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BIG EAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 6, 2017Doug BrunoJessica JanuaryLauren ProchaskaChicago, Illinois DePaul - 59, St. Johns - 41 DOUG BRUNO: Once again, I'm really pleased with the energy that our players and the focus that our players brought to the beginning of the game. In an overview, I think that we really played with good energy. I thought we had a good defensive game plan and did a good job defensively, and at the same time, on the offensive side of the basketball, while we had some good individual possessions, I don't think that we did a great job offensively of getting into any kind of rhythm or flow, so I think offensively we were very, very choppy all game. I'm thrilled that we were in position to be up 24 points when you're not playing well offensively, and that speaks to the defensive side of the ball and what we were able to do defensively. I just think that has to really get cleaned up for tomorrow. St. John's is a really good basketball team. They've had some really good wins this season. Joe Tartamella and his program is a really, really solid program. They're very tough. They're very tough defensively. They're going to make you work very, very hard to score. A big part of our offensive lack of flow must be credited to the St. John's defense, but I still think we've got to find a better flow. We got in foul trouble in the first half with some unintelligent fouls, and I think that helped chop us up. It's great to have Jessica January back. She just really brings us energy and competitiveness. And Lauren Prochaska, sitting next to me, has been an unsung hero throughout the season. People don't think that she does very much because her numbers don't jump off the page at you. We wouldn't have won the Big East regular season without her stepping in for Jessica and playing the kind of ball she's played all season. Again, I'm really excited about the opportunity to play Marquette tomorrow. Marquette is an excellent ballclub. I could talk to you more about Marquette after we talk to the student-athletes. Q. Jess, this is just your fourth game back, and you exploded for 20 points tonight, three of four from downtown. How did you find your rhythm so fast? JESSICA JANUARY: Well, I think I'm obviously really excited to be back, and like Bruno said, we kind of had a choppy game offensively, and I think everyone just did a good job being aggressive still and trying to take advantage of the easy opportunities that we did have. Q. Lauren, are you able to talk at all tonight about your role as kind of the engine of the offense and also your defensive work on Aaliyah Lewis? LAUREN PROCHASKA: It's definitely a team effort. It's not I stop you, it's we stop they, and I think we did a pretty good job. Aliyyah was coming off an amazing scoring game last night, so I think everyone did a really good job of when it was their time to step up and defend, got the job done overall pretty well. Q. Obviously this is a very big game coming up against Marquette tomorrow; what's the biggest thing that you're really looking out for concerning their offense, and what exactly are you going to take away from this game? Obviously St. John's is a very active team, very fast team, that you're going to be able to carry over and guarantee yourself a win? JESSICA JANUARY: Like you were saying, Marquette is a really aggressive team and they're extremely athletic, and I think that we were able to play against some of that tonight, against St. John's. And we're really just going to have to do the same thing, execute the defensive game plan and try to get some better flow offensively. Q. Coach Bruno, you talked about having a game plan defensively, and it was clearly executed well, shutting down Aaliyah Lewis for the most part and really frustrating her. What went into that defensive effort? DOUG BRUNO: Because we are a team that scores the ball, I like to score the ball. I don't think people have ever thought of us as a defensive basketball team. But we've always worked very hard to be a good defensive basketball team. And if you're scoring in the 80s, you're going to give up points, and the speed of the game with which we play, we tend to give up points. But I have great assistant coaches. All of my assistants are great scouts. So we spend a lot of time examining film and understanding what our opponents' strengths are and weaknesses are. It was beneficial to us to have Jade Walker in foul trouble the first half. That was huge for us, and I just think that we were able to also do a real nice job -- it was a team effort defensively. You know, we were able to one-man monster or one-man zone off of Simmons, so there was always a secondary player in the paint when Lewis did penetrate. It's not like we just shut her down by herself. We always had a secondary defender in the paint, and I think that was really, really important, as well. It's never -- Lauren said it but she said it very quickly and she's very quiet when she speaks. She said, it's about we stop they, it's not about I stop mine, and I think that's what she was trying to say. The second half, I thought we did do a good job of getting to Jade Walker with the secondary defenders well when Joe's game plan coming out of halftime was to go right at us with Walker. I thought we did a good job of getting a secondary defender to her in the second half, also. Q. Marquette, a team that you guys have played twice and fell to, is very hard to beat a team three times, but playing on their home court, what extra challenges does that bring to your team fighting for the Big East title? DOUG BRUNO: The concept of beating a team three times is something that people like to say, and I guess it's true, but the way we approach basketball is we never play three times, we play one time. And we played them once in Chicago and we felt like that game, to Marquette's credit, they came and took it from us after we had a 15 or 16 point lead. Prochaska here went down in the second half. In Game 2 here in Milwaukee, they just kicked our butts. I mean, they just came out and flat-out beat us from the opening jump to the end of the game, and that's, again, a credit to a really, really talented Marquette team. I'm really excited for the Big East that Marquette is as talented as they are. I really can't say it often enough, that when you look at their résumé, they have beaten Oregon State, they have beaten Arizona State. These are two teams that everybody is saying the PAC-12 is the best conference in the country, and these are two of the better teams in the PAC-12, and Marquette beat those two teams. We're not a shabby team. Their wins over us I think count for something. So Marquette is really, really talented. And it starts Danielle King is averaging 27.5 against us, so those are pretty good numbers. But they just have talent at all five spots. Blockton is really a special basketball player. Davenport is just really tough inside. Just can go on and on. Wilborn comes off the bench. I didn't even talk about Hiedeman. She's had a triple-double. They're a hard team to guard. I'm excited for the atmosphere tomorrow. I'm blessed to be the only guy in this tournament that got to play coach Al McGuire. So I know Milwaukee arena before it was the mecca and what the place was like when it was packed, and we walked out with three-piece suits and we walk up to the corners made sure the place was packed. You put visitors up in one corner for sure. So I know what this Marquette thing is all about, and I'm excited about that, and I'm excited about the fact that now women's basketball -- I expect it's going to be a full house, taking on a stage that is the Al. He's up there in heaven right now saying, when I grew up in Brooklyn I never thought about girls playing basketball, but you know what, this is pretty cool, and now we're going to be rocking in both corners in the Al. So I mean I'm just excited for the game. I think we'll make it a good game. I know Marquette will make it a good game. So I think it'll be a good classic battle. Then you've got the rivalry factor. Marquette and DePaul are two great rivals, and DePaul and Notre Dame. But before there were leagues, there were independents. Marquette played DePaul twice, Marquette played Notre Dame twice, Marquette played Dayton twice, the four of us played each other twice. So we are natural rivals. Kids from Chicago go to Marquette. Kids from Chicago go to DePaul. It's just a big, big game. It's an extension of the Packers and the Bears, even though the Bears haven't made it a rivalry for about 15 years. It's an extension of the Bears-Packers rivalry. It's all that into one, and the Big East has done a great job here hosting the tournament. Marquette has done a great job hosting the tournament. So I'm just excited for the opportunity to be a part of what I think is going to be a real cool event for women's sports and women's basketball in the El. Q. You lost three starters this year. Jessica obviously has returned now in her fourth game playing. When she went down you saw so many players step up into different roles, but now that she's back, how do you help create that same energy of those players stepping up even though she's returned? DOUG BRUNO: Well, Jessica gives us energy. She gives us energy, she gives us competitiveness, she gives us talent. It's all about working it all together and getting it all into a flow and into a sync. That's what we're trying to put together right now. We've had some good flow since she's been back. In four games here we've had a lot of really great flow. I'm not overly concerned about the fact that -- St. John's was the reason it was always a -- you've got to always give credit to the opponent, and you can't just say we were bad on offense. You have to understand that St. John's is good defensively. They made us bad on offense. We have to recover from that even though we did win the basketball game handily, we still have to recover and find some flow between tonight and tomorrow. But we have to -- Marquette is a great ballclub. When we average 81 points a game, you can't be giving -- you can't average 81 and give up 96 and give up 102, even though it was an overtime game. That's a lot of points. You have to do better than that. They're good and they're hard to guard, but still, that's a lot. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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