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WNBA FINALS: MYSTICS VS STORM

September 9, 2018

Mike Thibault

Seattle, Washington

Storm - 75, Mystics - 73

MIKE THIBAULT: Breanna Stewart shot 14 free throws and Elena Delle Donne shot three, so that's my opening statement.

Q. Take us through that last play. What happened there?
MIKE THIBAULT: Well, on the last play when Kristi had the ball, they had a foul to give, they tried to take the foul. Sue Bird took the foul and the officials didn't understand that Seattle was actually trying to take a foul, and then the ball gets knocked loose on the floor.

On the jump ball, we just went to sleep. We're all telling them to foul on the jump ball, and we had people running to their man, but unfortunately there was somebody else open.

But we knew that they were going to take a foul. We had drawn up two plays at the time-out, and they took the foul, and it wasn't called.

Q. Also, you played so cleanly through three quarters, two turnovers, and you had five in the fourth. What's the explanation for that?
MIKE THIBAULT: I can't tell you. I don't know.

Q. Mike, you mentioned Elena not getting free throws, but what else -- she wasn't really as effective in the second half. What were they doing?
MIKE THIBAULT: Well, they double-teamed her, they sent an extra defender. Sue was leaving people to go and help on her, making some of our other people try to make shots. They basically tried to make Pratt and Ariel Atkins make shots, and we didn't make enough. I thought our defense was good enough tonight for the most part. We hold them to under 42 percent, hold them in the 70s. It gives us a chance to win. But we didn't make enough shots against their defense. We need one more kind of offensive burst from somebody, and it was hard.

Q. After Friday's game, what kind of adjustments did you make to keep yourselves in this game and give yourselves a chance to win it today?
MIKE THIBAULT: I just thought we played better defense. We didn't turn it over in the first half like we did last night. In the first half of Game 1, they had 15 points in transition, mostly off our turnovers. We had one turnover today at halftime, and I thought that was the biggest difference. We got good performances from some of our bench. Obviously Myisha Hines-Allen and Pratt were big. Aerial Powers gave us a couple good minutes in the first half. But in a do-or-die situation like that where you're trying to steal a game on the road, I stuck with that core group for most of the game, and we've got three days to get rested.

Q. At one point in the second half I think you were down basically 2 to 1 in rebounding and you finish over 16 on threes. I wonder if you could address both those areas.
MIKE THIBAULT: Well, the rebounding part is that we got caught in some switches. Howard had a fair amount. But they got a lot of their offensive rebounds in the first half. I thought we did a better job in the second half. We don't make threes, it's hard for us. We're one of the best three-point shooting teams in the league. They didn't make them that well, either, but I think it was the defense on both teams. It's tough when we don't make any. We rely on that, and we didn't make them tonight.

Q. What was your reaction to Sue Bird's 35-footer to --
MIKE THIBAULT: Well, like -- you hate it. There's not much -- it was one of those things that you hope that's kind of a regular-season shot, not a playoff-deciding shot. Tough to overcome a play like that. We played great defense on the possession, get them to take a 40-something foot shot, and it banks in, and it ends up being the difference in the game. I don't know what you say.

Q. The second thing is Breanna Stewart came out hot, 11 points, I think, in the first six minutes, and she didn't score another field goal for 20 minutes or so. What did you do to --
MIKE THIBAULT: Just played a little better defense, stayed a little closer, made it a little harder for her to catch it. She was pretty amped up at the start, had fresh legs, and then that kind of went away.

Q. You mentioned the bench play. As much as Tierra played tonight, do you see potentially changing the starting lineup going forward?
MIKE THIBAULT: Probably not. Our starting lineup got us this far. Just one of those nights Tash was having a tough night tonight, and our plus-minus on the floor with Pratt was much better, so we stuck with that.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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