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PAC-12 WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 3, 2017June DaughertyNike McClureIvana KmetovskaSeattle, Washington Stanford - 66, WSU - 36 THE MODERATOR: Good evening, welcome to Washington State Cougars. Coach, an opening statement and then we'll go to questions. JUNE DAUGHERTY: First of all, on behalf of our program, we'd like to thank the Pac-12 for an incredible experience here in women's basketball. It's been everything great up to this point, unfortunately. Also to you, the media, we really appreciate all the support that you guys have given women's basketball, especially this year. It's really exciting, obviously, to coach in this conference and see all of the improvements that continuing to on, so thanks to everybody for that. Congratulations to Stanford for their tremendous play today. Obviously they came in well-rested, really had scouted us very well. Took us out of a lot of things early defensively. We were struggling very much to score, and, you know, it took us a while, but I thought we got back on track in the second quarter. Obviously, it's just not enough, given all of the strength of offense, especially that Stanford plays. But, you know, all in all I thought our team played hard at times, especially in the second quarter, and the third and fourth quarter and they stayed with the game plan. But, unfortunately for us, I think we were running a little bit on fumes today, and it showed. Q. Coach, when your team falls down by so much like that, what do you try to talk to the players, rally them? JUNE DAUGHERTY: Well, we did the same thing the other night. We've done that before, and they know that they've got a great maturity about them even though they're a young group. That's what we talk about, just don't play scoreboard. Get back down into our system defensively. Try to get some stops. Try to turn them over, get them one and done and get them back into our running game. Try to get something easy so we get some confidence and get some rhythm about what we're doing. They've always done a great job of that. But tonight, like I said, it's just tough because we were pretty tired out there. Q. Was there any sort of emotional letdown, I guess, after yesterday's game where you guys came back and really took -- JUNE DAUGHERTY: Yeah, I mean, I don't know how there couldn't be. For all the people that were here and people on TV that saw that game, I mean, Colorado, it was just a slugfest, back and forth, back and forth. You know, all the out of bounds plays on their end, and that arrow going the other way, the arrow not changing, all the crazy things that were going on. There is no doubt. I'm not going to tell you there wasn't an emotional letdown after. It's a very, very quick turnaround. No doubt, it's a quick turnaround for us. But I thought that our team was ready to play. I thought that they were rallying. I thought they were encouraging each other. I think after the first quarter in particular they kind of put it behind them and the emotions kind of leveled out and it kind of picked up emotionally and we got after it with some energy. Q. It looked like even in the early going you were actually getting some decent looks and just couldn't get it to drop. Is that right? IVANA KMETOVSKA: Yeah, and their defense is also good. NIKE MCCLURE: I mean, that happens to the best of us. Not all your shots are going to fall. It just depends. We ran our offense correctly, and that's all we could get, really, in terms of those shots falling. We just need rebounders. So if we're not going to rebound and those shots are not going to fall, then obviously the score's going to be a little lopsided. Q. For both of you guys, Coach has talked about how proud she was of you and how you've handled the injuries and adversity you faced this season. How proud are you of yourselves and what do you guys take away, do you think, from this season? NIKE MCCLURE: From this season, I think the biggest takeaway is our toughness as a team. Obviously, when you lose a lot of talent like that, it's hard. It's hard to come back from that and you have to adjust a lot during the season. So I think that it really shows that we're able to adjust on the move really well and we're tough. So when we bring those players back, we have that talent, that toughness, and the ability to adjust on the move. So I'm excited for our season next year, and I'm excited for postseason as well, hopefully. IVANA KMETOVSKA: I thought as much as this is a lesson for basketball, this is a lesson for life in general. When things aren't going right, you don't give up. I'm so proud of my teammates that we were successful in doing that. Q. Coach, Karlie Samuelson gets a lot of open threes tonight. What does she do that gets her those wide-open looks? Is that part of the system, and how do you counter that? JUNE DAUGHERTY: They space the floor really well. They've got tremendous inside game. I think for us, honestly, because we only played Stanford once this year with the rotation with the Pac-12, and we did a much, much better job covering them, but that was the first night of Friday Sunday play up in Pullman. So I think we were a little bit of a step slow. But they move the basketball very quickly. They've got a very, very dominating front line. So if you get caught leaning in a little bit or trying to help or whatever, they're going to find open player. And she's a great player. She's just a great player as well. They move the basketball and find her with ease. Q. What did they take away from you guys defensively tonight? It seems like in the first quarter things weren't falling. Is that something they were doing or were the shots not there? JUNE DAUGHERTY: They did a very good job of keeping McPhee on Swedlund. They were denying her the ball. You know, Swed was one of the big factors in us getting going last night offensively and she has been most of the season. So they did a good job. She didn't even get touches. We were trying to get a lot of ball movement. They play gap defense. They're not out on you playing really hard, but we're trying to move and cut through the gaps. Just, you know, trying to find something easy. But with their length and how they play that gap defense, I think -- we talked about we did get some looks early, but for us, I thought they were a little bit rushed and they did get some blocks early. I think that made us a little bit tentative. But I thought that probably four minutes into that first quarter Nike just kind of said, you know what, let's go. Nike has kind of been our superwoman. She kind of put that cape back on and said, you know what, guys, I don't care who we're playing against, I don't care what the score is, let's compete. She took it to the rim and hit that first free throw lying jumpshot and kind of got going a little bit, so everybody else kind of said, oh, yeah, I guess we can score against these guys. But sometimes it just takes one player stepping up and getting going and showing that, hey, we can do this. This is just basketball. Q. You went 0 for 16 from three-point range tonight. With that, would you rather see them attacking the basket more or do you think because the point differential was getting so much you had to take those? JUNE DAUGHERTY: I don't have a problem with our shot selection tonight. I don't. Two nights ago, the three-point line was very good to us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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