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NCAA WOMEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS AND FINALS: DALLAS

March 25, 2016

Doug Bruno

Dallas, Texas

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by DePaul head coach, Doug Bruno. Coach, your thoughts about the upcoming games?

DOUG BRUNO: We're excited to be here. I am blessed to coach a great group of young women led my our seniors that you will probably meet in a few minutes, Chanise Jenkins and Megan Podkowa. Oregon State is a very good basketball team. They've made that statement by winning the Pac-12 tournament and tying for first place in the regular season. They just have an excellent, excellent basketball team.

So we know at this point in time of the year every single team you're going to play against is very, very talented and very good. Oregon State is certainly one of the best teams in the country. Also would like to thank the people of Dallas for stepping up to host this event and get ready to host the championship next year. The Final Four is here next year, and I always appreciate that because our own DePaul people work to host the NCAA events when they have the opportunity, too. So thank you for all the hard work that goes into this.

Q. Coach, a lot of people, if they said there is a team in this regional right now that's been to 14 straight NCAA Tournaments, most people would probably think Baylor not DePaul. What's it says about your team to be here at this point again?
DOUG BRUNO: It says a lot about my staff, my players, my great administration. I have a great administration and a great staff and our players through the years have worked very, very hard to put themselves into a position to earn their way into this tournament for 14 consecutive seasons.

Every season is a new season. Every team is a new team. Every game has a life of its own. Every season has a life of its own. Every tournament has a life of its own. So it's our job now to keep the players focused and keep focusing on one game, one win in a row, and I'm proud that we are one of six teams in the nation that other teams are very talented teams as you all recognize, Notre Dame, Stanford, Tennessee, ourselves and Oklahoma so it's hard to do that.

But in women's basketball if you don't win a National Championship, nobody knows who you are. So basically -- and that's not a function of us at DePaul or a function of anybody else, that's a function of our great sport that probably should be covered a little bit better.

Q. Have you seen a team like Oregon State this season, a team with a traditional post, a big, like a Ruth Hamblin? Could you elaborate on that?
DOUG BRUNO: Oregon is strong because they have the great inside presence of Ruth. They have perimeter players and size and great guard skills. So they have guard skills and big guards that can shoot the ball, all coaches and everybody loves to talk about spacing without the ability to make a three there is no spacing. Oregon State has the ability to space the floor. Regarding having seen people like this, well, Breanna Stewart is pretty good, over at Notre Dame they have a kid that's pretty good, named Turner.

Baylor, they are a really, really strong, big team and Baylor is another team that's in some ways similar because they're strong inside and they've got very, very good guard play as well. So we've played Baylor, Notre Dame and we've played UConn, so I would like to think that we probably have -- and probably the only team that we haven't seen that has this kind of make-up is South Carolina but there are those and they're all still playing. There is a reason.

Q. Doug, Oregon State defense has been their MO all season, you guys obviously score a ton of points, but what's unique about the way that Oregon State plays, because it's not a pressure-heavy defense they play solid. What have you seen from their scheme that is unique compared to other teams?
DOUG BRUNO: They play very intelligent basketball, keep their own man in front of them. They don't help which is a great way to be able to play defense if you don't have to give help and open your own match-up, and if you get beat you've got a 6'6" shot-blocker sitting in the back to make things messy.

So that's why they're a really, really good defensive basketball team. There's other teams that guard on the perimeter probably equal to Oregon State, but they don't always have the person in the back waiting to be able to make sure everything gets cleaned up.

Q. Doug, look at the numbers, you're one of the nation's leaders in assists and part of that comes from style of play but also a kind of a mind-set in terms of sharing the ball, ball movement that sort of thing, just right behind UConn and Baylor in that category. Where does that come from with this team?
DOUG BRUNO: I think it always comes from the coaching you create in your program and the essence to me of basketball is sharing the basketball. The best teams, year-in, year-out, at any level are sharing teams. So I just think it's something we create as a culture. It's something we do recruit, visual athleticism, the players that have the ability to pass. It's just want even a discussion point that you're going to hit the open woman. You're going to hit the open woman with precision, on touch, on time and on target.

So it's just about hitting the open woman. So if there is one thing we pound into our players it's that this whole sport is about sharing the ball. The best teams, Joe Ponsetto, played on one of the best DePaul University men's teams ever and they were great at sharing the ball. You look at teams year-in and year-out and the best teams are usually the best sharing teams.

Q. Obviously you've seen the best teams in the country, the number one seeds, three of the four No. 1 seeds, Baylor in this region, while you're focused on Oregon State looking back at that Baylor game are there any lessons you take from it in terms of how to play them if you meet them again at some point?
DOUG BRUNO: I'm not even going to discuss playing Baylor because that's foolishness for my mind to go there. Regarding my evaluation of Baylor as a program from having played them on November 22nd, the day that Kennedy got shot here we flew out of Love Field after they beat us.

At any rate, I said that to them then and they didn't know what I was talking about. They didn't know what I was referencing, but at any rate, looks like you guys are old enough to remember, but at any rate, Baylor is big. Baylor is a big, strong basketball team. So she can attack you inside. But they also have great guard play with Johnson who leads the nation in assists, I believe, and they have Alexis Jones and they have the Wallace kid that. Those are three really good guards and they also have a junkyard dog in Nina Davis who is an All-American, and they also have -- I don't know what happened to the shooter kid from Florida that didn't play against us, and I can't think of her name right now, but she is -- what's her name, tell me?

Q. Prince?
DOUG BRUNO: Is she back? Because she didn't play against us on November 22nd. That gives them a lot of similarities to Oregon State. They're both very good on the perimeter and both very good inside. Probably Baylor has more big kids that they can go to inside, but that's -- still, you can't keep 'em all on the floor at the same time anyway so...

Q. Back to Oregon State, when you look at -- six years ago when the coach comes in he's basically having to build a team and to be where they are now. How much are you familiar with their coach and respect what he's been able to do with that program in such a short period of time?
DOUG BRUNO: I think Scott is a great coach and I've always thought he was a great coach since he got there. He's had this going for two, three years and I think he stamped his personality on it. This is a team -- these are his recruits, and recruiting is the name of the game and he's identified what he's looking for, and he's got himself a great big player in -- Ruth is from Canada and then Sydney Wiese and Jamie Weisner are special players and Hanson is a really good basketball player as well. People forget about her. She is a really good basketball player as well. I think Scott does a really, really excellent job.

Q. Doug, how much do you see the Oregon State game as being a contrast in styles, as to who can kind of impose their will? You obviously like to push the ball, I think they would want more of a half-court game, that's what their coach was saying.
DOUG BRUNO: I think that's just about every single game you play. I think every coach that gets their team to any certain level or point creates a style, and you always want to be able to play your style. One of the things I think we've been pretty good at DePaul is understanding that you just don't win by running. Yes, we can get up and go, but we've know for a long, long time that you have to compete in the half-court.

If you can run 35 out of 100 possessions that's an awful lot of running. You're still in the half-court 65 times, and that's if you're running a lot! So I think we tried to create a basketball program that understands how to go with the full court but also how to go in the half-court.

So I think we will be prepared, so it's not just a matter of imposing wills, if you will, as much as players being able to figure out on the fly what's there to be taken and what's there to be -- know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em, share a ball or shoot the ball. Still gotta make shots. You gotta get shots and you gotta make shots and that's on both sides, Oregon State or DePaul you've got to get good shots, you gotta make shots. Thanks everybody for covering woman's hoops.

THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach, good luck tomorrow.

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