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NCAA WOMEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS AND FINALS: OKLAHOMA CITYMarch 24, 2017Mike NeighborsKelsey PlumChantel OsahorOklahoma City, Oklahoma Mississippi State - 75, Washington - 64 THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Washington. Coach, your thoughts about tonight's game. COACH NEIGHBORS: Congratulations to Mississippi State. Been a tremendous team all year long. Have really started to peak, even more so in the NCAA tournament. We got their best effort tonight. I think it took that because our kids fought and fought and fought, and never went away. Congratulations to those guys. Really proud of our team, not only what they've done this year, but what this group has done for our program over the last four years. THE MODERATOR: Questions for our coach or student-athletes. Q. Kelsey, when Dominique Dillingham came in the game in the second quarter, what was she doing defensively? Also Victoria Vivians, what allowed them to catch back up and take the lead? KELSEY PLUM: They're a very good defensive team. I thought Dillingham did a great job on me. She just stayed down and just contested late on shots. She blocked a couple of 'em, tipped a couple of 'em. Just made it difficult for me. Credit to her for playing a great game. Their team, it was just congested in the paint. They're very big, very athletic. Difficult to get my shot off. Q. Chantel, can you describe what it was like to go against 6'5", 6'7", especially McCowan, what you tried to do to try to keep them away from the basket? CHANTEL OSAHOR: I didn't do a very good job today. Something I take pride in, she was the difference maker, McCowan was. She had 26-12. She had some big baskets at the end. That was my fault. I just didn't box her out hard enough. But credit to her, she had a good game. Q. Coach, is Chantel being a little bit hard on herself? COACH NEIGHBORS: Chantel is absolutely being hard on herself. But that's who she is. I got her back. She played incredibly hard. McCowan is a tough matchup, really tough matchup. She was very motivated. She got going, got really confident, starting hitting some turnaround shots. We simply can't do anything about that. She can't. None of us can. But that's who Chantel is. She has always been the consummate teammate, the consummate dream player that you hope for as a coach. It's hard when it's the end of it. It's a matchup, again, that's just really, really hard. Hard tonight. Q. Kelsey, just talk about your matchup tonight. Seems like in conference play, every time you stepped out, had your hand on the ball, there was somebody always in your face. KELSEY PLUM: Yeah, they did a great job. They shadowed me with the big player. They switched plays, hedged screens. Credit to them. They had a great defensive game plan. You know, I didn't make shots, just throughout the game, which I usually do. They made it difficult on me. I mean, there's not much else to say. They just played great defense. Q. Kelsey, I'm not sure if you're in the reflecting mood right now, but the end of your college career. You put Washington basketball on the map, done some incredible things here. Can you put into words at all what it's been like for you, what your experience has been. KELSEY PLUM: (Tearing up.) I'm so grateful to have been able to go to the University of Washington. You know, when I first came on campus, I had big dreams, dreams for our program, dreams as an individual. A lot of 'em came true. So for that, I'm very grateful. The university has been classy, just supporting me throughout this entire thing. There's no way that I would have been able to accomplish the things that I have academically, athletically, build the relationships with my teammates. It's been one of the best decisions of my life, not one of the easiest, but definitely one of the best. I'm really going to miss my teammates, just the people that I see every day. You know, my coaches, some of the staff, I've really built a family there. So it's going to be difficult saying good-bye. CHANTEL OSAHOR: Yeah, this team is my family. I wouldn't be here without them. You know, it's hard now 'cause we lost. I've made sisters for life, you know. This girl right here will be in my life forever. That's the most important thing, is the relationships. If that's what I leave with, I'm happy about that. Q. Coach, you mentioned about Mississippi State peaking at this time. Did you gather that from film, especially for McCowan? She showed flashes of it all season, but tonight it seemed like she raised her level. COACH NEIGHBORS: When you can do what Vic Schaefer did going into the NCAA tournament, put four starters down, you got your team. They have responded. The starters have played great. The subs have come in and did not do anything but what they were doing when they were starters. Now you've got a team that's really, really deep. Look at the quarters. It's 20-9, 25-9. Those lineups... I think he knows his team as well as any coach right now in the country, to be able to push that button, take that type of a risk. The way they played in their home pod, yeah, absolutely you saw it coming. We were wondering all week whether or not the week off would have been, did they change. When I saw the other lineup, the normal lineup they'd been using, I thought they've just been getting better all week. I thought they played outstanding. Q. Mike, you watched these two come up. You did some special things. Can you reflect at all, say what it's meant to you, what this ride has been like. COACH NEIGHBORS: I wouldn't be a basketball coach without these two kids, period. I'd be probably back working at Blockbuster Video, if they still have them, Netflix, something. You know, they believed in what we had started talking about when I was an assistant coach. They believed all the way through and built. Taught me way more about coaching than I've taught them about basketball. There's a lot of nights I won't sleep because I feel like I've let them down. I'm going to be coaching a lot longer. You know, I've been coaching for 20 years, I'll still be talking about these guys. Haven't coached a game without them. I don't know how you do. But they've made me so much better. They've said things to me I don't think most players would feel comfortable saying to some coaches, but I listened. I'll owe them any longevity that I have in this game, to these two guys, Katie and Heather. Q. Coach, this particular season, was it a home game, a road game that you saw in their eyes, not just in the staff's, or practice, that the team was headed in the right direction? If it all came together, something special might happen? COACH NEIGHBORS: I think it was on the road at Notre Dame. We got punched in the mouth in the first quarter. They stuck together. It was relatively early in the year. It was in the pre-season NIT. We had a lot of returning pieces. We had a lot of new pieces, too. To see our returning pieces get our new pieces set, that's when I knew we had something special. I think we've got six losses, and they're to teams that are all in this tournament. Unless Ohio State beat Notre Dame? Notre Dame won. Every team we've lost to is still in this tournament. That's pretty good. We had 29 winners. We're not a result's-driven team. But to hear these guys say the words, to talk about their teammates. These guys have -- Kelsey has had a microphone and camera pointed in her face all year long. Chantel has, too. They've missed some jump shots, turned the ball over some. But they have not missed a question posed to them. They haven't put anything negative on social media. All they've done is continued to help build the University of Washington and their teammates up. I think that's their greatest accomplishment. The 98 wins, we'll all remember. We'll probably have reunions for a long time with a group. Again, I challenged them not to look at this on a timeline, like we all do now that we all have Twitter and social media. We look at our timelines. If you look at a collective group of first-round NCAA tournament, a Sweet 16, a Final Four. You don't put what years those are, it's a hell of a career. When you go to a place that hasn't been doing any of that when they called you and offered you a scholarship, none of that, it wasn't even a consideration. And to leave with those expectations, the standards in that locker room that are so high, it should be written about for years and years and years. THE MODERATOR: Congratulations on a great season. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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