12 when it gets to NCAA Tournament time is that there are so many different teams and different styles of play in the Big 12, and different types of players that we have guarded and played against that I think you can always make some comparisons to the style of play. And I mean, I think it will be a terrific challenge for us. Q. Do they remind you of somebody? COACH ASTON: You know, not necessarily, but I think there are some players when we start matching up and start thinking about the way they play, you definitely will see some similarities in some of the players that we play in our league. It will be a very tough challenge for us. Q. They play a lot of defense. COACH ASTON: They do, they do. So I don't think anybody's going to be tired, and it's a chance for one of us to go to the Sweet 16. So I don't think we have to get our team to understand that we'd better bring house on Monday night. Q. Their coach said that the first four minutes of the third quarter, 10-0 run real quick, not decided the game, but put it out of reach in their mind. What do you like about the first four minutes of the third quarter? COACH ASTON: Just our flow, our decision making offensively. And then I think we stopped over-playing defensively. I think you can just get so excited that you're playing hard but it's not smart, and we looked a little bit like that in the first half and I thought we played smart in that little span of time. And then our decision-making offensively was terrific. We got out in transition and made really good decisions, took good shots, shared the ball a little more. I mean, we were just so anxious, everybody that got it wanted to do something with it in the first half. Q. How gratifying is it as a coach for you to see that so many of your players contributed significantly tonight and not just -- COACH ASTON: Well, somebody told me this is the first time all year long we've had every player score in a game, so that's kind of cool that you're in the NCAA Tournament and you have a chance for everybody to play and everybody actually score a basket. Yeah, that's terrific. I do want to say that I thought the crowd was really terrific. I was curious to see, I mean, it's south by Southwest, and I didn't have any clue who would show up tonight at 8:00, and I was really pleased with that. I hope it doubles on Monday. Q. We talk to the Alabama State coach and she said if you keep working, you can win the Championship. COACH ASTON: That's a great compliment by someone I really have a lot of respect for. She does things the right way. Her teams play really hard. They are respectful. They play to their maximum potential I think, and any time that you have a coach that gives your team that kind of compliment, is much appreciated. Q. Are there things that you take from this positively? COACH ASTON: Yeah, I think had we come out and flopped around in the second half, then we would -- might have a few, "Hmmmm"; I don't know how you write that. But I do think that the execution and the way we played in that third, especially the third quarter, gives us a sense of where we need to be tomorrow in preparation and then on Monday. Q. Was there anybody particular on Missouri that impressed you? COACH ASTON: You know, I think there are players on their team that probably don't get a lot of credit that people don't talk about. I think there's the Cunningham sisters, but I thought the point guard -- I mean, everybody talks about Sophie, and that was my first eyeball look at her, other than seeing them play on television. And she's obviously a very impressive player. But I do think that the point guard, the other Cunningham, is a pretty big piece of how they play. It seems like she has a handle on what they are doing on offense and just seems to be a glue-type player for them. I was really impressed with her. And just their physicality. You can tell they play in the SEC, no question. I was very impressed with their overall physicality and the way they move the ball offensively. They will be a difficult guard for us. Q. Do you have to keep reminding yourself about the loss to Tennessee? COACH ASTON: It will be that kind of game. We don't need to take anything for granted. We should never; we should never take for granted that you're going to be at home and it's going to be that way just because you're at home. These people are here for a reason. And I don't know what seed they should have been. I don't know what seed we should have been. But they are a very competitive basketball team. Q. The National Championship she was talking about, is that coming this year or how long do we need to wait for that? COACH ASTON: We're getting close. We're getting there. And I think I said that, I mean, everybody, the first thing everybody wants to talk about is why we're losing four games this year. And I've said, I don't know that we're quite there. But we're getting really close, and we're not going anywhere. Had a kid, a signee that just won a junior college National Championship tonight. And we're not going anywhere, but we do have just this one little step of mentality and a way of playing that we have to take. But I'm excited about this team. I don't think we're through, and I'm really excited about the future. Q. You lost 11 games last year, so losing only four, that's a big step right there. COACH ASTON: It is, and this particular team, I mean, I'll go ahead and say it. If we were to fall short somewhere along the way before the Final Four, this particular team would be disappointed. That's what their goal and what their expectation was. So anything short of that, I mean, granted, they will reflect back on it eventually and think it was a terrific year, but they have an expectation. They have a goal. So I don't want to sell them short in what they believe in themselves about. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|