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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 8, 2019Matthew MitchellRhyne HowardTaylor MurrayNashville, Tennessee Missouri-70, Kentucky-68 OT THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Kentucky. Coach, an opening statement, please. MATTHEW MITCHELL: You just have to give Missouri a ton of credit today. They were the tougher team. We knew coming into the game that it was going to be a game about toughness. Our team was tough today, but just not quite as tough as Missouri. You have to give them a ton of credit. They made one more play than we did. It was a really difficult ballgame to play in. Hats off to them. I was proud of our team from bouncing back from some really poor play at times, low focus. Got us off to such a bad start. To have the tenacity and the grit and the toughness to come back and have a chance to win the game says a lot about our team. We're really, really proud of the season we had in the SEC. It's an awesome conference to compete in. I thought our team really showed up well this year and worked hard. We're certainly disappointed to go home from this incredible tournament. That's a real credit to Missouri tonight. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Rhyne, you didn't shoot very well tonight, but were still able to claw back into the game. How do you use that momentum going into the tournament knowing you can at least come back in these games? RHYNE HOWARD: Well, when we don't shoot well, we try to emphasize our defensive focus, try to stop the other team from scoring when we aren't. Q. Can one of y'all tell me how Tatyana has helped you throughout the season for you guys? TAYLOR MURRAY: She's just very aggressive for us when we needed her to get baskets for us, we were able to pass her the ball in the post and she was able to knock down shots. MATTHEW MITCHELL: I'd say she's done an unbelievable job with improving her game throughout the conference play. I think she's really worked hard in practice each and every day, has put a lot of work in, has worked really hard on being more aggressive, with her mentality. She's really been big for us down the stretch. As we were working hard to have the best SEC season we could have, she just has improved so much over the course of the season. We're very excited about her future. We're excited about what she can do for us in the NCAA tournament. She's had a really, really good year of progress. Q. Rhyne, the team studying. What did you see out of Missouri's defense that you were able to exploit today? RHYNE HOWARD: Well, they're a sagging team, I knew if I attacked them, I would be able to get a power jumper or all the way to the basket, which I did. Q. Taylor, how do you use this experience for the NCAA tournament? How will you as a captain rally the troops? TAYLOR MURRAY: Just about sticking together, staying positive, take the lessons we learn from this game, try to improve it for the next game. We have more games to go. We have to take it one day at a time, keep practicing, just stay together as a team. THE MODERATOR: Ladies, thank you. We will let you join your teammates. We'll continue with questions for coach. Q. Can you take me back to when you recruited Tatyana, go all the way down to Georgia. MATTHEW MITCHELL: Watched Tat play in club ball, summer ball with her club team. They had a very good team, a really talented team. There were a lot of good players on that team. Tat really stood out to me for her athleticism and her versatility. We've really thrived off of versatile players, players who have multiple skills, who aren't one-dimensional. I always thought she was an outstanding player in her versatility, it could make her very special. Then she really checks the other boxes that are extremely important for us at Kentucky. She is an outstanding student, was a great student at Columbus High School. Our students really take their academics seriously and achieve at a high level in the classroom. She fit our program for that. She's a very high-character person. Has a great heart. She is a really quality, high-character young person. It was a great fit for us. There were a lot of schools that wanted her, great schools that wanted her. We feel very fortunate she chose Kentucky. She has been an awesome addition to our program. Q. You were shorthanded today, 0-16 for three, yet take a good Missouri team into overtime. What does that say about your squad? MATTHEW MITCHELL: We certainly showed a lot of fight. Outside of the first two games of the season, we won the Vanderbilt game by double-digits pretty comfortably, over 15 points. Mississippi State, second game, beat us by 15. After that, the next 15 have been real, real tough games. We've shown throughout the season that we have the ability to hang in there. We've also shown the ability when we get the lead, sometimes they'll evaporate. We've been that kind of team that has played a lot of close games. This one was extremely close and tough. Really disappointed in the way that we started the game. I was hoping we would be more locked in and focused. I thought our start dug us a hole that we were just climbing back out of all day. We had to be so sharp and so disciplined in this game on a day where things weren't going our way to get that win. We just weren't quite there. We had discipline, we had toughness, we had intensity, we had grit, we played some really good defensive possessions. Today we needed to be a little bit tougher. We just weren't. Like I said earlier, we've really competed hard in the conference. It's been a tough year for us. To come out with the record that we did, I'm real proud of the team. We got a lot out of this team. They work hard. We had to fight all the way. We had to fight all the way today. Now we're excited to see what the next chapter holds, see if we can find out where we're going in the NCAA tournament, make a run there. We feel like we're the team that can do that, a team that can shoot the ball. We just didn't do it today. Missouri had a game plan of trying to force us to make 12-footers. It's just a tough day for us. Couldn't get the ball in the basket. Disappointed in that. Q. Cunningham is known to be a pretty good shooter, but a lot of post work today. Is her versatility one of the things that make it difficult to game plan against? MATTHEW MITCHELL: I told her in Lexington - I didn't know if I'd see her again, I'm sorry I did see her again with the way she played today - I told her in Lexington, if that were the final time we competed, I don't remember anyone any tougher than her, really anyone that I admire much more just because of the way she presents herself to the game. Today was a day where I felt her sheer will and determination really was able to boost her team to a victory. She was fantastic. We had to play a lot sharper against her. You have to just give her so much credit. She wanted it today. She just sort of had that air about her that she would not be denied today. She was fantastic. I really admire that player. I admire players like her, who just love the game, who have a passion for the game, who are just not going to be denied. Won't miss competing against her because she was so tough against us. That's a player I really, really admire and always will. I hope she does real well in her future. I'm sure she will. Q. Rhyne still had 25 points tonight. What do you tell her heading into the NCAA tournament to keep her momentum up? MATTHEW MITCHELL: We just keep trying to improve, keep trying to help her improve. So many plays in the game today where she's just super special, can make plays not because we're using the right technique or we're executing it the right way. She just is so gifted and talented, has that quality. The idea here now is just to keep trying to get better every day, keep trying to learn the game where you understand some nuances of the game that can help her become an even better player. She was dynamite. We wouldn't have had a chance to win the game had she not played the way that she did. You just keep working on improvement. You're not satisfied. You don't look at the stat sheet and say you scored 25 points. You go back to the film, deal with the facts. Here is where you can get better, here is where you can improve. That's what we'll do with Rhyne. She has some time here where she can get better before the NCAA tournament. That's what we'll do. We're real proud she's a Wildcat. Q. A lot of shots for your team today weren't falling. Was Missouri doing anything specifically on defense that made it challenging? MATTHEW MITCHELL: What they're trying to do is take away the players who they feel like are your best players, who score. They're trying to get the ball into people who may not be as comfortable, have them shoot shots. Robin is a great coach. I have so much respect for her. They're so disciplined. I mean, we had wide-open 10-, 12-footers that we just couldn't get going. Another thing they did today which was just incredible is how physical they were around the basket without fouling. It was really an amazing thing to watch. They really became a team that could block shots today. We just kept getting to the basket and couldn't get the ball in there. They were tougher around the rim than we were. At some point you have to go in there and load your hips and get the ball at your chin and get up in there and make a shot around the basket. I thought they were extremely tough around the basket. They just played real hard, made the plays they needed to to win the game. Have to give them a ton of credit. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. MATTHEW MITCHELL: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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