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NCAA WOMEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS AND FINALS: ALBANYMarch 26, 2018Geno AuremmiaCrystal DangerfieldGabby WilliamsAlbany, New York UCONN 94, South Carolina 65 COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Well, I've always said, today is the hardest day; in all of the games that you play, today is probably the hardest. The next hardest is the one you play on Friday night. To get back to Final Four, I mean, every team starts their season and says, that's our goal, to go to the Final Four. So for us, it's an opportunity to go back to where we felt like we didn't really give our best effort. You know, we lost to a really good team, but it happened in a way that was really, really disappointing, and I know that we were really anxious to go back and put ourselves in that same situation, and see how much we've changed since last year. So I'm excited for our team and I'm thrilled for these two up here, and what they did was pretty remarkable. Q. Yesterday I don't think you were asked one question, and here you are tonight with a performance that really set the tone for your team. Can you talk about the last two days for you? CHRYSTAL DANGERFIELD: The last two days, Coach was just really telling me to be aggressive. Make plays for myself, make plays for my teammates. Right before the game started, Coach pulled me to the side and told me to get back to what I was doing earlier in the year. Tonight, my teammates did a great job of finding me when I was open and I was able to knock those shots in early. Q. When you look at kind of your game by game, it seems like you come out stronger in the higher-pressure games. With that being said, do you almost consider yourself a big-game player? CHRYSTAL DANGERFIELD: I would like to say that some of the times, most of the time I can't, but tonight I was able to say that. My teammates was able to find me when I was open and I was able to knock those shots in. I really wanted it for our team and we really wanted to get back to the Final Four and we came out with great energy. Q. Did you expect to get back here? GABBY WILLIAMS: I don't think we expect anything as far as we're just going to get here. You know we look at the game ahead of us and we take it one game at a time and one practice at a time. These kind of things, they just kind of come. I don't think we -- like Coach said out there, we are not entitled to anything. We have to earn it. Q. Coach said how you guys want to get back here; has that been on the minds all season that you want to get back there -- redeem isn't right word, but get further than you did last year, when you probably could have gone to the championship game? CHRYSTAL DANGERFIELD: Yeah, I think we didn't want to look too far ahead because we knew that if we were just focused on getting back to the Final Four game from the beginning of the season, something else could catch us off guard. We just took it one game at a time. I don't know, redemption, I don't know if it's the word but I think we definitely have something to prove, I think not only to the rest of the world, but to ourselves, as well. Q. I think around your fourth three-pointer, you started running back on defense. You almost looked surprised that you were so hot. Were you that surprised or did tonight surprise you at all? CHRYSTAL DANGERFIELD: I don't think I was surprised. I think it was just excited. It may have looked like shock, I don't really know. I was just excited. We were going on a run at that point and things just fell in and it felt good? Q. Last season, going into the Final Four, everybody remembers that shot that AK took over you. Did that play any motivation? Do you even think about that going into the final four this year? GABBY WILLIAMS: Well, I don't have much of a choice but to think about it because it's brought up in almost everything that I do, so yeah, I think about it all the time. But I can't -- I can't take anything back. All I can do is just look forward and see if, you know, what I can do going into Friday's game. Q. You guys looked like you were really enjoying passing the ball to Chrystal. Was that fun, just like driving and dishing to her and watching her make those shots? GABBY WILLIAMS: Yeah, I was trying to keep an eye out for her because I knew she had a hot hand. It's fun to watch your teammate go off like that. She was having fun with that. She's very different on the court than off the court and she's very serious on the court. So to see her crack a smile and look over at the bench, it gave energy to the rest of us. Q. By virtue of the role you've had on this team this year, and last year, really, as well, you've done a lot defending opponents bigger than you. Is that your comfort zone? Do you prefer to defend the 6-3, 6-4, 6-5, or are you hoping the matchups that people are like 5-11, 6-0? GABBY WILLIAMS: It's not my comfort zone to guard people that are that much bigger than me, but it's helped me get better. Definitely playing A'Ja these last couple years has definitely made me a better player. I definitely do feel more comfortable guarding people on the perimeter, but the fact that I've been able to do this the last few years, I think is going to help me at the next level. Q. I think this is the only time this year and maybe for a long time that anybody shot 50 percent against UCONN. COACH GENO AURIEMMA: I brought that up in the locker room. Not to them, but I just commented on it. Q. They shot 50 percent and you guys won the rebound battle. Can you comment on both those things? COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Well, some of the shots that they got, I would hope they would shoot 50 percent. Like they would get layups -- they had a couple guys on their team arguing who is going to shoot the layup this time; there was so many layups available to them. They spent a lot of time on the shot clock trying to get the ball to certain spots, and you know, we traded a bunch of threes for twos, and you can't make people miss all the time. They are good players. But to actually outrebound them the way the game first started, I thought we were going to get killed inside. But we said, two things had to happen tonight: One, we needed to keep the ball out of the lane, either on the dribble or on pass, and we didn't do that. And we had to keep them off the boards so they didn't get a lot of second shots, and we did a great job of that. They didn't get a lot of second shots because they didn't miss many. Q. I think yesterday or the day before, you said at this time of the year there's a number of players who might be able to carry your team. Was Chrystal one of the players on your list? COACH GENO AURIEMMA: That woman there in the dark blue shirt in front of you, is she part of the media or is she just playing on her phone? (Laughter). That's my wife, by the way. I've often said and I think it played out tonight, I've often said that if you have a certain culture that you've established in your program, and obviously you have enough talent, that's generally speaking, sufficient to get you to this weekend. But then to get out of this weekend and to win next weekend, your team generally is not necessarily going to be that -- what gets you there. It's going to be an individual or two, like these two, that have spectacular performances that separate themselves from everybody else. And the reason we won by so much is our team played great. But even had we not played or shot the ball as well as we did, the way those two played would have been enough to get us to next weekend. Just individual brilliance on their part, and that's what you need at this time. A'ja Wilson didn't have enough help. She was really good tonight. But individuals move you past this point. We had a couple of them, three of them in the locker room today after the game, just to remind everybody that they are not as good as they are when green, s stewy and Tina Charles came in. But it's having those kinds of players play for you on this weekend that allows you to keep going. Q. Could you expand on the thought of this redemption tour that you're back there; you said you're anxious to get back to the Final Four after what happened last year and the disappointment. Okay, now you're back the in Final Four -- you can't take back last year, but you win the game -- okay, that's what you're supposed to do. Dawn said in her thing that now all is right with women's basketball because you guys are back in the Final Four. COACH GENO AURIEMMA: You know, somebody asked me at the beginning of the season, you know -- and it's usually media people, both inside our building and outside our building, like, hey, is there going to be a team; are we going to make tee shirts this year? I said, no, I've never been, that. There's no theme. There's no rallying cry that's going to reverberate through the entire season that's going to carry us back to the Final Four. I don't buy any of that stuff. What I do think, is these kids are pretty good at -- somebody said it back there; they are pretty good at understanding when it's a big, big game. And they generally show newspaper big games. This year, every single one. That is what you need more than a slogan. So what happened last year, you can't take that back. You know, Mississippi State deserved to win, and South Carolina deserved to win a National Championship. That's ancient history now. When we go there and we play Friday, whoever we're going to play, we can go in there and be beside ourselves about trying to redeem ourselves from what happened last year, and it won't matter if we don't play great. I'm glad we're going back there, but that's that. Q. One number jumps out to me, 36-0, it's just extraordinary. You don't see that very often. How do you generate this consistent quality of play from your team? COACH GENO AURIEMMA: As I said, I don't know if it's one particular thing, you know. We have a really -- we have a really good group. You know, we try to recruit a certain kind of kid. We were talking about this the other night at dinner; that to get consistently the results that we get, you have to have super competitive individuals that -- and it's something that they have to learn when they come to Connecticut; that every day is a competition. Every day, you're competing, and that whenever you settle for just being okay, then all of a sudden, we're not Connecticut anymore. If we take a day off in a game; if we just decide we don't feel like it; and don't show up one night and get beat by a team that has no right to beat us because we have way more talent than them, we wouldn't be Connecticut anymore. You have to recruit those kids that if we were playing a crossword puzzle, they would want to win; a card game, they would want to win. You know, all right, everybody line up; they've got to be first in line. And that's what allows you to stay where you are because it's pretty hard to do better than what's been done at Connecticut. Q. You look at the macro view, A'Ja making the decision to go to South Carolina, how did that change in a lot of ways what's happened over the last few years, and someone that has done what she's did, overlapping with your success and still managing to succeed as much as she did? COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Well, a lot of programs struggled during the stewy era, and there may have been more teams winning national championships if stewy had gone to some other school. But there are players that become program changers. I remember when we got Rebecca Lobo, it kind of changed the perception of our program and it changed where we were able to go and who else we were able to get. So sometimes it just takes one player. Especially if it's a local player like A'Ja was. So she obviously made the right decision and their basketball program has gone from being good to being great to getting the kind of crowds that they get and to winning a National Championship and a couple Final Fours, you know. She's left a pretty impressive legacy at South Carolina. So wherever the program goes from here on in, they will always refer back to her and what she did. Q. Last year, even though you beat the upcoming teams like UCLA and Oregon, you still were concerned, and everybody in the media was looking like they didn't get it but then when you went to play Mississippi State, you had even stated that you weren't surprised that that happened. Do you have type of those similar concerns going into this Final Four or different concerns, and why? COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, I've always thought that you can go to a Final Four and sleep easy, if you know that there's nothing that could happen that can derail your team. And believe me, I've coached a bunch of those teams that as long as we showed up on time, we were going to win because we were just that good. What always worried me last year is we were able to overcome a lot of things and a couple big things that if we were ever in a situation that we faced that and didn't make shots, that what happened, would happen. And it came to pass. A big, physical strong team that made shots and made it difficult for us, and we missed shots. So we went right away down 16, but then we're Connecticut, so we outscored them by 21, you know, and then go up five, and at that point, really, it's like we almost realize, I don't know that we're going to be able to keep doing this. They were just too relentless, and we just couldn't get shots to drop and I think some of our guys, the moment was too big for them, because we had a lot of role players playing big roles. A lot of guys during the Stewy era, were just kind of hanging around, being great supporting actors and actresses, and now all of a sudden, they say, hey, step up. We didn't have it in us. There's no shame in that. We did that to a lot of teams. And now going in, I still worry about the size difference. I mean, we're the only team in America that starts, that, brings a 6-6 2-guard off the bench. I mean, our post players are what they are, you know. We have a 6-6 post player that is a 2-guard in waiting or 3-man. What was your question? Q. (Off-mic) Are you getting a nun? COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Am I getting a nun? All the nuns that I knew -- there were a couple that liked me, too. I was a good Catholic boy. My wife will tell you that. I followed orders, I wasn't a rebel rouser. I didn't get in trouble. But that didn't mean you'd out of times a lot of class, like this; and if you talk to somebody in line, the crossing guards, the nun is behind you and you don't even know it and you get whacked in the back of the head. I think today's kids miss out on so many great experience that is we got to experience, and every time I see Loyola play and I watch her, I go, man, I knew a lot of women just like her. And God bless them, because they teach you the right thing at the right age. They are worth their weight in gold, those women. I have so much respect for them. I might try to find one, though. I might go back and make a phone call to where I went to school and see if any of them are still hanging around. That would be pretty cool. But we're a state school, so I would get ten letters going, all right, now we have to have like a nun, a reverend, a rabbi, you know. We'd have to have -- everybody would have to be represented, so it would get too crowded on our bench. The NCAA wouldn't allow that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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