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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 8, 2019

Greensboro, North Carolina

Louisville - 75, Clemson - 67

THE MODERATOR: I'd like to welcome to the stage Clemson head coach Amanda Butler and student-athlete Simone Westbrook.

COACH BUTLER: Just really, really proud of my team. Obviously the outcome is not what we wanted and not what we were fighting for, but they're pretty dadgum good. We got beat by a really good team, really good staff. But I don't think we have anything to hang our heads about. Really proud of our effort.

I thought we fought through a lot of adversity, battled foul trouble the whole time and we never let any of those reasons be a distraction from what we were trying to do, and that's just continue to battle, continue to fight, continue to be the ugly ducklings and the Fighting Tigers. A lot to be proud of, a lot to look forward to, and we'll go back to Clemson and do what we've done all year long and that's just try to get better every day.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. For three quarters your team did a really good job at getting into the paint and getting layups. And then in the fourth, what did they do to take that away?
COACH BUTLER: Well, they really kind of started sagging off of us a little bit more, in particular our screeners, and just trying to really clog the paint. They were a lot more spread out the first part of the ballgame and took some of our good looks from 3 away, which is something we've been doing really well here lately.

And then they just kind of flipped the script in the last part of the ballgame, second half, fourth quarter in particular, made it much tougher for us to get in there and finish.

And, guys, this is one of the best defensive teams in the country, as well. So as much as we just -- we like to say we're just trying to be us, Louisville was just Louisville and played great defense when it mattered most.

Q. Can you kind of put in perspective -- when you came in here, it's not even been a year, did you think you'd be sitting here in the position you're in, potentially getting an NCAA Tournament berth, and playing a protected No. 1 seed right to the wire basically?
COACH BUTLER: We just didn't really approach it like that on the front end. I think that on the front end we just wanted to agree to things that we were in control of. And that was daily improvement.

How much we were going to love each other and what that was going to look like and that when we did get an opportunity to compete against someone besides ourselves, we wanted to make that competition to be Clemson's best and not as much about our opponent.

The last thing that we wanted to try to accomplish was whoever we were playing -- at the beginning of the year, I'd be lying if I told you, we said, oh, let's win this many games or try to finish in the top half or get this seed or any of those things. We just said whenever we play somebody let's make sure they know who they're playing. Let's make sure when that game is over they know who they were competing against.

And ultimately we don't always control the outcomes, especially when you're playing against the best teams in the country. And in this league which makes this league so special and gets us so ready for the NCAA Tournament.

But on the front end, we agreed to the things that we wanted to give energy to and that wasn't records or decisions that committees were going to make that we didn't have any power over. We just wanted to just, every single day, work really, really hard; love each other; and be proud of our university; and go out and battle and compete whenever we get in those opportunities.

Q. One of the things in women's basketball has been that when coaches, when women coaches lose their jobs, a lot of times they did not get second chances. And I asked Muffet McGraw about this earlier today, and she said, you're a great example that she gives to people as somebody who had that happen and then has come back. Can you talk about that? Because I do think it's been an issue in women's basketball, that maybe the trend is starting to change.
COACH BUTLER: I would love to think that what this really special group of women has accomplished this year and the administration at Clemson giving me a chance to do what I love is a great example to other ADs across the country that second chances, next opportunities, whatever those are, just hire the best person for the job.

And I'm really glad that you asked that question because I think that it has been a really negative trend in our business that when women lose their jobs, they don't get a similar second chance. And it's not as common in other ways in sports.

I'm just really, really grateful that Dan Radakovich and Stephanie Ellison thought I was the right choice; that we have a group of women that, from day one, made that transition for a new head coach and a new staff really, really easy because they were eager, and they were just really wanting to figure out how good they could be and wanted a chance to do that.

But if I can be someone that somebody else looks at, whether that's the next fired coach or whether that's an AD who goes, "Hey, that wasn't a bad idea," then I'm proud to be that.

Q. Simone, can you talk about the confidence of this team? Because this is such a hard league to play in. And obviously Clemson, the last several years, has struggled to put together ACC wins to make the kind of jump you guys did this year. Obviously it's taken some confidence. How did that build over the season?
SIMONE WESTBROOK: Well, we came together as a team and kind of looked at what they did last year and ways they wanted to improve. And just every day in practice we got better. Every game we found a new way to win.

We would look at film and we would perfect our mistakes, and we would perfect those in the next game and just try to find something to get better at. And, ironically, we came up with "Ugly Ducklings" because we realized we're a scrappy team; we're the team that's first to get on the floor and first to get up.

We found our niche in this league. And I think we're the only ones that could do that. So we just tried to improve every practice, every game. And we always try to be the tougher team. And I think that we really do that.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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