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BIG TEN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 7, 2019Amy WilliamsIndianapolis, Indiana Purdue - 75, Nebraska - 71 Q. Coach, obviously a disappointing loss. Offensive rebounding for Purdue played a huge role. Talk about their work on the glass. AMY WILLIAMS: Yeah, I thought they did a fantastic job. A couple times we had some defensive breakdowns that forced us to rotate out of position and then they really capitalized by crashing the boards hard. But they came into this tournament with a mindset of rebounding. We knew that when we watched their game yesterday against Illinois, and they came away with 18 offensive rebounds. We knew if you want to win, you have to rebound, and we did not do that today, give up 19 offensive rebounds, and they really made us pay. Q. The first couple minutes of the first quarter, first minute of the second quarter, 15-0 run for Purdue, and if you condense it even more, there's a minute and 33 seconds in there where they hit four consecutive three-pointers and the score flips from you being up 4 to being down 11 totally changed the game for you. Talk about what that stretch meant to your team and how you were able to fight your way out of it later. AMY WILLIAMS: Yeah, I mean, I think that is just a devastating stretch. You feel like and you know coming into tournament games that there are going to be runs, but you can't give up runs where you're giving wide-open three-point looks to their three-point shooters, and I thought they did a great job of getting out and pushing in transition to get some of those looks and just had a few defensive breakdowns to give them some of those open looks, and that can flip the game. I thought we scratched, we clawed, we fought, we dug ourselves out of that 14-point deficit. But you can't dig those kind of holes and expect that you're going to come out on top. Q. Fourth quarter, the end of the fourth quarter down by 13 points. You'd been down by as much as 14 in the second half, and then you get hot, knock down some threes, but it really started with Sam early in that third quarter, one, going to the rim, two, knocking down a mid-range shot, then hitting a step-back three and that kind of fired up your team a little bit at that point. Talk about the way your shooting played a role in the fourth quarter but also the levels at which you scored. AMY WILLIAMS: Yeah, there's no question that Sam gave us a spark there in the fourth quarter, and I think just showed a lot of maturity and growing up out of a freshman who started the game 0 for 6 in the first half and then a lot of players would really kind of pull back into their shell and kind of hide after that. But I thought Sam did a fantastic job of staying aggressive, and she gave us that spark. And then we knew that in that fourth quarter we could take advantage because of our depth and our ability to push pace, and I thought we found Taylor Kissinger open in transition for a few threes there. It really sparked that comeback and put us in a position where we drew back to a one-point game. We get to a one-point game right there, we give up an offensive rebound, and you just have to have that board. Q. Looking at your season as a whole now just for a second, you go through the season, and you go 4 and 10 in two-possession games. You take that and you take the youth on your roster, what does this experience do to help your team moving forward next season, or what do you hope it does? AMY WILLIAMS: Yeah, this is a tough question right now. I think we're all just still kind of feeling the pain of this one. We had just a very special senior on our team that everybody in this program wanted to scratch and claw and give everything they could to extend Maddie's season as long as we possibly could. She's meant a lot to our program. And so thinking about what this is going to mean for the future, we're going to take some time to really think about that, to walk away and step away and be able to process, but for right now we're just going to be grateful to this particular team and all that Maddie poured into this and just take us a little time to get over it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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