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NCAA WOMEN'S D-II BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPApril 4, 2016Ryan McCarthyMegan MullingsKiki RobertsonIndianapolis, Indiana Lubbock Christian - 78, Alaska Anchorage - 73 THE MODERATOR: Joining us on the dais now from Alaska Anchorage head Coach Ryan McCarthy and student-athletes Kiki and Megan Mullings. Coach, an opening statement. COACH MCCARTHY: First off, hats off to Lubbock Christian, they played a heck of a game. We respected them from the beginning. Their length gave us fits at times and took us longer than we anticipated to adjust to. But they're very well coached. They have some very good players in their two All-Americans. So hats off to them and congratulations on a national championship. But I'm just proud to be in this position even though we lost, and I told my ladies that if it meant that, you know, I gotta spend some more time with them in the locker room even though we lost just to be around them, then that meant losing a national championship, I'd do it. And I mean it. I just love being around this group. They work so hard. They sacrificed so much. And before the game, a lot of people were telling me they were nervous. And I wasn't nervous at all because the hay was already in the barn and I knew the work that they had put in. Gave me all the confidence in the world in this group. And if we had to do it over again, and I knew the outcome, I'd still roll with this group here. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Megan, last couple of minutes of the fourth quarter, there was a stretch where you forced four turnovers, looked like you were getting back in the game. What was working for you guys defensively during that stretch? MEGAN MULLINGS: I mean, we had decided at the timeout that we needed to get stops. And that's what we've been about all year. And so we just were focusing on doing the little things, you know, just follow the game plan, play hard defense. Play crazy, out of control, and things will swing your way. And so we did. Q. Megan, what is something that you learned and can take away from playing with the Seawolves that you can take with you the rest of your life? MEGAN MULLINGS: I would say the biggest thing I learned being a Seawolf is that it's not easy and it's not fun to get better. It's really hard work. It's really, really hard work. And if you can convince a group of 14 girls to all do their absolute best every single day, even though it's not easy and even though it's not fun, amazing things happen. Really amazing things happen. Q. Megan, you guys were down eight points the first half. Seemed like you were rolling and clicking. The second half you guys was having a difficult time getting to your opposite set. What adjustment did LSU make the second half -- LCU? MEGAN MULLINGS: That's a great question. I think we just had kind of a hard time taking care of the ball, and that was one thing that we were really focused on was they've got really, really good length and they do a really good job of taking mistakes and scoring out of them. And so when we were making those kind of mistakes, it was something we needed to focus on, was taking care of the ball better. Q. Kiki, can you just tell us what that battle was like between the guards going back and forth with yourself and the other UAA guards and Hampton and Hoppel for LCU? KIKI ROBERTSON: It was an honor to play -- it was an honor to play against an All-American. And it was -- I'm just so glad that I had Shorty on my team to help us turn her over or at least give her pressure. But I don't know. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach. Q. You talked about their length, and getting to the second half it seemed like getting to your half court and their length and athleticism was a problem. Do you think it was so much their length or was it the height of the moment being in this tournament? COACH MCCARTHY: Yeah, I think a little bit of both. You know, other than turnovers, we outplayed them. We outrebounded them by 17 and, you know, missed six free throws. We make them all, we win the game. So I think we shot 16 more times, if my math is correct. I'm not a math major. But their length just bothered us. It's hard to simulate that at our level. We have one kid that's the 6'3" in Dominique Brooks, and I just say we are who we are at this point. We can't start bringing out broom handles and starting to prepare for that. But Lubbock is a really good team. That's as good a team as we've seen. And we beat Pepperdine by 30 and played Western Kentucky who had beaten Louisville, and lost them by four. Lubbock is as good a team as we've seen. They might be the second best team in Texas. Hats off to Coach Gomez and his Ladies. They played their best game. Q. You were alluding to the foul shots. I believe four of those missed foul shots actually came in the last five minutes, almost seemed like an inopportune time. And then Megan had a couple of -- looked like a couple of easy looks. She just couldn't get the friendly bounds. Certainly had to be frustrating for you. Any thoughts? COACH MCCARTHY: Every time we'd go on a run, something would happen, miss a free throw or miss an easy bunny inside. And/or we turned the ball over, and it would be like in football, a pick six. You go on a run and all of a sudden a momentum killer, we get a turnover at the top of the key and it's an automatic 2-on-1 break in a zone situation. So as much problems as we wanted to cause, we worked really hard for it, and they got to sit back in the zone, stick their arms out and get some turnovers on us. So that did cause some problems. Q. The refs were quick to blow the whistle on you guys early on. You had 13 fouls in the first half. How did that affect your game plan for the rest of the matchup? COACH MCCARTHY: It didn't really affect us too much. I think that the style that we play, sometimes we're going to get some early fouls. And that's just one thing. We just gotta adjust to however the game is officiated, just to try to even out the flow. So that's on us. I thought the game was well-officiated. And it just -- anytime we send a team to the line, one thing we try to do, we talk about, no bonus. We have a box before every game and we talk about four things that can't happen. And if those things don't happen, we're playing with house money. We're going to win. And one of them is not to send the team into the bonus. And that just happened too early. Sometimes you send the team into a bonus about a minute left, two minutes left, that's okay. But when you're playing with four fouls and there's five minutes left, you can't be as aggressive. And we had to kind of take our foot off the pedal a little bit until it came desperation time and we were all in. Q. What did you think of LCU's guard play? What did you think of Hampton and Hoppel? COACH MCCARTHY: I thought they played with a lot of poise. They were what we expected them to be. We were more athletic than them at the guard position. And we did turn them over, kind of like I thought would happen. The one thing that -- Hoppel was what we thought she would be. I knew she'd burp up a couple of 3s there, 13 3s attempted is quite a few there. What impressed me with Hampton, how hard she worked. She's an All-American because she outworks everybody. I have a lot of respect for that particular lady. There will be times they miss a shot. She would come up with a huge board or take it from one of our players and, you know, it's good for our guards to see that because that's a high level. Nicole Hampton is a very good player. Q. You played from behind in this game. There's the physical of trying to catch up after they have an answer. Is there an emotional, psychological barrier, too, with the team when they have an answer every time and you've got to work that hard to get back into this thing? COACH MCCARTHY: Yeah, one thing that I'm really proud about this group is we've been down a number of times this season. Cal Baptist we were in about the same situation, came back, took it to overtime and got the win. UNLV, we were down by 20 in the first quarter and came back and had a chance to win at their place. And one thing I'll really miss about this group is the seven seniors is -- they might bend but they never mentally break. You see that a lot. 20-, 30-point losses usually are because the other team at some point in the game they accept to lose. This team never did it. Every single time out they came out and they said we're not losing this game. I think from a culture standpoint, I couldn't ask anything more than what those particular ladies gave us in that regard. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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