	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

NCAA WOMEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS AND FINALS: LEXINGTON

March 23, 2017

Karen Aston

Lexington, Kentucky

THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us for the press conference for the Texas women's basketball team. We're joined at the podium by head coach Karen Aston.

If you would raise your hand, we'll go ahead and open it up for questions for the head coach.

Q. Coach, Tara had mentioned earlier that she watches Joyner Holmes sometimes, and she's a woman playing against girls. I'm just curious how she's grown into who she is over the course of the season from that first game against Stanford.
KAREN ASTON: Well, I definitely think that Joyner has matured as a basketball player. I mean, to go back and look at that film in that first game against Stanford is almost comical, just from the standpoint of how young we were in a lot of areas and how really disconnected we were, in particular on the defensive end, mainly because of youth and inexperience.

With Joyner, the special thing about her is not necessarily that she is, I think, a woman yet -- and I think she would definitely admit that she's not -- but her kind of unique ability to be able to learn from her mistakes pretty quickly. Sometimes freshmen and even -- I would say even as they become sophomores, it still takes them quite a long time to adjust to things and get over failures and move on. She has a pretty good grasp of that. As probably as, I would say, immature she is off the court a bit, she has gained some maturity as the season's gone along.

Q. Tara told a funny story about three-point shots. Their team went to China the year before it was introduced as a shot here, and some girl hit ten threes on them, and she didn't know what the heck was going on. Do you as a coach remember when the three-pointer was instituted and what your thoughts were at the time of what it might do to the game?
KAREN ASTON: I definitely don't remember what year it was. I do remember some different things about the game, just because I still played a year or two even with the six-on-six, when I was young, when I was in high school. To me, the most significant difference as a player was when we changed the ball, the size of the ball I thought was really, really significant.

I was not a college coach when we went to the three. So I don't necessarily remember that significance as much as maybe Tara does, but it has absolutely changed the game. It is a huge part of, I think, women's basketball and men's basketball at this point.

Q. Karen, your team is obviously a lot better than it was back when you played Stanford earlier, especially with Holmes. In what ways do you think Stanford has also improved since then? Especially with the emergence of Alanna Smith down the stretch of the season.
KAREN ASTON: I think that is probably the most significant change in them from a personnel perspective is Alanna, and we know her well. We recruited her. We were well aware of Alanna as soon as she showed up on Stanford's campus.

She has definitely grown as a basketball player, and that just speaks to the evolution of kids. As they get into, I think, that second semester of their sophomore year, second round of conference play is usually when those lights start to shine bright if they're really talented players, and she is. So she's made a big difference in them.

I think the other piece of growth in Stanford's team has been probably on the defensive end, not necessarily that they're better defensively or different, but I think that they look like their attention to game plans is really, really good, and their solidness on defense is -- it jumps out at you for sure.

Again, when we played them, it was early. It was the first game of the season for us, so we had not even seen their team at all, other than I think they played one game before they played us. So not near as much film and a lot of growth from both teams.

Q. Coach, Samuelson is No. 2 in the country in three-point field-goal percentage. What makes her effective behind the three? Is it anything different than you've seen? And who might guard that?
KAREN ASTON: I think what makes her effective, it's her team. You wouldn't just -- it's not just her. It's the fact that they have a really good concept of their offensive flow. I think they screen really well. That's another thing that jumps out at me is their efficiency on screens and screen angles. They're really good at it, and they understand their job. When you get to this part of the season, when you get to the Sweet 16, nothing is easy, and people are paying attention to detail at a very high level, and they do their job to get her the shots that she needs.

The other part about Samuelson that's grown in her game -- I wouldn't even necessarily say just recently, but in her career -- has been her ability to play off the bounce. I think, when she first started, it was catch and shoot, and she's added other dimensions to her game, and it's made her more difficult to guard.

Q. Since that three-game losing streak in late February, you all have won 5-of-6. What do you feel like you all learned from that losing streak that's helping you right now?
KAREN ASTON: I think what we've learned the most is to sort of try to stay in the moment. Our team won 19 games in a row, pretty much staying in the moment. I don't know if fatigue set in with our young kids or whether we just got out of the moment. I don't even know that they've know. We've talked about it, and it's a pretty honest group of kids. They always manage to tell you how they feel, even if it's something you don't want to hear.

And we've talked about it at length, and I'm not sure it's even something they know, but I think it's definitely something they learned from in the sense of either you have to get over fatigue and you have to fight through it, or you really just stay in the moment and try to do the best you can do that day or for that team that you're preparing for.

That stretch we went through at the end of that 19-game win streak was really tough, and it would have taken a very mature team to go through that stretch and then go through the two or three games that we fell short on, and we may have just not been mature enough to handle that. I say that, but all three of those games we lost were in the last second and could have easily all three have been won. So shots didn't go our way. That's part of life.

I think the other thing was just to handle adversity because the first one, the other team made a shot at the buzzer, and that may have bled into the other losses. You know, you have to have a short memory in this game.

THE MODERATOR: Any other questions for the head coach?

Q. Coach, you play in a big gym, but Rupp is probably going to be the biggest one your players will ever play in. Is depth perception something that you guys talk about? And how do they go about their business of getting accustomed to a big open space like that?
KAREN ASTON: Well, I think that's what today is about. That's why you come here and have a chance to practice the day before. Fortunately for us -- I say fortunately that we're playing at 9:30. I'm not sure about that. But we do get a shootaround. So we have an opportunity to get two different times in the gym before we play tomorrow night, and I think that will be helpful for our players.

But you hit it right on the head, we do play in a big gym. We've played in some environments that have been different. I mean, that's the thing about this team, there's not a whole lot we haven't seen, and it may be a little bit bigger than what we're accustomed to, but we've been in an awful lot of different environments this year. Schedule allowed us to do that. So it's a reflection for our kids and for our team. It's pretty significant. I don't know that there's anything we haven't seen.

THE MODERATOR: The press conference has been concluded.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297