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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: AUSTINMarch 16, 2018Karen AstonAriel AtkinsBrooke McCartyAustin, Texas THE MODERATOR: Coach, if you'll begin with an opening statement. KAREN ASTON: Just really excited to get the tournament started. You're always anxious as you lead up to game day. I think tomorrow will probably feel like a long day. But I'm excited to get back on the floor, and super excited to host in front of our fans. I'm proud that we've been able to put a schedule together and a body of work together where we can host. I think that's great for our program and great for our fans. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. What does it mean that you get to start in your home with all of your fans? What are you feeling like? BROOKE McCARTY: It's very exciting. I mean, I said all year, our fans are like our sixth man out there. Just to be out there, playing in front of them, feel their excitement, because I know they're probably more excited than us, it's just really exciting. Really looking forward to it. ARIEL ATKINS: Basically what Brooke said. It's definitely exciting. We get to see them screaming and hollering and going crazy for us during the game. They're just a support all season long. It means a lot to be able to play in front of them again. Q. How are you approaching this last NCAA tournament and what is at stake personally? BROOKE McCARTY: I think I'm just kind of going day by day, approaching it probably as just -- let's see. I don't really know. I'm just taking it day by day, having fun with it, enjoying these last moments. Especially getting to play here for probably our last time, it's just a lot of emotions that go into it. I'm taking it day by day and going with the process. ARIEL ATKINS: Absolutely taking it day by day. It's one of those things you don't want it to end. I love this team, this culture. Being a part of it has just been kind of a surreal feeling. I'm just thankful to be here, excited to keep it going. Q. What are the challenges that Maine is going to bring? ARIEL ATKINS: They have shooters, people that can drive. Their guards are pretty versatile. They can score basically at every level. That will present a challenge for us. BROOKE McCARTY: They stick to what they do and execute very well. We're going to have to stay disciplined, kind of know personnel, follow the game plan. Q. At the beginning of the season was there a conversation of Final Four or bust? BROOKE McCARTY: Not really. Of course, that's the common goal. I think we did a really good job this year of taking it day by day, worrying about who we have to play the next day. Of course, it's a goal. At the same time we have opponents in front of us who on any given night can show you anything. We just have to kind of stay in the moment. ARIEL ATKINS: Definitely taking it day by day. I don't think honestly at this point anything would be a (indiscernible) to our entire career. I think we came here and have given Texas everything we have, although we still have more to go. Like I said earlier, we're just thankful to be a part of this program. At this point it's just fighting for the next day. Q. How do you compensate for two important players being injured? BROOKE McCARTY: I think they definitely are important to our team. Audrey has been out for a while now. I think we kind of tried to fill that role as best as we can. Rellah, she brings a lot to the table, too. We have the people who we have, so we have to play, go to the next day, keep rolling. Q. What are some advantages you feel like you have over Maine for the game tomorrow? ARIEL ATKINS: I would think our length. Me personally, I'm kind of a long guard. Our posts have a height advantage, I believe, with Jatarie being two to three inches taller than their tallest post player. I think that will be part of our advantage tomorrow. BROOKE McCARTY: I would piggyback off what she said. I think we have a post advantage. We kind of need to feed off of them tomorrow. Q. Is there more excitement knowing that this is your last time in the NCAA tournament? ARIEL ATKINS: I'm extremely excited. You dream about this since you're a little kid. For it to be my last time being in this tournament, I guess you could say it's not nerve-wracking, but it is butterflies. This is my last time, my last chance to be a part of this program that has continuously been in this tournament. Just can't say enough about it. I think our coaches have done a really good job preparing for it every year, making sure it's one of our main goals, to be in this tournament. BROOKE McCARTY: Definitely. I mean, I don't think it's necessarily hit me yet that it's our last time playing in the NCAA tournament. I think it will tomorrow maybe when we get to run out there in front of our fans again, everything like that. I don't know. It's not hit me yet. It's just crazy to think this is our last go around. Q. What does Coach Aston mean to you? BROOKE McCARTY: I'm very thankful for her. You can't really see it when you first get here. You can't really see the light at the end of the tunnel. As I look back, just kind of remember everything that has gone on here, she has been a person that pushed me to my limits and past my limits. She's kind of made me a better player and a better person at the same time. She's so passionate about her job, you can't help but be passionate about playing for her. When you look back on it, it's my last couple times playing for her. Nobody has pushed me how she's pushed me these past four years. I'll be forever grateful for that. ARIEL ATKINS: Actually, I think 'passion' is one word you obviously hear when you hear coach's name. Her passion, her belief in Texas when she first took the job here, you couldn't explain it. When she relayed that to me when I was trying to come here, you could feel the passion in her voice. You could hear how much she wanted to do for Texas. That's something you just can't help but believe in. I believed in what she was trying to do here. She's just a great person, somebody you really can't put into words what she's done for you here. I'm extremely thankful. THE MODERATOR: We'll dismiss the student-athletes and continue with questions for coach. Q. What kind of relationship do you have with Brooke and Ariel? KAREN ASTON: It's really special. I've said this many times. I've been fortunate to, in my career, have coached some really good point guards, which one of them is my assistant coach. Brooke ranks up there with the best of them. She reflects me. The words she just used were 'passion'. You don't see it sometimes because he's not as emotional maybe, but Brooke is very passionate about basketball and passionate about being the best she can be. I would say the same thing for Ariel. They reflect I think my feelings about the game, and they reflect what they came here for, the same thing I came here for. They're a mirror of me and how I feel about Texas. They're a mirror of what our jobs are. My job when I got here was to do everything I could to make Texas better. When I took the job, that's all it was about to me. When I recruited them, that's all it was about to them. They wanted to impact our basketball program. I mean, knocked it out of the park with that. That's all I have to say. They have been model student-athletes at Texas. Their impact will be felt, you know, way past when we're all here just because of what I think the fans think of them and what the people across the country think of them. It's hard for me to think about. I've been with them so long, it's just really hard. I think today is the first day it hit me when you guys started talking to them that they're about to be done here. Q. How big of an advantage do you have hosting? KAREN ASTON: I think there's a comfort in being at home and sleeping in your own bed, not having to get on the plane and travel. I don't know, I mean, if you reflect back to last year, once we started to make the run against NC State, the crowd definitely was a factor in that game because we started to feed off them. I will say even through my experiences at Cal, once you get between the lines, it's a basketball game, and everybody is here to win. Everybody has the same goal and the same purpose. So I'm not sure the advantage is felt once the game begins other than if it gets tight and your team can fuel. I do say from that experience, though, that where I think hosting comes into play is possibly down the line if you do advance. We felt the pain of the travel, needless to say, when we left the west coast and had to go east in the regionals. I'll say I'm not sure it's as big of an advantage maybe in the moment, other than the chance to play in front of your fans. But as you go along, it probably does weigh in. Q. Do you see a difference between postseason last year vs this year? KAREN ASTON: I do. I do. I think because we have a mix of youth with our older players. I mean, you have to be careful with these two because they're in the gym all the time, so I have to limit their time and practice. We've tried to be sharp and crisp, not spend a lot of time, because we do have experienced guards. I think Jatarie has gotten so much experience playing, and four out of our five starters are pretty seasoned. I think we've been able to be pretty sharp and pretty precise with what we're looking for. I will be honest, that we had some time after the loss to reflect, take a few days off maybe, even regroup and get our pep back again. That was a difficult loss in a lot of ways. I think we needed the time to regroup. I mean, I gave them a weekend off. Some of them got to go home. I think just seeing their moms, having some home cooking, things like that, is really good for kids sometimes. Q. Do you feel like you have an edge in length and height vs Maine? KAREN ASTON: Well, I definitely would agree that we potentially could have an advantage in the paint. I think what we have to be careful of is that we are a pretty free-flowing team when we're good. Even though we have an advantage, I think we need to be careful about thinking we're just going to pound the ball inside. I would guess they'll have some answers for that in some ways. I think being aware of taking what the defense is giving you is really important for tomorrow. Maine presents some different problems for us, definitely for us on the defensive end. I think we just need to stay aggressive. We need to stay in our style of play. Our guards have been our best scorers all year long. Even though I think we have an advantage, we need to do what's available. If that means the guards are open for shots, they need to take shots, because they're our main scorers. I think what we don't need to do is forget about the post players. Q. Is front court depth a worry for you? KAREN ASTON: No. She wasn't playing a lot of minutes. I think first of all, when you get towards tournament play, I mean, we were able luckily in the Big 12 tournament to play a lot of people because we did have a lead in both games where we were able to do that. I mean, the rotation trims in tournament play. I think that's a realistic statement. I think the bigger key is just getting everybody prepared, even if it's a minute or two. I feel very comfortable with Mide coming in and giving us a few minutes of defense and rebounding. I feel very comfortable with Khale. Even though she hasn't gotten the minutes, when I watch her in practice, you can tell she's the most comfortable she's been all year. She missed a large portion of the year with injury. I feel fine. I feel really good about where we are. I think we've got to continue to get Joyner in the spaces she's comfortable. I think that's up to the coaching staff, not Joyner. Q. How can Joyner get her footing right? KAREN ASTON: Well, I think one thing that I've had to remind myself repeatedly is that Joyner missed -- I'm going to preface this with saying there's a reason why you practice. There's a reason why the NCAA gave us opportunity to work with our student-athletes in the summer. Because you wanted to work with their skills, you wanted to have some time to work on offensive skill work, footwork, timing, breakdowns of offense. All of those things, I'm assuming that was the reason why the NCAA gave us leeway to work with them in the summer. There's a huge advantage to that. That's all we work on in the summer, is offensive skill work. If you're putting in an offensive scheme, then you get to work on those schemes the summer and fall. Joyner missed all that. What has been the challenging part is that we have guards that are very free-flowing, and the offense that we ran was probably predicated on what our guards are capable of doing. Now we're implementing Joyner in that system that she missed some time in. It's taken us some time sometimes to figure out where is she the most comfortable and what offensive scheme does that work with. Against certain opponents there's certain things you have to look for. I think that's the challenge of our staff. I don't even just mean Joyner. When you put Jordan in, what offensive scheme works best with a certain lineup. I think we've tinkered with some things over the break that I think will help. But she needs to be in spaces where she's comfortable. Q. How much film have you watched on Maine? KAREN ASTON: A lot. Q. What do you think of Maine? KAREN ASTON: I think the players hit it on the head pretty good. At least they're listening. They can shoot. They've got a lot of craftiness to them. They can pass the basketball really well. They run offensive schemes that make you move a lot defensively. They can shoot the three really well. They kind of test your discipline. I thought Brooke hit that on the head, that they need to be a very disciplined defensive team. I think there's some mismatch challenges for both teams. I think that there's a chance we'll have to go with four guards tomorrow some. I'm very comfortable with that if we do that. I think if anybody watched us sort of down the stretch, there were times in Big 12 play we went to the four-guard lineup. It's actually a very effective lineup for us. Won't shock me if we don't need to do that some tomorrow just because of how they spread the floor and their capabilities at their forward position. Q. What pressure does four guards put on the other team? KAREN ASTON: I definitely think that's been part of why that lineup against specific teams has been good for us. It enables us to sort of revert back to the offense that we ran pretty consistently in the first semester. I think that lineup gives everybody a little bit of a different look. Having Ariel at the forward position is a mismatch problem. Again, we have to be able to match up defensively to be able to do that. So that's the challenge sometimes. There's not too many teams we can't do that with, but there are a few. That's not a reality for us. But I like it. I'm very comfortable with a four-guard lineup. To answer your question, again, Maine can really spread it, and they can score in a lot of different ways. We're going to have to be really good on defense. Q. Are you able to give any details on why Rellah won’t be available for the tournament? KAREN ASTON: No. Q. How is your team going to adjust to a team they have never played before? KAREN ASTON: I think that's the fun part about the NCAA tournament, is that you can breathe a little bit. I would say every coach in the country, every player in the country kind of feels that way. You get away from conference play, in particular in the Big 12, because of the fact that we play the double round-robin, by the time you get to the second one, everything has come to a screeching halt because you know each other so well. It is a breath of fresh air for us. I think to be able to play someone that's maybe not quite as familiar with the way we play or the tendencies of our individual players. I mean, Maine would probably say the same thing. It's just a little bit of an adjustment period as you go along in the game to get used to someone's style of play. I think it's a little bit of a breath. We enjoy it. It's a new season. I think the players enjoy having that reset button pushed. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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