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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: WACOMarch 20, 2016Terri Williams-FlournoyTra'Cee TannerBrandy MontgomeryWaco, Texas Baylor-84, Auburn-52 THE MODERATOR: Coach, an opening statement and then questions for the student-athletes. COACH WILLIAMS-FLOURNOY: It really doesn't matter the score of this game. Baylor's a very good team. More importantly, I'm just so proud of my team, you know. No one expected us to be here. Their hard work and dedication to Auburn and their dedication to how we play just once again shows how good of a team that we are, and I'm just really proud of my young ladies. Q. Brandy, I guess that first quarter in particular you guys turned it over where usually you're the ones forcing turnovers. How frustrating was that in that first quarter? BRANDY MONTGOMERY: It wasn't that frustrating. We were just trying to calm down. There was a lot of hype going into the game, so we just wanted to calm down and play Auburn ball and do what we do. Q. Tra'Cee, what does it mean to you to have played for Auburn? TRA'CEE TANNER: It just means a lot that I've gained a family over these past four years. Gained different bonds with different people on the team, including the staff. But I'm just really grateful to have this opportunity and meet who I have met and have the relationships that I've had. I've gained a family away from my own, and they've taken care of me over these past four years. So I couldn't be more happy for the people that I've met. Q. Tra'Cee, how do you think your leadership, as being one of the seniors your last game, can help propel the team going forward to having success in the future? TRA'CEE TANNER: Just continue to stay in touch with my teammates and talking to them even when I'm not here. Always be encouraging. All my teammates know I love them to death and always pull them aside outside of practice or something like that and talk to them about where they can improve, what they're really good at and what they should capitalize on. I always talk to Brandy about a lot of things. I talk to everybody on my team. So just looking forward just telling them what they should look for next year and what they should look to accomplish. We have a lot of great players on this team, and when we play as a team, big things happen. So I honestly think, moving forward, if I just keep motivating them, keep talking to them and they keep their confidence in themselves then everything will fall into place. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach. Q. My first question is what is the biggest takeaway from how you guys handled this game? Because score and all, you guys played really tough, you guys played very physical. You have to match the pace of what is a very talented Baylor team. But moving on, when you're going to be facing the conference of the Big 12, and other things like that, what's the biggest takeaway from the second round game? COACH WILLIAMS-FLOURNOY: I guess probably the biggest takeaway is that we just continue to do what we do. We're always going to play hard. For 40 minutes, you're always going to see a team on the floor that's playing hard. That's just who we are and what we always do. You know, when you look at it we actually got up more shots than they did. We got up 68 shots, they got up 64. We just didn't finish the shots that we needed to. Baylor's a very good team. There's a reason why they are now 35-1. They're a very good team. They're big inside. They've got really good guard play. This is a team that should definitely be in the Final Four, if not winning it all. They're a very good team, and we're just happy to have competed and continue to play hard. My young ladies left everything out on the floor just like we do every game. Q. Early in the season your team was predicted to be second to last. COACH WILLIAMS-FLOURNOY: 13th out of 14th. Q. Yes. And how does it make you feel now to know that your team accomplished and proved so many people wrong? COACH WILLIAMS-FLOURNOY: And that's right, we knew. We knew what we had to do to prove to everyone else. And right this here, making it through the second round, playing a tough Baylor team, it just once again shows we're a very good team and we're going to continue to be a very good team. Because of the way we play, we're always going to be in games with a chance to win the game. Q. Your team gave a great effort coming out of halftime. Could you talk about that a little bit? And what kind of moves do you make during the off-season to get ready for the next season? COACH WILLIAMS-FLOURNOY: There's a lot of questions in that one there (laughing). Like I said before, that's just our MO. We're always going to play hard until the last zero click on the clock. We're going to continue to play hard. In the halftime speech, it was just like we've got 20 more minutes just to play hard. The last ten minutes, we've got ten more minutes to play hard. We're going to continue to play hard. And our young ladies know they're always going to play hard. From now on, we just do what we normally do. We've got to go recruit. We've got to continue to add on. Tra'Cee's graduating, Caper's graduating. We're only losing two. We're playing a lot of young people, so the future is very bright for us. Q. You obviously beat Kentucky and you hung with South Carolina. Would you say Baylor is fairly comparable to those teams or what kind of level, I guess, is Baylor on compared to them? COACH WILLIAMS-FLOURNOY: I mean, Baylor's very good. I don't know if I can compare one team to the other. They're very different. They're similar to South Carolina where they have the post players inside and they have the guard play outside on the perimeter as well. Kentucky's just a different type of team. Kentucky gets after it. They push in transition. Their posts are big, their posts are very aggressive. Very good comparison somewhat when you just think about some of the best teams in women's basketball. Q. Nina Davis is just one of those players that kind of gets hers. Sometimes you don't know how. How difficult a match-up is she sometimes? COACH WILLIAMS-FLOURNOY: Oh, I know how she gets them, definitely. I've been watching Nina Davis. I liked Nina Davis when she was playing high school, when she was playing AAU with the Tennessee Flight. She just works hard. She's got a motor that's unbelievable. I just looked at the box score and I was like, oh, crap, she scored 30 points. But it's easy for her to score 30 points because she plays so hard. She's getting to the boards. She's running in transition. I want me one of those, you know (laughing). Nina's just great. But she's always been a very good player. So what she's doing, for me to look at that, I'm not really that surprised. I didn't want to give her 30, but I'm not surprised at all. She's a very good player. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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