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BIG EAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 4, 2018

Anthony Bozzella

Chicago, Illinois

DePaul - 78, Seton Hall - 52

ANTHONY BOZZELLA: Congratulations to DePaul. They are clearly the benchmark program of our tremendous conference. I said to Doug, if I ever wasn't coaching in his league, I would certainly be a person at his practices. His kids play with so much passion and heart and togetherness. It's something we strive for, and I think everyone strives for.

I think we just ran out of gas. I think what hurt us was we were down 6 points at the half, and it took us so much energy to get back down to six points at the half. I think if it was 8-2, then 10-8, then 20-18, and whatever, and it ends 36-30 because it was close the whole half, I don't think we would have expended so much energy as all of a sudden we were down 13 points and pressing and running and pressing and running.

And I give the kids a lot of credit. We could have given it up and packed it in. DePaul hit six of their first seven three pointers, and they came out with a lot of confidence, and we didn't back down. That's why I was really proud of the kids.

I think in the second half those two plays that really changed it where there were two loose balls and we didn't get them, and maybe because we weren't aggressive enough, maybe we were tired. Maybe because we spent a lot of energy last night and today to try to catch up, or maybe DePaul was just quicker to the ball. I don't know but hey scored six points on those two plays and it put us out of reach, and then I think the kids really started to struggle.

I told them, you know, what they feel is adversity is nothing in life that's near that. So we have to learn how to fight through adversity. We have four starters returning. We have 11 of our 12 players returning. So we've made a big step in the way the program is.

I wish, obviously, DePaul a tremendous amount of luck and I'm very, very humbled by the fact that we get to play in one of the best conferences in the United States.

Q. You said in last year's tournament after playing DePaul, I'm paraphrasing, but you said you were glad your team played against them. Did you feel that way again tonight? You spoke about this earlier, and I didn't want to elaborate on it.
ANTHONY BOZZELLA: No, it's fine. I am glad. I want to test ourselves against the best. We've lost to them in the finals. We've lost to them in the quarters the last two years. I think last year's game was far different from this year's game. I think last year's game we were totally outclassed from the beginning of the game.

This year we showed it in our last regular season game. We showed that we can be competitive and that we still have a long way to go, and we still have to improve the way we play and get into a better system that's more conducive to our players. But we are making good strides in the program.

To play against them and grow the way we did and fight through the adversity of, you know, just being down and them making six or seven threes to start the game and us staying in the game, I thought, was a big step.

Q. What, in your estimation was the difference between last time you played them and being so close in tonight's game?
ANTHONY BOZZELLA: I think it was still close. I think last time we played at home. Our crowd is tremendous, our fans give us a lot of energy. I mean, it's one of the toughest places to play in the country, and I think that helps. It's hard to play when you're not home.

I think also, you know, we played last night. When we played DePaul last night, they had a great Friday night, we had a great Friday night. And DePaul earned the right to not play last night. Let me make that clear. There is nothing against that. They earned that right. That's why it's important for us to earn the right next year to not play yesterday.

Q. DePaul is shooting more threes than two teams in the NCAA. Today they shot 44. Is that unusual? How did that fact affect your game?
ANTHONY BOZZELLA: I wasn't really upset with the 44 attempts. When we had talked, I had said to a few of the press people and even the people on TV. I said, we want them to shoot threes. We want them to be contested threes. They only shot 8 for 37 to end the game. I think they might have made one or two of their last ones. So they went it through a stretch of maybe 6 for 35. That's really good. What hurt us was the offensive rebounds and they had 19 of them and the lay-ups. They had only made five lay-ups in the first half. It was 36-30 with them shooting as well as they did. That was good for us.

But like I said, Charlie, we had to expend so much energy to get us from being down to only down 6. If we could have kept it close the whole time, I think we would have had a lot more energy and really eliminated the chance of them getting as many lay-ups as they did in the second half.

I want to say we're back at DePaul and their staff is tremendous. We needed a lot of things, and we had to move some stuff around and they were very accommodating. They run a first class program, yes, on the basketball floor, but in athletics the way we were treated was certainly first class, and that's something the Big East needs to be proud of as well as DePaul. Thank you.

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