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BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 4, 2017

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Texas - 71

Oklahoma State - 60

THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by the Texas Longhorns, Coach Karen Aston along with student-athletes Lashann Higgs and Brooke McCarty. Coach, congratulations on the win and your thoughts?

KAREN ASTON: Thank you. I think the first game is always difficult to play, especially if you play a team that had gotten their feet wet last night. I was pleased with the way we started. Sometimes we have a tendency if we start really, really fast to let our guard down a little bit and I thought we did that, but I also thought that we had really good contributions from our bench down the line. We had nine or ten people score and lots of good energy off the bench in particular in the first half when Kelsey was in foul trouble. Then I thought she got involved in the second half and it made a difference for us. Good team win for us. We're excited to still be playing.

Q. Coach just mentioned how good the bench played and I think it was 32-18. How critical is the bench especially until a tournament situation where you're going to be playing back-to-back games and maybe even Monday? How crucial is the bench play in a situation like this?
LASHANN HIGGS: I think that it's very critical that the bench players contribute because you never know who may get in foul trouble or what starter might need a breather, so just got to be ready when our numbers are called.

Q. Coach, you went on a 15-0 run there in the third quarter. Who was working for you coming out of the gate after halftime?
KAREN ASTON: First of all, we didn't play yesterday so you have to give our team a little bit of credit for probably having a little more energy and a little more legs today which is the benefit, obviously, of getting the bye.

Second thing, I mentioned just a few minutes ago, is that Kelsey got back involved and I thought we made a good effort to try to get her the ball early, and she is a big part of our team and obviously our offense. We seemed to have a better flow and we limited our fouls.

We had a period of time there in the second quarter where we fouled too much. It slowed the game down and we got some stops and got out in transition.

Q. Brooke, pretty good week for you with all the individual attention, but how difficult or was it difficult for you to come out here, one, just to prove what everybody has been saying how great you are, and is that extra pressure for you?
BROOKE McCARTY: No, I don't think so. I think it's about the team. So the individual awards are pretty great, but at the same time I couldn't do it without my team and we couldn't do it without each other. So I think just staying in tune with my team and coming to practice every day and working hard. I think it was easy.

Q. Coach, did you see something yesterday watching Oklahoma State that you felt you could take advantage of, and did that work out?
KAREN ASTON: Honestly, no, because we've gotten to the point where we really don't quite every know how people are going to play us. So for us to go back to the hotel and really start to analyze what it is we can attack, you can't almost decide that for our team until we get into a game because we're not every quite sure how we're going to be defended. I thought our players did a good job of adjusting because we didn't talk as much about what we would do against a man.

I thought early Brooke got some penetration and we got some good looks early offensively and that gave us some confidence, but I think we could have done a better job and we just talked about it because we were anxious tonight. We shot a little quick, and I think had we been a little more patient we would have gotten better looks.

But I thought we did a pretty good job of adjusting. But as far as your question, I didn't see something last night that we thought we would attack. We saw some situations in the game where we were able to post up some guards and do some different things like that that I thought we executed pretty well.

Q. Brooke, you didn't have any assists at halftime and finished with 4. What did you adjust in your game? Do you always drink chocolate milk after games?
BROOKE McCARTY: At halftime Coach preached penetration, and so when we penetrated to the middle of the floor the posts were wide open. So it was easy to make that extra pass; and, yeah, it's kind of recovery.

Q. Coach, Jensen got her points, but 5 of 16, if I remember in Austin she was almost 0-10 at one point. How pleased are you with your frontcourt defense and anyone in particular that was active that made it tough on her?
KAREN ASTON: I actually thought -- they're probably surprised I would say this because I'm on them all the time, but I thought collectively we were better, in particular better than we were in Stillwater. I thought they attacked us in some different ways in Stillwater than they did at home, and we made some pretty good adjustments to that. Kelsey helped up in the second half kind of stabilize our defense on Jensen. I thought the best job we did was on Mandy Coleman because that was the adjustment to the last time we played them. Mandy Coleman hurt us pretty bad. We relaxed and let Jones come in and didn't really recognize what her strengths were, and we'll talk about that.

But I did think that we talked at length about not letting Kaylee Jensen and Mandy Coleman have big nights, and I thought we did a much better job on Coleman.

Q. Coach, how important is the bench in a tournament situation where you play back-to-back, maybe even three games in three days? People like Lashann and Hosey actually had a great game today as well?
KAREN ASTON: I think it's important for two reasons, and Lashann hit on both of them. One of them is that we tend to always have someone that manages to get in foul trouble and I think our team recognizes that. Our players stay ready. They work in practice like they have an expectation to play.

I think it better prepares them. We coach 'em like we expect them to play in practice. So I think it helps them to prepare to be ready; and then you're right, if you have to play two and possibly or hopefully three then you better have some other people ready to play.

I think we do have several. I thought Shug was really good tonight. She was aggressive. Jordan was good. You could go down the line. Audrey had a good night for us. So lots of contributions from those guys coming off the bench.

THE MODERATOR: Okay, ladies, we will see you tomorrow. Congratulations on the win.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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