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PAC-12 WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 3, 2017

Seattle, Washington

Oregon State - 65, Cal - 49

THE MODERATOR: I'd like to welcome the California Golden Bears, head coach Lindsay Gottlieb, Kristine Anigwe, and Courtney Range.

Coach, I'll let you open and then questions.

LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: Sure, we lost today to the Pac-12 regular season champions and a potential No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. And they proved it. I don't think it was without a fight from us. I think that's what we do in this conference. We prepare each other and beat each other up a little bit. I think everyone makes one another better.

Credit to Oregon State, Syd is terrific and plays like a senior. Scott's terrific, has done an unbelievable job. I don't see how he's not in a serious conversation for National Coach of the Year with what they've lost and what they've done this year.

But I'm proud of our group. We sat up here last year, and we made a run. It was the end for us. Now we're a postseason team. I just said this in another media thing. I cannot fathom the Pac-12 not having seven teams in the NCAA Tournament, with what an incredible top to bottom conference it is. People talk a lot about the top four seeds who have been continually in the top 16 reveals, which is an incredible story.

But I think the bigger story is 5 through 12 are better than anybody else's 5 through 12 in any conference. I think it set us up for a postseason run. We're hoping that's in the NCAA Tournament.

And I just think that the way that our kids showed out these last couple days talks about who they are, and I want to continue to play and coach basketball with this group, so we're excited about that.

Q. Coach, you got it down to single digits multiple times in the fourth quarter (indiscernible)?
LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: But they're a twenty, whatever they are, eight win team for a reason. They're going to bend a little bit, but it's tough for them to break. I thought we could have hit a few more threes, might have changed the game. I thought we could have kept them off the free-throw line a little more and maybe changed the game and not put ourselves in such a hole in the first quarter.

But if you look at the rest of the game, it's pretty even from there. And they're too good of a team probably to come back from that much of a deficit, but gosh, I like how we played and competed and put ourselves in a position. And I felt like if we had gotten one more bucket and the pressure's really on them, then maybe it's a different story all the way down the stretch.

Q. Lindsay, you sound pretty confident you're an NCAA Tournament team. Is the next ten days going to be uncomfortable, anxious? What are the feelings going to be like? Because most projections have you guys right on that edge?
LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: Yeah, I'm confident that's where we belong. It's hard to be confident in things that are out of your control. We know that, you know, if we have five or six more wins, then it's not a question. But I do think the committee has sort of in the years that I've been doing this, right, it's crazy. Like 15 or something years as an assistant head coach, I think it's evolved where they watch a lot more games because of the Pac-12 Network, because everything is digital streaming and all of this. It's a weird year with the bubble, right?

I would say it's soft in a sense that there's a ton of teams with very similar records and resumÃ©s. I think what puts us over the edge is that we've got a Top 10 RPI win with UCLA, a top 20 RPI win with Oklahoma, and Oregon is a really good win for us, and no real bad losses, because nobody in our conference is outside the Top 100.

The thing that makes me most confident is the eye test. If you watch our games and watch today, if you just looked at the score, oh, Cal lost to the No. 1 seed. If you watched the game, you'd say that team's a Top 10 seed or whatever the heck we would be. And I think that's where I have confidence that we have a caliber of club that is an NCAA Tournament caliber. The rest of it is out of our control.

But I'm happy the committee has watched all year and understands. I think when you have whatever she is, a Top 10 player in the country, Top 5, whatever, can you compete with anybody? Sure, then you compete with anybody. And we've got a bunch of other talented kids too.

Q. Lindsay, you're talking about how you're proud that your team came back, but falling behind yet again in the first quarter. What happened there?
LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: I don't know if there's a guard that makes as many big-time shots as Syd does. When you literally go under one ball screen and it's a bucket, and I thought we missed a couple good looks earlier, and they got a little bit of a rhythm.

I thought the second quarter when we cut it to six, I think Kristine scored seven points and we game back and started hitting shots. When we cut it to six and got five stops in a row, we couldn't get a bucket. So when we went on our run and won the second quarter by four, we could have won that by ten.

So it's tough, right? But they've got their No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament potentially if they win this thing, so they're really, really good. So some of it is you've got to be so sharp from start to finish. You miss a bucket, you give up a three, and all of a sudden you're in a little bit of a hole.

But I didn't think it was a lack of focus or energy or intensity or anything like that. I think we've been pretty solid here for two days, and this is the type of way that we want to play. And if we continually play this way, I think there's a lot more basketball in us this year, and especially for the young kids understanding this is what it's like. You know, I think we'll eventually get to a championship caliber.

Q. When Sydney hit those three free throws to open the second quarter, you guys were really on the verge of getting blown out of there. Do you think that's something that what it says about your team, but also an NCAA committee would look at and say they were on the ropes and next thing you know they're down by four?
LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: Yeah, she hit those free throws and I think they didn't score again for a really long time until Pivec hit some big threes. And the reason Oregon State is good is that you kind of want to give up Pivec threes if you're going to give up something, it hasn't been her highest percentage thing, and she goes 3 for 4. That's why they're good.

But absolutely. I don't -- I think to have a team climb back, right, and string together stops and score, and this is a team that's tough to score on. We put some pressure on them in the second quarter.

Again, it speaks to how good they are and also, I think, that we're competitive against anybody. We want to get to the point where we're not putting ourselves in a hole and having to climb back. But to be down 13, 14 or something, and climb back to four, again, obviously, we can compete. We just have to take that next step.

Q. It seems like the last couple games you've taken your game a little more on the outside, like more short jumpers and all of that. How's that working for you? Was it like more of an intentional thing this game because they were clogging inside for you?
KRISTINE ANIGWE: Well, like when you're getting pushed around game after game, you have to do something else. So when there's three people on me, I just try to extend the court and do whatever's comfortable, whatever fits our play, whatever the guards are giving me. I'm just trying to do whatever it takes to win. So if I have to shoot a jumper, I'm going to shoot a jumper because that's two points and it's closer to winning than anything. I'd rather do something for us to be in the game than not do anything at all.

Q. What did you tell your team in the locker room after the game? Because you are kind of on this bubble, kind of waiting. NIT is a given, but for the NCAA, how do you approach this now?
LINDSAY GOTTLIEB: I told them I couldn't be more proud of their effort in the last couple days, but we also need to understand that there are reasons we're not a championship team yet, and they are, right? Because I know that, again, Courtney and KC are only seniors, and we have a lot to play for for them. But the rest of the kids in this group are going to win a Pac-12 Championship at some point, so I want them to feel how it feels to give this effort all the time, even when you come up short.

In terms of the whole postseason conversation, they're really smart. They're cerebral kids. We've been pretty transparent with what's at stake the last couple weeks. So I talked about it, I said, we're going to be in a postseason tournament, and I think we deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament. And if we do get that opportunity, gosh, we're going to, you know, blaze into that thing like the team that nobody wants to play. If that's not in the cards for us, then we're going to take every advantage to try to win the other tournament and that could be, you know, useful for us too.

But we're going to be on pins and needles for a couple days here, but the thing you can do is rest and practice hard and mentally prepare and take what comes. The whole thing we do in college basketball is all about life lessons. And we know we could have taken care of business earlier. But I also know looking at our resumÃ© lined up against other people, I think if we get in that tournament, we'll be everything that it's about, which is, hey, I don't want to face that team. Anything can happen in a 40-minute game. So we'll get them prepared either way, and everything we always do is about the life lessons, and the growth and handling situations through basketball.

Q. Courtney, as the senior here, what are your thoughts and feelings going on with you in terms of your last Pac-12 tournament or waiting on the bubble? What's going on with you?
COURTNEY RANGE: I felt like -- Coach Lindsay said it best, but, yeah, we're going to be on pins and needles, but at the end of the day we're going to go back, practice, and whatever happens on the Selection Show, that happens. If we get our name called, then we're going to prepare for whoever we're playing. If not, we're going to prepare for the NIT.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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