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MOUNTAIN WEST WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 7, 2017Mike BradburyLaneah BryanCherise BeynonLas Vegas, Nevada Boise State - 64 New Mexico - 62 COACH MIKE BRADBURY: Well, it was the game that we expected. We felt like it would go down to the last possession. It did up there. They hit a shot at the buzzer or with a second or two, the .7, I think up there today. They hit one with 1.1. So it was the game, I think, we expected and probably everybody else. I was really proud of how our kids played and how hard they played and how we fought. Once again we come up a basket short. We've had four of these in the last two and a half weeks that we've lost four games at the buzzer, on the last shot. Not the last possession, the last shot. And the way our kids continue -- and it was all against the top three teams. The way our kids continued to bounce back and practice well and come out and play the next one and play the next one, you know, that's what made this group special. We got down to bare bones in players. They continued to fight and put us in this position. Q. How reminiscent was it to the Boise State game a couple of weeks ago? CHERISE BEYNON: It was like Coach said, we knew it was going to be almost the same game, last possessions of the game. So it sucks. It hurts that it came down to the same way as last game. Give credit to Boise, they're a really good team. We've had four games like this. We tried. We played really hard. It just wasn't our game today. Q. You guys, as Coach said, bare bones, you guys don't have a whole lot of bodies left at the end of the season. And you guys play a style that's up and down, and you obviously fight hard and were running like crazy. How much at the end of the game, how tired are you guys or are you not feeling it? Is the adrenaline taking over at that moment? LANEAH BRYAN: We feel it, but like you said, they're not going to change the way they play just because we're down players. We had to step up, next man up and played as hard as we could, and I thought we did that today. Q. Boise State was able to keep up with you. How were they able to keep up with that quick pace? If you could talk about what you guys saw on that final play. CHERISE BEYNON: Boise State also likes to play fast. They like to get up and down. We knew it was going to be a fast-paced game on both ends of the floor. They run in transition, we run in transition. On that last play of that shot we did our defensive assignment. We did what we needed to do, no foul, and Brooke just got the shot off. There's nothing we could have done better. Nothing we could have did to prevent the shot. We played defense and that's all we can say. Q. The first year with Coach Bradbury, just summing things up, how would you evaluate the season under him? LANEAH BRYAN: Well, like you said, the pace changed a lot. But we learned a lot, me personally, I thought I learned a lot this year. We did have some bumps in the road with injuries, but other than that I thought it was a good year. CHERISE BEYNON: It was a whole new system we all had to learn. We had to learn us, we had to learn them. It turned out to be better than what we thought this year. Being down players, we still proved to people that we can still play. He changed a lot of our mind sets to work hard every day in practice, and I think that was the biggest thing, like no matter what, nobody really cares. Every game, we have to focus on that game and play hard every day or it's not going to matter to us. Q. With 7:41 left you guys take a five-point lead, 57-52, you went on a run. There was a media timeout in there. And from about the final 7 1/2 minutes until that three, you guys shot 1 for 9. Were they doing something different, were the shots just not falling, what caused the struggles in that stretch? CHERISE BEYNON: I think we weren't getting the stops. We were doing good throughout the entire game and then we were letting them drive it by us. We just weren't hitting open shots. It happens in the game. It's a game of runs. So if we weren't going to shoot, we had to make them not make it, and that's where we didn't stop them a little bit, when they got back-to-back layups, the guarding part of it. Overall we've just got to do a good job, and we have to hit shots down the stretch. Q. The question about the 7:41 mark, you have a five-point lead, and something seems to switch? COACH MIKE BRADBURY: Yeah, Alex got a wide open 10 footer. It rims out. Rise got two open 3's and a layup in transition that didn't go in. We got great shots. We got it to Richelle point blank, came up a little short. Any one of those go in, they were all great shots. Any one of those go in, the outcome changes. Q. You draw up two plays, because they get the warning, and saw what you were doing. I imagine that's why you did the second one. When you draw up the play that did go in, have you guys used that before? COACH MIKE BRADBURY: No, we haven't. We have a series of three plays that we have for any game, last-second plays. And we used two of them at Boise last time. We used a couple at Colorado State. Each time we use them once we put in a new series of three. So we had one drawn up. They take a delay of game. And where that hurt us was we had to use our last timeout to draw the next one up, because if not, we would have got to advance it with 1.1 and then we would have been able to draw up our last one. So then we would have got the last shot. So that's where that hurt. Q. Their play they draw, is that something you maybe could have done something different on? COACH MIKE BRADBURY: Yeah, we thought they were going to get her at the top, which is why we were in man. And then we could double her at the top of the key. She slipped down to the block. Good play on them. Our kids did everything that we told them to do, based on what we thought they were going to do. It was my fault. We should have -- we should have been in a different defense. But that was -- so our kids did everything right. If there's anybody to blame for that last play it's me. We should have done -- been in a different defense. Q. Both teams benefited from the advancement in the final ten seconds. General thoughts in the advancement of the ball. Are you in favor of that in general? COACH MIKE BRADBURY: Yeah, I think it's great. It's a good rule. It makes the game more exciting. There's a lot more coaching involved when you've got that. Clearly you could see that today. They're very well coached. And we come out, have to make a three. Our kids execute it perfect. And we get a wide open one. Okay. So now it's tied. We're the second best defensive team in the league. And they draw up one, after they advance it, and get it to their best player, four feet from the basket. So you could say it was two good plays drawn up and both teams executed them perfectly. Q. Obviously the emotions of a close game and tough losses like this, but you coming off your first season, just maybe a quick evaluation of how your team performed. COACH MIKE BRADBURY: Yeah, I thought they were great. For us to be able to win the number of games we won and finish where we finished with everything that had happened, you know, throughout the year, I couldn't be more proud. They were a hundred percent bought in and played hard, with the exception of one game. We really competed every single night against the best teams in the league. Q. They fought hard. They bought in. What did you learn in your first year. A little bit of a different beast there? COACH MIKE BRADBURY: It is. It's the greatest thing because those people care and they care about women's basketball. It says 1600 on here, I don't know how accurate that is, but if that's an accurate number, I'm going to say 1550 were Lobos fans. The support -- you've got to remember now, our men don't play for two days. So these people came to watch our kids play. The fans are tremendous. The support is tremendous. So what I've learned about it is that. They care about it and they expect our best effort and my best effort and our kids to act right and do right and all that, every single second. So that's what we try to do. Q. You see something, a foundation sort of being built? You can see something that can parlay your first year into a pretty good run year? COACH MIKE BRADBURY: I think so. We've got to continue to get out there and recruit and continue to build the roster and keep improving with the ones that are still here and those kind of things. But there's really no reason why we can't be good there. They've got a good history of being good. There's no reason why we can't get back there, hopefully sooner rather than later. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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