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NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FINAL FOUR

March 29, 2018

Columbus, Ohio

THE MODERATOR: Again, we'll start with an opening statement from Coach and take questions for the student-athletes. On the dais for UConn, head coach Geno Auriemma, student-athletes Kia Nurse and Gabby Williams. We'll take an opening statement from Coach Auriemma and then take questions for the student-athletes.

GENO AURIEMMA: Can you just replay the one I did Monday after the South Carolina game?

They're really -- by the time you get to this point, there really isn't a whole lot that anybody can say that hasn't already been said by every coach, every player that's here. It's all redundant.

Everybody's happy to be here. Everybody's excited to play. Everybody respects the other teams. Every game's going to be difficult. Lots of great players in the tournament. So all that is absolutely true.

We deserve to be here, just like the other three teams do. We've earned the right to be here, and we're going to play a great team tomorrow night. If we play better than they do, we're going to win, and if they play better than we do, they're going to win. It's no more complicated than that.

We're going to go to practice after this, and we're going to prepare and get ready and come out and play.

THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Hi, good morning. Gabby and Kia, I was in that locker room with you guys last year after the Mississippi State game when a lot of you guys were talking about wanting to remember how this felt and bringing it forward to the next season. Do you want to tap in to how you felt in that locker room last year when you take the court?
KIA NURSE: I mean, yeah, I think that's something that is not easily forgotten, something that you shouldn't forget and you can use to a certain extent in the right way. But I think at the same time, as we step on the court this time around and we go out, we're focused on what we need to do to execute and be successful offensively and defensively against the Fighting Irish.

GABBY WILLIAMS: Yeah, I mean, just what Kia said. We're just going to be focused on tomorrow. I think we've been trying to tap in to that all year. It's not something we're just going to bring up just at the Final Four. It's something we've been remembering throughout the entire year.

But it's a completely different game plan tomorrow. We're just going to focus on having a good practice today.

Q. For both of you, do you think, as a team -- now, some teams come out, and they can play with a lot of -- when they're really emotional, they play better; and when they're not really emotional, they don't quite have that energy. In some ways, you guys are kind of the opposite that you're better off when you're just calm and not a real emotional team?
KIA NURSE: I would say to a certain extent we always come out with a type of emotion, and you can see it in a lot of the plays. You can see it in a lot of the celebrations we have, celebrating each other's success. But at the same time, there's a fine balance and a fine line between being a calm and under control team, controlling the tempo to what you want it to be in order to be successful with your game plan.

GABBY WILLIAMS: Yeah, I don't know. I don't think it's necessarily that. It's just the right kind of emotion. It's not having no emotion or having emotion. It's just having the right kind of emotion. Like she said, as long as you can be emotional and excited for your teammates and celebrating and passionate about what you're doing, but if you have it under control, then you can use it to your advantage.

Q. For both you guys, you played Notre Dame back in December. It was a really good game. They were up double digits in the fourth quarter. You came back and won it. I remember after South Carolina, you played them, and it was a 25-point win. What do you learn from that? I'm sure this one was fresh in your mind. They gave you a pretty good challenge. What did you learn from that game that will help you tomorrow?
KIA NURSE: I think there's a number of things. Every time we play Notre Dame, they come out and give a good fight. They compete, and it's a competitive game for a full 40 minutes. So for us, it's a matter of learning from what we could execute better, what we could have been better defensively from that game, but also understanding that we're at a different point in the season, and hopefully we've cleaned up a lot of those little things we wanted to be better at.

GABBY WILLIAMS: Yeah, it's a team that we're very familiar with each other. We've played each other a lot throughout these years. There's nothing we can do that's going to surprise them. There's nothing they're going to do that's going to surprise us. We've just played them so many times.

So like Coach said, whoever plays better tomorrow is going to win.

Q. Gabby, the game against Notre Dame was kind of a tough game for you. You weren't feeling well. I mean, it was a little bit of a struggle. I'm just wondering if -- how much that game -- sort of you came out of that saying, hey, I don't want to go through that kind of thing again?
GABBY WILLIAMS: Yeah, that wasn't a fun game for me. Just trying to put it behind me and just, you know, let the game come to me tomorrow and just be fresh, have a fresh mind, and just be ready for it.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies. We'll take questions for Coach Auriemma.

Q. There was a stretch a few years back when this will be the fourth meeting of the season between you guys. It was the 16th game in four years. You can probably call their plays for them and they can call your plays for you. Is this easier now in a sense that you played them once this year, but it was three months ago, and it isn't the fourth time? There isn't this extra rivalry crap that we bring up for you.
GENO AURIEMMA: I spoke with Muffet last night at an event for the four teams. We talked about exactly that, that -- she said, I don't even think about you guys anymore until it's time to play you, whereas before it was a constant. No matter what else was happening, you knew there was a possibility that you were going to play each other four times, and it just -- you're right. Like 16 games in such a short period of time, to the point where now it does, obviously, seem way different.

It does seem easier, I think, on the coaches to not have to constantly be confronted with Notre Dame this, Notre Dame that, Connecticut this, Connecticut that. We have our players competing against their players for Player of the Year, or whatever the case may have been back in those days.

But they're not going away. They've been around for a long time. We're not going away. So in one sense, I'm thrilled that it's at a whole different level, but she knows and I know we're always there and they're always there. The neat thing about it is after every game in December now, I just say to her all the time, I'll see you in March. Because I know, if I see you in March, it's going to be in the Final Four. So that's cool.

Q. Geno, could you talk a bit about Crystal's evolution. I think last year you were saying for her, the basket is a rumor and that kind of stuff. Obviously, she came back with a lot of confidence this year. What sort of changed? And I think you were saying the other night, when she is feeling the worst with her shin splints, is it literally that she can't practice?
GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, she doesn't practice. I mean, there was -- I bet you it's been a month where we go to practice -- well, when's the last time we played South Carolina before the other night?

Q. Early February?
GENO AURIEMMA: Okay. So from February 1 until now, it's been off and on the whole time. If we're working on something half-court, she'll come out, and she'll be involved. The minute we start going up and down, she's over on the bike.

So it's really difficult to maintain any sense of the rhythm that you're in, that you need to be in. And I was really -- I mean, I felt for her because going back to November and December, there wasn't any guard in America playing way better than her. She was unbelievable in what she was doing. I think she would have been able to sustain it. Unfortunately, it doesn't play out that way.

But where she was the other night, that's the kid that we recruited. That's the kid that I saw. We saw glimpses of it last year in the Baylor game as a freshman. And after the game, she's being interviewed by all of you. The room was full. Big game, national television. And she's like, yeah, I like to think I'm a big game player. I'll never forget that quote. I didn't realize she meant one big game a year, you know (laughter).

But that was kind of a glimpse of this is what I can do. This is where she gets an opportunity to prove that.

Q. Geno, over the past decade or two, if you want, how have you seen the women's game change, evolve, and how have you adapted to that change?
GENO AURIEMMA: Well, I mean, it's interesting that it goes in cycles, and there's ebbs and flows to the game. There was a time when the Final Four was limited to certain schools. It's like college football, you know. Like the preseason top 7, four of those teams are going to the playoffs. You kind of knew, all right, these teams are going to be at least in the final eight and probably get to the Final Four. And then every once in a while, you'd have somebody sneak in, and then it would be right back to all the No. 1 seeds, and they were always the same. And then somebody would sneak in.

And then all of a sudden, two years ago, you had three teams that had never been there, and you go, wow, maybe this is the future. And now we're right back to four No. 1 seeds. Except two of the No. 1 seeds are not your traditional Final Four teams in the last 15 years.

So the game has changed where more people have access to the Final Four, more people have access to the regional finals, the regionals. So that means the game has grown, and it's grown in every part of the country instead of just certain parts of the country, like it used to be when I first started. It still has miles to go, long way to go.

It's our job, I think, to help push it in that direction. And all you can do is hope that the kids coming out of high school really appreciate all the work that's been done to make it possible for them to have an opportunity to play in this environment. Our first Final Four, we played on a college campus, and there was 8,500 people at the game and one TV station. People see you walk around town and go, Where you visiting from?

Oh, we're here to play a Final Four game.

What's that?

You know, so it's come a long way in some respects, but we've got so far to go, which is kind of exciting, to be honest with you. And the level of talent is off the charts. Way off the charts.

Q. Geno, what was the most exotic trip you guys took in '85 and '86? And number two, following up on that, you guys have played in all four corners of the country this year. You played in the middle of the country. I think you went to Italy preseason. I think you might have played in Canada. How has that helped prepare this team for like a tournament -- for what you face in a tournament?
GENO AURIEMMA: My first year, what would be the most exotic trip? Pittsburgh? You know, it was like back in -- we were like revolutionary war. We have to go to Ft. Pitt and fight off the French and Indians or something, I don't know, back in the day. And we bussed everywhere, and everyone threw $10 on the table and said, Okay, how much can we eat with that total for the whole team?

It seems like almost another century ago, and now this year we're in Europe for ten days in August, we're at UCLA, then we fly up to Oregon and then we go to Nevada. We're in Florida a couple times. We're in Texas a couple times. We go to Chicago. I mean, it's ridiculous.

I think in some ways the players were really innocent back then. So every little thing was a big deal. And today, I don't know what fazes them. I don't know what makes them go wow, except this does. So all that stuff that we do, I think our kids appreciate it. But they've come to kind of expect that. But when they get to this, that's when it really pops for them. So all those other trips are great, but nothing compares to this.

Q. You were just talking about how far the game has come. Every year about this time of year, we read or hear from somebody about how far the game has not come, what's good for it and what's not, even though they may not have seen all that many games. How do you deal with that? What goes through your head when you read and hear that kind of stuff?
GENO AURIEMMA: Well, when I see somebody weigh in on our game, that would be like me weighing in on and doing a 30-minute piece on ESPN on curling. I don't know shit about curling. I know it looks cool on TV. I don't know nothing about it. So the same people could have won curling for the last 50 years, and I have no idea.

So there's people that have never seen a women's game, have never talked to a women's basketball player or women's basketball coach, and they have an opinion at this time of the year, and their opinion usually involves Connecticut. So how are we bad for the game when we made you pay attention even that much? And you never used to pay attention. The fact that you're giving it negative attention, well, you took time out of your really busy day because no one else will talk to you, to comment on our game. So that, it makes me like kind of, yeah, you're as stupid as I thought you were.

Then the younger me wants to respond publicly, or privately, and then me, my age, goes, Why would you respond to that? So I just hold it in and just kind of move along and wait for a guy I'm friends with to ask me so I can tell him how I really feel.

Q. Two questions. How many times have you explicitly asked your kids to tap in to that feeling they had in the locker room after Mississippi State last year? And do you make an effort to try and bring something new to this experience for the kids that have been here a few times? Do you try to find something, an angle or something, so it's a new experience in some way?
GENO AURIEMMA: The Mississippi State game for me ended when the buzzer went off, and I never gave it another minute's thought. There's only been a couple times in practice this year when I brought it up, and never in the sense of trying to motivate them or try to elicit some kind of motivation about revenge or anything like that.

If we had lost three straight times in the semifinals in the Final Four and those kids had never won a National Championship that played in that game, maybe my response would have been way different. So for me, it began -- it ended the minute the buzzer went off.

For our players, God bless them. I love every one of my players. They're like the nicest kids on the planet, and when they tell you, yeah, we'll never forget how we felt. Seriously. They couldn't remember what time we said practice was this afternoon. So when we play the game tomorrow, it will be something that they will remember. But up until now, I haven't seen one shred of evidence that, wow, they're carrying this around them.

When we lost in 2001 to Notre Dame, and Shea didn't play, and Svetlana didn't play, and we had two All-Americans sitting out due to injuries and we were up a bunch because we lost, when Sue and Dee and Asia and Tamika and Swin, when they showed up September 1, the first day of school, the look in their eyes, and every day that I saw them walking around campus, in my office, at practice, in the locker room, there was a look like somebody every day is going to pay for what happened last year. You could feel it. I don't get that. I don't see any of that.

Q. Geno, we didn't really talk about it on Monday in Albany, but you've passed Wooden's record for Final Fours in a row with 11 and passed record of overall with 19. I know you hate talking about history from that standpoint, but do you still carry the Wooden book around with you in your briefcase? Perspective-wise, 11 straight Final Fours is something no one has ever done before, and 19 total, what does that mean to you as a coach?
GENO AURIEMMA: That book that I had in my briefcase, I happened to be reading it at the time, and I happened to be carrying it around, and I put it in my briefcase. I would read a little bit of it at a time and kind of look at it every once in a while. Some of it was because it reminded me of a bunch of stuff when I was a kid in high school, playing basketball, and watching them play in the NCAA Tournament. It almost had nothing to do with where I was at that point in time as a coach and where their program was and all that.

And it wasn't until almost after the fact that I started to really pay attention and started to go, man, I can't tell you how many things are in this that they did that we did and are doing. The players that they had, the players that we have. The circumstances that they were winning under, the circumstances that we're winning under. God rest his soul, I'm glad Coach Wooden never had to go through the nonsense he'd have to go through today if he was doing what he did. Everybody just left him alone and said, yeah, he's the greatest coach of all time and that's the greatest program of all time and they left it at that.

I gave that book to a friend of mine who really admired Coach Wooden, so I don't have it anymore. And all these other records and all this other stuff, it's when I'm reminded of that stuff, it really makes me incredulous that that could happen. It really does.

Q. Coach, I was just wondering, you know, we talk about it just about every year when you guys are here, just people seeming to chirp up and saying that you guys are boring or that it's bad for the sport, and I know some people say it to a smaller degree when it comes to people like the New England Patriots or Alabama football. But just what is it about great teams, and especially great teams in women's athletics, that people just want to slander them for whatever reason? Is there any -- do you have any thought process on that at all?
GENO AURIEMMA: Well, the easy answer is when you don't understand something, you either have two choices: One, just want to learn more about it. Don't comment on it until you do; or, two, you automatically don't like it. So you have to comment that you don't like it.

The other easy answer is we live in a sexist world, that no matter how much you want to pretend that we're not, pretend we've made progress, pretend that things are way better, every opportunity that that segment gets to take a shot at a women's accomplishment, they're going to do it. They're going to do it. And the interesting part is it doesn't happen that much, almost never, in individual sports.

I've not read too much about Serena being bad for women's tennis. Last time I checked, she wins most of them when she's healthy and ready to go. I've not read too much about Roger Federer is really bad for men's tennis. The only time he doesn't win is when he doesn't win, which is not often.

I remember when people, when Tiger was just destroying the PGA field and people were saying that guy's terrible for golf. No one else can compete.

So it's directed at us specifically, women's team sports, and especially college kids, not even pros, and it's directed at them. And to me, like, what do you gain by that? The natural reaction is you want to respond and lash out and come back at them. And that's probably the worst thing that you can do, but I know it's hard not to.

So the way we respond to it, how we deal with it, we just say, look, this is what we do for a living. We coach as hard as we can. We get our kids to do stuff that's really hard to do. We get them to do it better than anybody else has done it ever, and those kids are entitled to the kind of success that they have, and people should appreciate what they do. Plain and simple.

Q. Geno, you talked about how the game has changed certainly over the last 15 years or so. Every few years, you'll say to us it gets tougher and tougher, something about the kids or whatever. Yet maybe the game has changed, maybe the kids have changed to some degree, but the level of excellence and the consistency over such a period of time doesn't change. Can you put your finger on why you've been able to do that?
GENO AURIEMMA: Again, there's easy answers to all of these questions, and I could go and give you the same easy answer that those people we were just talking about would give you and why they're bad for the game. It's because every single player coming out of high school goes to Connecticut. No other good player goes to any other school in America. I don't know how Walz and Muffet and Vic got here if we have all the best players. So Connecticut has all the best players in America. Everybody else we play against is a terrible player. That explains our success. That's the easy answer.

The true answer is we get the kind of kids that fit exactly what we want, what we do, and how we do things. That doesn't mean they weren't the best players coming out of high school. For sure, they were. But we've been very, very fortunate, for the most part, to get those kids that come out of high school and they want to be coached the way I coach, and they're not afraid to walk into our building, look up at the walls, see those names and see those banners and go, I got this. I'm not intimidated by it. What else can I say?

Q. Hi, Geno. Could you tell me a little bit about Kia's personality. She seems to have such an adult-like presence for your team. How much of her personality has really evolved over four years? Did she come to you as a pretty polished person?
GENO AURIEMMA: You know, when you grow up in the family that Kia grew up in, one, you'd better grow up fast because everyone in that family is high intensity, high achievers. You've got a mom that played in college. You've got a dad that played professional football. You've got a brother playing in the NHL. You've got a sister that played college basketball. So you'd better grow up fast.

And the other part is you also understand what it's like to be the other person for a long time in your family. And when she got to Connecticut as a freshman, it was she's the other kid on the team.

When you think about the iconic players we had on our team when she got here as a freshman, it was like probably being in her own family. Everybody ahead of her was a superstar in their own right. And it was for her, hey, I've grown up with this.

And little by little, each year, she's been able to take on a little bit bigger role, but she's never forgotten that it's still about how do you play your role to the best of your ability and not try to be something else. So she makes more shots now than she did. She's more confident now than she used to be because she knows she's earned it.

She came to the sidelines in the Notre Dame game freshman year at Notre Dame in a crazy, crazy environment, and she would just take the ball and put her head down and go to the basket, either score or get fouled, and she was playing like way above her years as a freshman. And walked over to the sideline, and I asked her a question, and she looked me in the eye, and she couldn't speak. Literally, she's like that. And I went, by the way, you're playing great. I'd hate to see if you're playing lousy.

And in her mind, like I can't believe I'm doing this. This is my first year. I'm playing as good as, maybe even better, than the superstars that I admire. Well, now she doesn't look like that anymore. Like, I belong here. I'm one of the older guys. This is what I do. I've earned it. I'm thrilled for her. She deserves it.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have today.

GENO AURIEMMA: Thanks, everybody.

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