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BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 3, 2018Mike CareyKatrina PardeeKristina KingNaomi DavenportOklahoma City, Oklahoma West Virginia - 69, Oklahoma - 60 THE MODERATOR: Congratulations and your thoughts? MIKE CAREY: Thank you. Give our players credit. We got tired at the end, started turning it over. Overall we executed our game plan and got a little sloppy, but I think that was mostly because we got tired. We had some people come off the bench and give us some great minutes today and that really helped us. Q. Naomi, they came out, you guys were hitting shots, they were missing. For a team that thrives on defense the way that you do, does that just kind of elevate everything for you at that point when they're struggling the way that they did? NAOMI DAVENPORT: Yeah, we came out early with a lot of energy and I feel like that carried us throughout the first half. We were just executing our plays. We couldn't have drew them up any better. We took advantage of what they were giving us and we sat down on defense in the first half and that's where we took it from. Q. Kristina, you struggled last week against Morgantown. What changed for you? KRISTINA KING: Really it was to attack. Me attacking draws my defense in and then our shooters are open, so that's where I got a lot of my assists and moving the ball. Just being more confident with driving in and scoring. MIKE CAREY: She played harder. Q. Katrina, you had eight rebounds in this game, one off from a career high. Was it for of a concerted effort to go up on the boards especially when you are going against Kaylee Jensen who is leading the conference in rebounding? MIKE CAREY: Yeah, I wanted to help Teana in the five. Kaylee is a tough post and when you have such a great post on the opposite team I think we need to help rebound. Naomi did a great job as well. She had 9 rebounds I think, so we just want to help our post and get in there and attack and do more stuff especially if our shots aren't falling. Q. Katrina, the pride of Vista Ridge High School, near my hometown. Last year you were a sixth seed you won it all. This year you're a six seed. Is there a sense that this is going to happen again? Because you played awfully well tonight. KATRINA PARDEE: I think we go in every game thinking that we're going to win. That's what you have to do. You can't go in shy or fading away from your opponent. We have to take it one game at a time and we need to execute the game plan, and if we do that we will be all right. Q. Biggest difference today compared to the last two meetings against Oklahoma State? KATRINA PARDEE: Energy. Energy, moving the ball and just playing team ball and playing together. We had a lot of energy going into this game and we knew we needed it. KRISTINA KING: I feel like everybody played hard. NAOMI DAVENPORT: Yeah, what they said! (Laughter.) THE MODERATOR: Okay, ladies, thank you very much. Questions for Coach? Q. Mike, I just asked the same question, you were a six seed last year and you talked about it last week. Can you do it again? Do you have the same feeling for this year's team that you did last year's that took this tournament? MIKE CAREY: I just don't think we're as deep, you know what I mean, this year, plus Chania Ray has an injured knee, to play back-to-back it's tough. But we're going to come in. Texas is a great team. They just keep bringing bodies off the bench that really can play. So we know we have our hands full, but like our players said, we'll be ready and we will play as hard as we can. Q. Coach, Loryn Goodwin, 5 of 19 from the field. Did your game plan differ on her at all? MIKE CAREY: Yeah, we got on her a bit better. We didn't let her go left as much, she likes to go left, hesitate and then go and Chania Ray did a great job on her and a lot of times Kristina King was switching on her, which gave us height on her which bothered her a little bit. I thought the key was Jensen. We held her to two offensive rebounds. I thought that was key for us. Q. Coach, obviously a lot of turnovers tonight. How do you cut those down tomorrow against a dangerous Texas squad? MIKE CAREY: Well, that's a good question. I thought Kristina King in the first half had 5 turnovers, didn't have any the second half. I thought the second half Naomi had 5 but I think she got tired and there at the end we had about three turnovers and they were going to trap us and we took the ball to the side instead of keeping it centered so that was an issue also. Q. You mentioned the bench production earlier, Coach. How important was it to get good minutes out of Ashley Jones, Theresa Ekhelar, and also the way that Katrina shot the ball tonight? How important were all those things? MIKE CAREY: It was very important because Naomi got tired and Katrina started driving, getting to the line, scoring, and Teana didn't have a big night offensively, but did a great job on Jensen keeping her off the boards. But I thought Theresa was key for us, gave us energy, did some great things off the bench for us. She was key. Q. Braxtin Miller had a really big game against you guys in Morgantown last week and she went out in the second quarter. Did you guys try and attack and just get after the team when they lost her? MIKE CAREY: Yeah, but I'll be honest with you, when she came back in, we tried to drive her. She did a pretty good job on a bad leg there. We tried to isolate her and tried to get her to drive to the rim and she did a couple of times, but we should have been able to do that a lot more. Q. Teana didn't have the best game tonight, but what did she mean to your season as a whole? What do you need her to do tomorrow? MIKE CAREY: Everything. She can pop guards. She can lead on and off the floor. She can relieve pressure, go out and get the ball, make a play and if you noticed with when they be went to the zone we got her to the middle and she kept making the right pass. So she is key to us being successful. Q. It's not unusual for your starters to all tally over 30 minutes. But how do you face challenges with that as you turn around to play in less than 24 hours? MIKE CAREY: It's tough. Texas, like I said, has a lot of players and they play hard. Texas is very athletic, they can score inside and out. We're going to have our hands full. We're going to have to get a game plan together and be ready to play and hope we're hitting shots and they're not. Q. Mike, Uconn is an elite basketball program. In your opinion, what are the other teams in this country that you would consider elite basketball programs? MIKE CAREY: I mean, there's a lot of them. Uconn is, I think right here in our league, I think Baylor, I think Texas is as good as anybody we've every played. Notre Dame when we were in the Big East, Louisville, when we were in the Big East, we played a lot of league teams, also, including Connecticut and then we come to the Big 12 and played elite teams, so there's a lot of them. That's a hard question to answer, to be honest with you. I'm going to make a lot of people mad. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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