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PAC-12 WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 5, 2017

Seattle, Washington

Stanford - 48, Oregon State - 43

THE MODERATOR: Welcome to the Stanford Cardinal. We've got Tara VanDerveer, Karlie Samuelson, Erica McCall, and Alanna Smith.

Coach, an opening statement and then questions.

TARA VANDERVEER: First of all, I want to congratulate Oregon State on a great season and a great team, and wish them the very best in the NCAA Tournament along with the, hopefully, six other Pac-12 schools that will be going to the NCAA Tournament other than us.

We're really excited. I'm so proud of the women next to me and the rest of the women and staff in the locker room.

But a lot of us, the reason that we're sitting up here is because of the great leadership that we've had from Karlie, from Bird, from Bri, the great defense that people played and the belief and the resilience that we showed.

We kind of have that little saying, it wasn't pretty, but it was gritty. We got after it. Our defense, I thought, was outstanding. You know, we stayed in the rebounding game. I mean, the numbers, there are so many numbers that match up. It was just a heavyweight battle. We started out, we kind of got the bloody nose first, but that motivated people to keep playing hard and make some plays.

So, congratulations Stanford, and I'm really excited to be the automatic bid for the NCAA Tournament.

Q. Can you talk about getting the bloody nose first, what you guys were thinking when you were looking up at the scoreboard at that point and what shifted?
ERICA MCCALL: Honestly, I was like, dang, again? But that's what we're used to. We come back strong, and I think being in situations like Washington, even Oregon yesterday, we battled back.

I'm just super proud of how my team performed. I think just being down helps us push through. We knew we've been through those situations a lot. I think we just had to continue to talk to each other, encourage each other. I know my teammates were talking to me when I didn't feel like I was knocking things down, and I think that really helped us push through. Like Tara said, it was really gritty, and I'm just really happy we got this win.

Q. Tara, you did a great defensive number on Sydney Wiese. Can you talk a little about your priority there and how you did it?
TARA VANDERVEER: Well, it wasn't me, for sure. I thought Briana Roberson and Marta Sniezek worked extremely hard, and they were very focused. Sydney Wiese is an outstanding player, and she can frustrate a lot of defenses, and I think people really studied tape and said: This is what we're going to do.

She got -- both Bri and Marta got great help from our post players who showed out. We just really wanted to make other people make plays, and they were doing the same thing to us. Both teams, I think, were playing what I call scouting report defense. But I thought we just had great effort defensively from everyone, but especially Bri and Marta.

Q. Yesterday you gave up 25 points to Oregon in the first quarter, and then the final three quarters hold them to 31; today give up 22 and you hold them to 21 over the final three quarters. Can you just talk about how important defense is to your program?
TARA VANDERVEER: I think, first of all, we should skip the first quarter and just go right to the second quarter and play second, third, fourth and fifth; maybe that would help our defense a little bit.

But defense is a mindset. I think it starts with Briana, her being a great defensive player and under -- sometimes underrated defensive player. But everyone buys in. Defense, you're unselfish. It's not about scoring. It doesn't get written up in the paper that much. So, again, I hadn't seen those numbers, but to be able to hold them to 7 points in three quarters is phenomenal.

Q. Alanna, you were able to get in deep in the paint. You were able to score. You gave your team a big offensive spark when you guys seem to have trouble scoring. Could you just talk about what your mindset was when you went into the game? And I'm going to ask Tara about Alanna's game and what she gave you guys.
ALANNA SMITH: I think for me, it's just having an aggressive mindset, and just slowing down and reading the defense. And that's something my coaches have been telling me and I've really been trying to take on board. Tonight it worked really well for our team, for everyone, not only me.

Q. Coach, can you talk about Alanna?
TARA VANDERVEER: It's been really exciting to see Alanna's improvement throughout the year. She has a lot of talent. She gives us a big body that can score on the perimeter, score on the block, runs the floor. She's had some super games for us, and she really stepped up big tonight.

I think that one of the things with our team, Kaylee Johnson had a great game yesterday, and Alanna got to rest a lot, you know? So it was really what I call tag team. So Alanna played great tonight, championship game. Kayl played great the night before. We were able to play a lot of people in the first game against Washington State, so I think that helped Alanna have her legs, rebound. And Alanna really focused. She works extra. She watched video. We don't sugar coat it, and she really listened and I think really improved. It's really exciting to see her have such a great game.

Q. Coach, yesterday during this press conference you said that we were going to talk about the problems you had with Oregon State after today's game. Now that you're here and you've won it, what shifted into getting the win today? It was kind of interesting that Scott Rueck said nothing surprised him in this game. He knew it was going to be gritty. What are your thoughts?
TARA VANDERVEER: Well, either -- any of these three games could have gone either way with each game. We could have won all three. They could have won all three. We could have won two. It could have been any combination. I think a lot was on the line for this game. This is the Pac-12 Championship. I think our team came in with a lot of resolve. After losing last week, we wanted to play them and we wanted to show to ourselves that we were champions too.

Again, Karlie and Bird and Alanna and all of our team dug in. Even when things weren't going well, everyone stayed with things. The grit, the resolve and resilience was to me what was most important.

Q. Karlie and Erica, how satisfying is this to finish in your senior year with a Pac-12 Championship? You guys came here to win championships. Regular season championships have been a little tougher to come by than maybe you might have thought they were. But here you are, and is this a super satisfying way to finish?
KARLIE SAMUELSON: Yeah, I think our loss to Oregon State we were that close on that last loss, and that was a pretty painful loss for us. We wanted a championship this year. So we really wanted this tournament. We knew we could do it, and I'm really happy that we did, because we really want to be champions, and we were that close during regular season.

ERICA MCCALL: Yeah, like Karlie said, those two losses to Oregon State hurt really bad. We were super focused this week, and being able to come out, and even the way we won makes it that much more satisfying. The way we came back from that 16-3 score they had, and we battled.

I'm really happy about how my team performed. It's super satisfying. It's like tasting your favorite candy, Sour Patch Kids.

Q. I don't have the box in front of me, but I think you only gave up seven field goals after the first quarter. But you also didn't put a fairly good free-throw shooting team on the line very much. So you played not only played good defense, but you played without fouling. Is that about as well as you can play defensively over the last three quarters?
TARA VANDERVEER: I'll probably go back and nitpick a little bit and see one more opportunity. But they are an outstanding offensive team. Sydney Wiese is an All-American, and we had people really work hard to shut her down and work as hard as we could to make everything tough. Like you said, without fouling. I tell our team fouling negates hustle. So if you're fouling, you're really hurting yourself.

So not sending them to the line, making -- even like you think of her shot at the end of the first half, Bri was right there on her. She's just that good. I'm so proud of how hard our team played and how they just battled, getting on the floor for loose balls, getting on the glass, all the little things.

We left some -- we left a lot of points, I think, kind of out there. We had a lot of shots that we would make nine out of ten times. So it wasn't like our offense was as good as it can be. But our defense really stepped up.

Q. You said at the start that you thought it was seven from the Pac-12 would get in. I think people understand six of them. What would your case be for Cal? With that, what do you think this tournament title does for your seeding?
TARA VANDERVEER: Well, we have 12 teams in our league, and if you look at how well Cal played in the preseason, the teams they beat and playing against in the top RPI conference, I just would say that there would be no one in the NCAA bracket that would want to play Cal. I think they're good enough, and I think that they should be definitely given consideration. I mean, I think they should be in it, having played them twice.

Q. The absence of winning regular season titles over these last few years, and the conference is obviously upgraded, has it been strange? Has it been -- what has it been from your vantage point to see other teams climb up -- you guys don't win titles for a couple of years. What's that experience been like?
TARA VANDERVEER: Well, the regular season has changed because you don't have a true home at home. So in some ways we've come into this tournament and been undefeated. It's like, oh, great, regular season, on to the tournament, and this gets the automatic bid.

So in a lot of ways we have geared our team for the tournament. To be -- I think we won it two years ago. We won the regular season three years ago, right? So that's not shabby.

But I think it's different. There's more of a sense that there's more excitement with the tournament because you're playing these teams and three games in three days. Our team from the beginning, I told our team we're a tournament team because of the depth that we have. We're able to put a lot of players in the game.

You know, I'm excited that the Pac-12 is so good. I mean, it's really a premier conference in the country with great universities, and now we have women's basketball to kind of check that off too.

So it's exciting to go to Washington and play in Seattle with a sellout crowd, and a sellout crowd at Oregon State. I know Oregon's going to be good for years to come. It's great crowd for us at Stanford. So I'm all for everyone doing well.

Thank you, all. We've had a great time.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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