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PAC-12 WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 3, 2017

Seattle, Washington

Oregon - 70, Washington - 69

THE MODERATOR: We welcome Washington. Coach, I'll let you start with an opening statement, and then we'll take questions.

MIKE NEIGHBORS: Great game, that had to be fun to watch. Tremendous crowd. Thank you, Pac-12, Seattle, everybody that did everything to pack that house tonight. It was awesome. I thought they played very, very passionately like they needed that win. I thought they were already in the NCAA Tournament, but they played like a team that thought they needed to have another one. And I think what they did tonight is play themselves into a higher seed.

I thought our kids really, really battled. It's really tough to play that second day, and I thought we got off to a little bit of a slow start with some hustle plays, some 50-50 balls that they won every one of. Once we got that cleaned up, it was a great game from that point on.

Q. Kelsey, will you talk about the last shot? Did it look like a good look? Somebody had a hand on it, right?
KELSEY PLUM: Yeah, I didn't -- I mean, there were two people on me, but there wasn't a lot of time left, so I just tried to get it up there. Yeah, someone tipped it.

Q. Coach, you swapped Kelsey on to Sabrina I think maybe midway through the first quarter or second quarter, and I think she held Sabrina scoreless for a quarter, quarter and a half. Kelsey is always praised for her offense, but can you talk about her defense?
MIKE NEIGHBORS: Yeah, anybody that doesn't praise her for her defense doesn't watch the game. They're just watching it for the offensive stuff. She got everybody's best player last year for 40 minutes. So I thought she did a great job after that adjustment. It got her in some foul trouble that I wish we could have made some other adjustments on, but the kid's hard to guard. The kid's really hard to guard. I thought -- I'm going to go back and look at it. I thought the fouls that Kelsey got called on her were mostly hand checks and stuff. So there's nobody in the country that gets more hand checks than she does, so we'll look at it.

But I thought she did a great job defensively. I think, in general, our team doesn't get any defensive credit anyway. I think these got to be one of the Pac-12 defensive players of the top six, five or something, if she didn't make it. Just because steals and blocked shots show up. She's in my opinion one of the best defensive players that ever played in the post. Look at the numbers of what she did against people head-to-head. The job she didn't tonight.

Defensive rebound doesn't count anymore? I think we had a great team defense. And I thought our first-shot defense was great. They got 15 points after we would stop them initially in the first half. Like we would stop the first shot, and then the ball would kick around or something, and they'd get a second. It might not have gone down as a second-chance point, but they got 15 after we made them miss the first time.

So that to me is a sign of a team that really was amped up to play the game, and they got to all those loose balls. But I think both of these kids' defense, and Natalie Romeo, is way underrated. I'm really proud of our team where we finished statistically to not have had somebody that the rest of the conference thought was good enough to be on the defensive team. Even though they were third in field goal position defense.

Q. I'm not sure that it matters because you guys did such an incredible job last year with your seeding. What seed do you think you've earned this year? Do you think that regardless of who wins this tournament, the Pac-12 needs to be a 1 seed?
MIKE NEIGHBORS: I don't think regardless. I don't think if Oregon wins it they should be the No. 1 seed. But I think if Oregon State does, they should. I'll look at it really hard. Y'all know I love to look at that stuff. I'll start looking hard tomorrow. Preliminary looking, I didn't think there was any way we could fall out of the 3 seed just based on who the other four seeds were and what their resumÃ©s were. This will put Oregon's RPI probably into the top 25, close. Low 30s at the very least. And that would be considered our worst loss because we've lost to Notre Dame, Oregon State, UCLA, Stanford, and Oregon, there is not a bad loss in that column. So if we don't end up getting the host, then we'll go back to work to try to figure it out.

But I think we've done plenty to be able to host one. If they at any time see what Seattle does when they come out to support us. What was it, 9,000 tonight?

THE MODERATOR: 9686. It was a sellout.

MIKE NEIGHBORS: That's a big number.

Q. Kelsey, what was it like going against Sabrina? She's at the beginning of her career and you're kind of at the end of yours. What did you see from her tonight?
KELSEY PLUM: She's a very good player. She's going to have a great career. I missed shots late. I'm known for making shots, and I didn't make them late, and that's why we lost. You can give credit to them, but as a player, as an All-American, I have to do better, I have to play better, so end of story.

Q. You guys had I think a nine-point lead at one point. Were you guys comfortable in any way?
MIKE NEIGHBORS: No, never comfortable. This team's too explosive. And Lexi Bando, I think, hit two straight threes in that run and had an and-one toward there. So I was happy that we were playing well. We had built the lead, but by no means were we satisfied or didn't think there was another run coming. They're too good of a team. We've been in too many games with these guys. It happened last year too. We had an 18-point lead against them last year when Alene (phonetic) fouled out. And that's one of those moments you go Alene is out of the game now, and all of a sudden they start raining threes again. So never comfortable, never any of that.

I thought they hit some very, very timely shots, and that was the big difference in it.

Q. Lexi Bando had nine points in your first match-up. She only had four or five shots, I believe, to get that. Was her performance -- did that change your guys' game plan defensively?
MIKE NEIGHBORS: Didn't change the game plan. Maybe it should have, I don't know. But we do what we do. We didn't do as well this time. I think also last time you have to understand, Sabrina and Maite didn't play, so those kids that were on the floor, we may have been heavier in the gaps and we could have helped on some of those curls and given Natalie more help on some of that stuff.

It was an overall team breakdown, wasn't anything any individual did. But I think the result of the stress that Sabrina and Maite put on you on the perimeter, that just makes Lexi that much more dangerous. And like I say, I thought she hit a couple threes in transition that were just really, really timely and clutch.

Q. Kelsey, not the outcome you wanted, but what are the positives you can take from this game and learn moving on to the NCAA Tournament?
KELSEY PLUM: We'll be ready in March. March Madness, we'll be ready. And I'm not going to miss like that again.

Q. Kelsey gets a hand on the three late, made a great defense, Chantel gets an and-one, and you're right there the final minute. Can you just talk, is it harder to swallow when you lose the game at the line, essentially, when they're able to go ahead at the line?
MIKE NEIGHBORS: It's hard to lose period, with this group, just because their expectations are so high. But I think the key thing is, again, for us, if we all of a sudden start talking about being a process team all year long and now all of a sudden become a results team at this point in time in the year, that's what we didn't do last year.

So I think there are so many plays. I mean, I'm going to kick myself for running the play that involved the screen that gets a moving screen called on it with under a minute to play. That doesn't happen very often, but that's my fault. I probably should have just ran an iso play or something like that. But moving screen called with under a minute to play in a crucial, crucial game, that's on me. I should have known better.

Q. Kelsey, you've been a captain since you were a freshman. What are you saying to your teammates right now? I think you guys will be ready for March, and I'm not sure anyone wants to play you. But as a captain, as a senior, what are you saying in the locker room to make sure everyone's focused?
KELSEY PLUM: We have some veterans on our team and we have some young kids too. So I think as a leader you have to reassure the young kids that it's not the end of the world. Yeah, it's a tough loss, but we learn from it. When the big games come in March, March Madness, you learn from this mistake. You learn from getting one more defensive rebound, one more screen, whatever that was called for offensive foul.

But I think as veterans we take responsibility for the loss.

I think, if anything, I didn't do enough job preparing the young ones, and even Natalie in there. Because, like, they need to feel more free out there. They need to feel like they can step in, knock down shots and there's no pressure, no pressure on them. So I'll get my team better prepared.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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PAC-12 WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 3, 2017

Mike Neighbors

Chantel Osahor

Kelsey Plum