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MOUNTAIN WEST WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 9, 2018Amanda LevensT MoeTeige ZellerLas Vegas, Nevada Boise State - 62, Nevada - 60 AMANDA LEVENS: Yeah, just congratulations to Boise State, winning the regular season, tying with UNLV, and then winning the tournament. They're a very good team. And I think they're playing really well right now, and will represent our conference extremely well in the NCAA Tournament. With our team, we had the lead most of the game, just couldn't quite hold on. I thought the offensive rebounding, especially in the fourth quarter, got us. They hurt us a little bit in transition in the fourth quarter. We needed to sprint back and play, I thought, a little bit better. And offensively, we missed some shots we've been making in the fourth quarter. Unfortunately, I thought Terae had a great look at a layup that just didn't go down. T Moe had a couple of looks that she's been making all week that just didn't go down. And give them a lot of credit, they did what they needed to do to get the win today. Q. Obviously it wasn't the ending that you wanted. What will you take from this week and this experience that you had coming so close to reaching your goal? TEIGE ZELLER: I'm just, again, just really grateful for this opportunity. I don't know. There's nothing like it. There's really nothing like it. I mean, yeah, I want to look back at it and say we won, but I'm going to look back at it and say that we fought, at least. I don't know. I'm really proud of my team and the way we came out to end the season. It's hard. It's really hard. Q. Same with you, T? T MOE: I would just say that I'm grateful to be here. We weren't supposed to be. And we made it. So we did the best that we could. Q. T, do you feel like you guys ran out of gas in that fourth quarter? You played so many minutes and so many consecutive games. Did you feel that was a factor or not executing down the fourth quarter? T MOE: For me, personally, I was tired. That shouldn't be an excuse. I should be able to suck it up. And there were a couple of times I didn't pick it up in transition and they scored off me. That's on me. Q. You dominated the rebounding, you were up like 15 on rebounding, but they came back in the fourth quarter. What was the biggest difference as far as them getting more second-chance opportunities in the last quarter? TEIGE ZELLER: I honestly don't know. Resiliency, relentlessly determined. They just wanted it more than us, I guess. Q. Both of you guys are seniors, and obviously this will be your last game here. What kind of foundation have you set for the future of this program? T MOE: I think things will definitely look up from here. I think we're going to establish a winning program from now on. This little end run that we had is going to set the stage for the future. Q. Same for you? TEIGE ZELLER: Yes. I'm sorry, I totally missed the question. Q. What you feel like this season maybe sets the foundation for the program moving forward. TEIGE ZELLER: Oh, absolutely. Really, I was lying in bed this morning just thinking about how awesome it would be to be able to say that we helped Amanda get a championship her first year here. But like T said, it's going to be the start of every year getting to this -- getting to even play in the championship and they will win it sometime. I know they will. Q. T, I guess just the feeling, can you describe it when you saw that basket go through, you were right in the corner there and seemed like you just kind of sunk. T MOE: I guess for me is anger and disappointment. That was the biggest defensive stop we needed in this tournament, and we got the stop, and gave up a no-board putback at the buzzer. There's no words to really describe that. Q. I know it's really tough right now to maybe summarize some positive aspects, but we've been talking to you two the first part of this week, can you maybe touch upon Jade and Camariah, they seem to really have a good supporting role tonight. Camariah came out on fire, Jade came up with key buckets to sort of keep you guys in there when there was a cold stretch with the main players. Can you talk about their play today. TEIGE ZELLER: Camariah and Jade, I have all the confidence in them, and they're going to be a huge part of this team next year as well. Any time I get a kickout to Camariah, that ball is going out with positive energy, she's going to make it. And any time Jade gets that pull-up, I know it's going in. Again, they're great players, and they're going to do some great things next year. T MOE: Yeah, definitely. There have been games where each of them have gone off this year and they're more than capable of doing so. And tonight they definitely stepped up when we needed them to. Q. The last shot from the corner, your last shot of the game, is that what you wanted or something that had to happen because of Boise's defense? AMANDA LEVENS: Our timing was off out of the timeout. We started to run the play and CK didn't start the play with the ball in her hands, and we got messed up. It was a great job by Jade getting a shot out, but it was not what we were looking for out of that timeout; we wanted to go right away. I think CK was thinking we were going to hold the ball. I don't know, that's something we have struggled with. We struggled with it last game, too. We came out of timeouts and didn't do a great job of executing. I think moving forward, being in these positions, CK and Jade will be returners for us, we'll be better. But we needed to be better in that situation tonight and try to get a better shot. We definitely wanted to get Teige a touch because we thought we had an advantage with that matchup, and unfortunately didn't get her a touch in that situation. Q. Did you think coming out of the timeout going 2 for 1 to get the last shot of the game? AMANDA LEVENS: No. Q. Any reason why not? AMANDA LEVENS: With our team we want to make sure we get the shot we wanted. In that situation we did want to go quick. And I guess in my mind we wouldn't call it a two for one; we wanted to get the ball back when they had more time in the game than was on the shot clock. But just the way that we stalled out, like I said, CK held the ball and everyone else was running the play. We did want to go a lot faster. And the other thing with that is if you shoot it and miss it then you get the O board hopefully and you get other 30. That's why we wanted to go quick. I think one of the biggest strengths of our team is offensive rebounding. And we had a lot of big ones tonight. I thought in that situation if we got the shot we wanted out of the set we were running, we would have a great chance to O board it. And also, Teige in there, she's such a great finisher, and we would be able to set our defense. We had other opportunities in the fourth quarter. Terae had a great look at a layup that just didn't go down. If she makes that, we're up four, versus not up four. And T Moe had some good looks that have gone in. CK had a three from the corner that went in and out. Those are plays that are so close that does not go our way. Q. They played more zone the second half. AMANDA LEVENS: I don't think we did a great job against their press or zone. I thought we played backwards a little bit, which is exactly what they want. I don't want to say we're tired as an excuse, but our guards have been more aggressive all week, and tonight we were on our heels. We talked about it at halftime, and I didn't think we adjusted and do a lot better in the second half unfortunately. We did execute and get the ball inside but it wasn't because we were driving it harder or anything like that; it was from passing. Q. Teige only had 7 shots the whole game. You need her to touch the ball more, get up more shots? AMANDA LEVENS: Yeah, for sure. We'd like to see her 12 to 14. I give Boise credit, they did stay lose and they fought with her a lot. I think that puts a lot of pressure on the officials, like who do you call that on because they're both fighting with each other. She got a tough offensive call, in my opinion, wasn't an offensive foul, because they're both battling down there. It's a tough. It's a tough play to officiate. And also like for her, she's working so hard down there, so the timing of the passes have to be right and things like that. Q. What will you remember about this week? AMANDA LEVENS: I mean, I think when you have some time to reflect you'll look back and think just how fun it was. Our girls made amazing memories. They were so excited and happy all week and just enjoying this. And so I think for us to put ourselves in a position to win a championship when we were picked 10th in the preseason, and we had newspaper articles saying we wouldn't get better for three to five years, and I think our team used that to fuel them. They really believed in themselves and each other and our coaching staff and our system. You don't make a run like this if you don't believe. If you don't come back to practice and the keep getting better. We had a tough stretch where we lost 6 in a row, they were all, except one, by single digits, and they came back and working. And they wanted to fix the things that were not allowing us to be successful. Like you saw in the tournament, the character of our team. The two that were sitting by me, they're going to be a huge loss to our program, amazing leaders, amazing kids, amazing workers. They're going to impact the world and be great in whatever they decide to do. We will miss them and they went out of their last conference tournament with their heads held high, they did everything they could. And I know they won't have any regrets. Q. Boise State is a team that's really, really experienced in these games, situations, NCAA tournament games. Did you think that was a factor? AMANDA LEVENS: I thought if we could keep the lead, the pressure was on them, because we didn't have anything to lose. I didn't think we ever got tight. But I do feel stuff didn't go down that had been going down for us. You've got to score. They're a great scoring offensive team. We held them to 62 points; we did a pretty good job. We needed to do a better job on Riley, she had too many 3s, especially early to keep them in it when we were playing well. And I thought we did a good job on everybody else. Braydey Hodgins had been tearing it up in the tournament and the conference, I thought we did a pretty solid job on her. Q. Feeding off of that, Coach, and I know that A'Shanti and Sha are starters, but focusing on Riley and focusing on Brady and even Marta, Sha and A'Shanti had big plays, with A'Shanti hitting the game winner. With the focus on their three main ones, they got lost in the shuffle? AMANDA LEVENS: No, we didn't box them out, to be honest. I watched the last play before I came down here. We missed the box-out. Then in transition we didn't match up the play before then. And the other play with A'Shanti we came over and we doubled, we shouldn't have doubled with two posts so we didn't have any big patrolling the paint and she was wide open. Can't help with three people on a guard. That's a breakdown, it's not our defensive system. And in those critical moments you can't have those breakdowns. You see it in the men's game, it's a dunk, if your big comes over helps on the guard. And they do a great job of exploiting that, and we needed to better. Their posts do a great job just continuing to pursue the ball. You can box them out and they keep coming, you can call a foul or not, but I'm going to keep going after the ball. They're really relentless on the glass, they do a great job. Q. Obviously your first year, I guess what do you feel like you established this year in moving forward? AMANDA LEVENS: Just our expectations within the program in every area, academically, how we conduct ourselves on a daily basis, how we practice, how we prepare. At first the team was, What's this all about? And now they really buy into it, they understand the importance, like everything is important that we do; sleeping, eating, all that stuff. I think we turned the corner and now when we bring in our new players next year, it's not going to just be the coaching staff. We have all our returners saying you need to do that. Hopefully they're saying it before the coaches are. As soon as they become more of a player-led team it's going it to be a lot of fun. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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