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NCAA WOMEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS AND FINALS: BRIDGEPORTMarch 25, 2017Geno AuriemmaNapheesa CollierGabby WilliamsBridgeport, Connecticut UConn - 86, UCLA - 71 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by UConn. We'll start with an opening statement from Coach Auriemma. COACH AURIEMMA: Obviously, you know, we played a really, really good team. They are hard to play against. And today was a struggle for us. Even when we got up 20, I didn't think it was like being up 20 against somebody else, where you know it's going to go from 20 to 30. I never had that feeling. It was a grind for our guys. We felt it a little bit in the fourth quarter. These two here, especially, they were amazing. They just keep playing and playing and playing, just keep making plays when we need them to make a play. Between the two of them and Saniya, they were just really, really, really good. We got our work cut out for us on Monday. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for the student-athletes. Q. Gabby, can you talk about Saniya's contributions today. Seemed like her baskets came at big moments, breaking the press when they brought the press to you. GABBY WILLIAMS: Yeah, at times it seemed like she was the only person we could really trust with the ball. She was able to penetrate the zone, which is what you have to do against a team like that. She handled their full-court pressure. She just played really confidently tonight. Q. Gabby, Saniya on the defensive end it seemed like was everywhere she needed to be today. What do you see from her at that end both in a game-by-game basis and today? GABBY WILLIAMS: Yeah, she stepped up. They're not an easy team to guard. I mean, the matchups are pretty tough. I was really impressed with how she did on the glass. She was boxing out guys that were a lot bigger than her. She tried to stop dribble-penetration as best she can. I think she did a really good job with that. Q. Gabby, it's not very often that you get matched up with somebody that's almost as athletic as you are. Monique Billings has that type of jumping ability, the length, is very similar in style to you. Can you talk for a second about what it was like to actually face somebody that can compete with you athletically, not just basketball-wise. GABBY WILLIAMS: It was tough. It was a challenge. Usually, you know, I try to use my athleticism as my advantage. I couldn't really do that tonight. So I had to find another way to, you know, guard her to match up with her. I'm glad I was able to see that, you know, going into next game. Q. Gabby, during the handshakes, many of you guys didn't really have a smile on your face, yet you won. Why was that? GABBY WILLIAMS: I think we were just kind of exhausted. It was a long final three minutes. We were happy, you know, once we got back into the locker room. We didn't end the game as well as we would have liked to. I think the look on our face is just a result of how the last few minutes kind of dragged for us. Q. Did you get a chance to see Oregon before you played today? What do you think of that matchup come Monday? GABBY WILLIAMS: Yeah, we watched the game. We've been watching them the whole tournament. We've been watching everybody. So it's the same thing. They're here for a reason. Right now they're a really good team obviously. They're a lot similar to UCLA in that they have really good perimeter players. They're really good on the glass. We're just going to have to go in with kind of a similar game plan, I think. NAPHEESA COLLIER: You know, like Gabby said, they're a really good team. There's no bad teams left. Monday is going to be a hard game as well. We're really going to have to stop them on the three-point line because they have some really good guards. Q. Napheesa, you had your customary offensive game today. Three blocked shots, tie-up during a team moment. Did this feel like a big step forward for you defensively as well? NAPHEESA COLLIER: I think every game I try to get better on defense because it's one of my weakest points in my game right now. I'm just trying as hard as I can in the games, trying to do those hustle plays. Q. Napheesa, Gabby was saying that last three minutes seemed like it would never end. How did you keep finding a way to make one more play? How did you find that within yourselves? NAPHEESA COLLIER: Well, the time I was in, because I fouled out at the end (smiling), we tried to keep them off the three-point line and tried to box out, which we didn't do as well as we did in the beginning of the game. Because we were fouling, because we kept reviewing plays, that made it drag out longer. From the bench, from my standpoint on the bench, it seemed like that really dragged it on, like I said, just because we weren't really, you know, stopping them on the perimeter as much. Q. For both players. It's only three minutes in, but when you're down 9-2, is that a bit of a wake-up call for you? GABBY WILLIAMS: We like to say that, you know, to play with us, it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. They came out hard. They came out aggressive. But there was 37 minutes left to play. I think we got a lot of good shots up in those first few minutes, they just weren't falling. Once they started to fall, once we started to execute better on defense, the game kind of fell into place. NAPHEESA COLLIER: Yeah, teams are going to go on runs. I think the important thing is to stop the runs as quickly as we can. I think we did that. Then go out there more and try to score. Our shots started falling, so I think that's what happened. So I think we adjusted to it pretty well. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies. We'll see you tomorrow. We'll take questions for Coach Auriemma. Q. Geno, at this point in her career, how nice is it to see Saniya come out tonight in this spot and play this well? COACH AURIEMMA: I was just looking at the stat sheet. That's probably more points tonight that she scored than in maybe the three previous NCAA tournaments combined. That's how little she played the last three years. I said before the conference tournament at Mohegan, there's three guys we need to play at their level, Saniya is one of them, Crystal is the other one. Today, the effort and play of Saniya, I thought it was the difference in the game. You know what you're going to get from those other guys. They did what they always do, for the most part. Saniya made some big plays, big shots. She's as good now as she can be. It's at the perfect time in her career. I mean, she's a senior. Sometimes it never happens. I'm really thrilled for her that it's happening. She deserves it. She's hung in there. Q. Geno, Gabby was saying a little bit earlier, to play with us it's a marathon, not a sprint. Is it the same thing when you look at Saniya in terms of her development? COACH AURIEMMA: Yeah, I was really anxious to see how Saniya's game would transfer over to the college game because when she played in high school, it was chaotic. They would just run up and down the floor. They would try to score 100 every night in a high school game. I went to see her play one night. I don't know, she must have had 45 points or something. If she could have passed it to herself, she would have, back then. When she got here, it just was a real struggle for her. It was a real struggle. A real struggle to play with other good players on the floor, to not just be able to do whatever you feel like doing; that you have to share the ball, you have to play some defense, you got to be mentally ready. You know, it was really a struggle for her. She would get it going for a week. We would always say, All right, this is it. Then it would go away. Then she would get it back for another week. All right, we got it. Then it would go away. It was like that every year. This year, you know, it's all kind of fallen into place for her. She deserves it. She's worked hard. She deserves it. Q. Coach, a similar question that I asked your player. You looked pretty frustrated, as well. What part of the game were you guys not executing that was obviously frustrating you? COACH AURIEMMA: Yeah, I mean, as I said, you know, when we got up 20, it wasn't going to be just roll over and get up a bunch. That doesn't happen generally at this time of the year. But I didn't think we really took advantage of a lot of things that we could have taken advantage of, the way they were playing against us. Some of that was we were tired. We played a lot of minutes. Some of it, we made some bonehead mistakes, you know. I don't mind us making physical mistakes, either 'cause we're tired or we're just not good enough, whatever the case may be. But we got tired mentally, and that bothered me a little bit. At this time of year, where you are mentally is going to be the difference maker in the games at this time of the year. Everybody's good. Everybody's physically capable. So I was kind of disappointed. And I know they were, too, because they pride themselves on being able to finish things out. Plus, you know, the fouls, the waiting. It was just a drag. It was. Q. Geno, I know in your former job as USA Basketball coach, you said you hated it when they said they have nothing to lose against the other team. Oregon has so much youth. What has impressed you about them? COACH AURIEMMA: They were too young to know any better. They didn't realize they're supposed to be, like, nervous. They don't realize this is supposed to be really hard, you know. You're not supposed to just walk into the NCAA tournament and just start beating teams with three freshmen in the starting lineup, and a freshman point guard. I'm not even the least bit surprised at what they're doing. Not even a little bit. I remember when Kelly got the job. I told everybody in the coaching profession, I said, They're going to be in the Final Four sooner than anybody thinks. As I said earlier today, it better not be this soon. But they're going to be there because he's a hell of a coach. You can recruit pretty good players to the University of Oregon. He's done that. They are a really, really good team. If you got really good guards, you can have a really good team. They've got some pretty good guards. Q. Geno, you talked about Saniya figuring it out, out on the court. To what extent do you see the figuring out on the defensive end, what she is for you as a defensive weapon at this point? COACH AURIEMMA: Yeah, that was a big struggle for her, playing defense, because, again, it was something different for her. I think the thing that kids generally learn when they come to play at UConn is you can't shoot your way into our lineup. I mean, Lou does. She don't guard anybody. She doesn't even pretend. At least some people pretend. She don't even know how to pretend. But Saniya knew. She came here, we got some pretty good players on the team. Bria Hartley, Moriah Jefferson, Kelly Faris. We got guys that are pretty good. She knew. If I don't play defense, I'm not going to play. It was a real struggle for her. It finally dawned on her. She's become a really good defender, really good. I trust her. Never thought I'd say that, but I trust her. She has put a lot of time and effort into this. It means a lot to her right now. We put her in a situation that I wanted her on the free-throw line at the end of the game because I trust her. And we put her on Jordin Canada a lot, because I trust her. That's the best thing that you can get from your coach, is they trust you. Q. To talk about Oregon, how you were saying they were young, they don't know any better, are you also concerned about their play as far as, like, when Maryland tried to defend them, Maryland threw everything at them, the same thing how you sometimes win, teams try to catch at you, you throw different defenses? Oregon seemed like they had an answer for every defense thrown at them. Is that definitely one of the major concern, going into the game Monday? COACH AURIEMMA: Oh, yeah. It always is at this time of the year. This is the hardest time of the year to be a good defensive team because all the bad offensive teams are home. They're not playing. So everybody you play at this time of the year knows what they're doing on offense, for the most part. So you got to be good defensively at this time of the year. But, even more important than that, you got to get great possessions and you got to score over and over and over and over and over again. You go long stretches without scoring at this time of the year, you're going to lose, or you're going to put yourself in position to lose. Sometimes the pressure that teams put on you by scoring, and I think that's what they did to Maryland today, they would come down and get a bucket, and Maryland would miss, then they would go down and run 28 seconds off the shot clock, get another bucket, and Maryland would come down and miss. After a while, the pressure to have to score gets to kids. Yeah, I don't know if we can defend them on Monday. I really don't. We'll come up with something. But this time of the year, I want to try to get to 90 and take my chances. I don't want to try to win a game 65-60. That's probably not going to work. Q. Jordin Canada said after the game you congratulated her for a great career. Did you know she was a junior? COACH AURIEMMA: Yeah. We recruited her coming out of high school. She's become a really, really good player. I don't think she was this good when she was coming out of high school. She was good, and I thought she would get better. But she's worked really hard to improve offensively. She makes shots now that she didn't make back then. We played them two years ago, and we didn't have to guard her that much. Now, you see, she controls the entire game for them. She not only gets the ball to players, but she gets in the lane and she causes problems. You got to kind of build your defense around how to guard her. I know, I mean, you watch a majority of their games, and there hasn't been too many people that have been able to guard her. I just wanted to kind of let her know that, that her career has been great. For a minute there, I did think she was a senior 'cause... Did she sit out a year maybe? No. Seems like she's been there forever. When kids start out as a freshman, they feel like they've been there forever. I remembered after the fact that she has another year left. She's just gotten better and better every year. I was really impressed with her. Q. This team that you just played was incredibly athletic as well as long. Strikes me that Oregon doesn't have that pure athleticism at the same level. Is that your impression? Does that make a difference in how you're going to be able to run your stuff? COACH AURIEMMA: Yeah, they're a completely different kind of team. You know, Doug Bruno and I have that conversation all the time, about what really constitutes athletic. People have this vision of what a great athlete is. It usually involves somebody that looks like LeBron, you know. Somebody that there isn't anything on the basketball court they physically can't do. Well, that's one definition of an athlete. Bruno and I talk about the kind of athletes that have an amazing set of eyes. Like, they see things nobody else can see. Their feet, they move to spots way before anybody knows they're supposed to be there. Their minds are really just quicker than everybody else's. They're one step ahead of everybody else. So Oregon's got a bunch of those kids. They're athletic in a different way than UCLA is. Doesn't mean they're better or worse. But they're different. I don't think a lot of times that gets recognized. We try to do that. We try to recruit kids that have that, you know, and can run and jump, like Gabby. We try to do that, too. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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