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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: LOUISVILLEMarch 21, 2019Jeff MittiePeyton WilliamsKayla GothLouisville, Kentucky JEFF MITTIE: Excited to be in Louisville. Still obviously playing. This is obviously a great time of the year. You watch the start of the men's tournament today, you watch a lot of the games go on, and then as it goes with our tournament getting here, we were excited to finish strong and to be able to make a late run to get here. Ready to get on the floor here in a little bit and go to work. Q. Coach, what did you know about Michigan before you saw their name pop up on the bracket and their coach, and what did you learn about them the last couple days? JEFF MITTIE: Yeah, I figured you were from Michigan. You know, I knew they were a quality team. I don't know Kim well. I was at TCU for a number of years, and I was in the Big East for six months, so got to know her at a couple of the conference meetings. Watched her teams at St. John's, followed her. She's done a great job at Michigan. Had followed, obviously, the Big Ten a little bit. We've played a number of Big Ten teams over the years. She has done a really quality job with this team in particular because they're young like us, you know, only a couple seniors and got a vast majority of underclassmen. I like their group. I think they're a balanced team, and I think that's what I first gained from -- but I don't know -- what I've come to know about them in the last 72, 96 hours is kind of just their balance is impressive, their inside game is impressive. But they've kind of done it I just think with a good overall balance of both ends of the floor. Q. Coach, Michigan's size has posed a problem for a lot of teams in the Big Ten this year. Obviously your team is not overly small, but what do you think specifically, what about Michigan's size poses you guys some trouble potentially tomorrow? JEFF MITTIE: Yeah, well, they're very talented inside. You know, not only are they talented, but they play very physical. Their rebounding numbers, that's a problem for us, quite honestly. That's a problem for us. It's been a problem for us. And their ability to go big at times I think can give us problems. We've got to figure out how to counter that. Obviously we play a lot of size in the Big 12. We've just come off of Baylor, which is the biggest team in the country. We've had trouble with Brown all three games. I'm sure their front line is excited to play. But we have faced a lot of different power forward/center combos, and we've got to try to do things, I think, a little bit different by. We've got to make sure we've got bodies on them. We've got to make sure we've got enough traffic around them, and if we can do that, then you've got to hope that you get them off the block some. If they get in on the block, though, that's going to be a problem. That's a problem for us, and it's a concern of mine going into this game. Q. When she was in here, she said she was looking at some of their Big Ten games to try to find a team that was similar to your team, and how that would help them get a mental picture of how to play you. Did you do a similar thing, and who would you say would match up in the Big 12 to what Michigan had? JEFF MITTIE: Yeah, you know, everybody is trying to look for similarities so you can talk to your players about, hey, this is a team that plays like this. I kind of felt like from a defensive standpoint, because they're primarily man but they'll also full-court press at times, three-quarter court press at times, that they were a little bit of a combination of an Oklahoma State, West Virginia. Certainly those teams come to mind. They have a big front line, though, so you can go -- we have some big front lines in the Big 12, so I can list a lot of teams in those numbers -- Texas has a big front line that also likes to three-quarter press. So the teams that I talked about, Texas, Oklahoma State had some big front lines. That would be -- did she find anybody in her league, by the way? You know what's funny about that is Joe and I are friends. I'll probably give Joe a call tonight. Northwestern plays a little bit of that zone. They play a little bit of a buzz zone, and certainly when we looked at Michigan, we looked at their zone offense because we play a lot of mixture of defenses. And while I'm not here to tell you which defense will play tomorrow, Northwestern would probably be a team that I would look at, as well. I'm not as crazy as Joe, though. Q. What do you think your team's particular strengths are, and what's really led you to the tournament? JEFF MITTIE: Very similar to, I think, Michigan in that we've gotten more production out of our entire group the last six weeks than we had early in the season. Now, everybody talks about the two, Williams and Goth, but we've gotten more production out of our entire team -- Ranke has played very well. Chrissy Carr has played very well. Kali Jones has played very well. Our bench has continued to improve. We're a much more balanced team that if you look back at games in December and early January, we weren't a very balanced team at that time. That's been the biggest thing for us in our improvement. It's simplistic to say we've shot the ball better, but going along with that has just been better balance, and I think we've been harder to guard in the last six weeks. We were pretty easy to guard in the early part of the season. Q. Any coincidence that you say Texas was a match-up similar to Michigan since you beat them twice this year? We saw Texas down in Florida and they were really good. JEFF MITTIE: Well, when you look at a game that was played on November 24th, if you saw some games we played on November 24th, you would wonder if you were looking at the right team. So I don't know. I didn't -- I think the similarities are just simply the size, the body size. Texas has a big front line, and Texas has good athletic players. I think Michigan falls in that same category. I think Michigan has big guards. That is very similar to us. When I saw Michigan play, I thought there were a lot of similarities between us because we had size across the board. They obviously have a difference maker at the center spot with the size there, but overall good size and complete good size. No, I just think that from a body mass, from a style of play, pretty similar. High-low game, like to get the ball inside, left-handed, that would be a similarity to White has, both left-handed centers, those would be similarities that we looked at. We've made our redshirt center be left-handed all week. It's been good for her. She's about 6'5", so she's really developed her left-hand jumper this week, so that's been good for her. Q. Peyton, can you talk about being in the NCAA Tournament, finally having a good run here late in the year and then getting to a point where now it's time to put it up in the big dance? PEYTON WILLIAMS: Yeah, it was a little bit of an up-and-down road on the way here, absolutely. We're a young team. We took a break from the tournament last year, even though we went to the WNIT, so we knew we wanted to get back to the big dance this year. We had some great team leadership and some younger players that really stepped up in a lot of areas to get us where we are, and yeah, we're glad to be here. KAYLA GOTH: To add to that, I would just say we went into this year with the expectation of being here, and we preached that kind of all season to our younger group, and we kind of struggled early, obviously, in both the non-con and conference season but were able to kind of put the pieces together and figure out how to play together really well towards the end of the season. Q. When Coach was in here he said if you took a snapshot of how you played in November and how you're playing right now, it's two different teams. Can you give me a little bit -- maybe an example of something that was crazy early when you knew you were in disarray, and when you kind of knew it solidified? KAYLA GOTH: Yeah, I can attest to that from a point guard position. Early in the season we were calling plays every single time down the floor. I was looking at Coach Mittie for a play call every single time down the floor. Now towards the end of the season, I am barely looking at him. We are just kind of moving the ball, we're playing together a lot better together. We don't have to talk people through where they're supposed to be as much as they know where they're supposed to be. That's definitely changed from an offensive perspective. PEYTON WILLIAMS: Yeah, I would agree. We moved the ball a lot better than we did at the beginning of the year, and I think that's just playing together longer as a team. That comes with time I would say, especially for having such a young team. Yeah, and defensively I think we're getting after it a little bit more, getting more comfortable with the defenses, and again, just the time and getting used to playing with each other has really been helpful. And then also those younger players stepping into their role and becoming comfortable with their role on this team, I would say. Q. Who's coming in with the hot hand? Who do you feel like is playing really well or shooting really well that maybe was a kind of surprise? KAYLA GOTH: Chris Carr has obviously been playing well all season, but she's definitely I would say right around the turnaround, right around the time we made that turnaround, she kind of settled into her role a little bit more. She'll talk a lot about, if you were to ask her this question, she kind of looked at herself as more of a scorer at the beginning of the season, and thought she had to shoot the ball almost every time she got it, and that's definitely not what we need her to do. So stepped into her role a little more, knew when she needed to take shots, knew when she needed to turn down some, and I think she's playing really well right now. PEYTON WILLIAMS: I'd also say Rachel Ranke a little bit. She came into the Big 12 Tournament pretty hot and a couple games before that pretty hot. It would be great if that could come back again. It would be awesome. Q. Talk about the leadership that you provide for the younger players since you have a younger core that is having some good production for you, that they don't panic and go back to your old ways. How are you shoring them up a little bit? PEYTON WILLIAMS: Yeah, it just takes a lot of knowing how to communicate with specific young players because, I mean, and I guess reining them in is a key. Making sure they're actually listening to you is a key. That has taken time -- on their part, they've gotten a lot better in their defense. It used to be, I mean Coach is always like, "Butterfly, bring it back, bring it back." But yeah, in those game moments they've gotten a lot better at knowing when it's crucial to focus, but yeah, we've got Kayla and -- Kayla does most of the talking in the huddles because she's a point guard, and she's really good at making sure she's just not saying generalities. She'll pull you out and say, okay, this is what I need from you, or if she knows a player is really down or in their head, she'll be like, we need you to not focus on yourself and give as much as you can, and that's really been helpful, singling out and making sure she's talking directly to someone is really helpful for the younger players, I would say. KAYLA GOTH: I would just add to that add social cues. You can tell when somebody is off on their own island, they're just not focused at all and being able to understand that, and not necessarily calling them out in front of everybody but walking over and saying, "Hey, I need you to bring your focus back. I need you to come back to where we're at right now. And then you can totally tell when Coach Mittie says something and some of those younger players have absolutely no idea what he's talking about. Just going over there and talking them through it, trying to -- I would say at the beginning of the season that's where a lot of growth has happened, at the beginning of the season it was talking them through almost everything, and now they are able to understand what he's saying, what he wants, how he wants it done, stuff like that. Q. What do you remember from your experience with the NCAA Tournament a few years ago, and what can you use from that experience as a bonus for not only yourself but also when you're passing on leadership skills to the other ones that are here for the first time? KAYLA GOTH: I would say I have two different experiences. My freshman year we obviously went away to South Carolina, and then my sophomore year we got to host. So they were two very different experiences. So my sophomore year, you're dealing with the home crowd, you get to stay home and be in your home city, and that was super fun in its own way. And then freshman year, you get to go someplace new and you're playing against basically their home crowd. We didn't play South Carolina my first game and we still had their home crowd there. So I think they're two totally different experiences, and just trying to take it as it comes, enjoy the experience, enjoy the process. It's really fun to be here, but it's also do or die. You lose, you go home, that's it. So understanding the weight of each game and being able to move forward and not put too much weight on it but knowing that it's there. PEYTON WILLIAMS: Yeah, it's hard for me to look back on my freshman year because I'm like completely different. My whole goal was just to not like turn the ball over and to get it to Kindred and Lew. If I had it in the short corner, I could shoot that one. Like that was it. Yeah, just kind of flipping the switch and -- yeah, in that way, embracing just the newness of it all, and we get to play a different team for the first time in several months, which is really fun, and I think, yeah, just embracing the challenge of it and just having fun I think will be two of our main points of emphasis I would think. Q. Kind of following up on that, what has the travel been like here as opposed to some of your other tournament appearances? Does this seem closer or does it seem more manageable compared to the others? PEYTON WILLIAMS: It seems pretty similar, at least to me. One recently I think in the Big 12 we had to travel quite a bit to -- what was that? We had to travel quite a bit to where we were like practicing and stuff like that. But it's been pretty reasonable, and everyone is getting us in and out of where we need to be. It's fun being in like more of a city, like we were in Oklahoma City. I like that. The feeling is a little different than Manhattan, which is fun. KAYLA GOTH: I think I would just add to that, I think that's one of the pros of being the in Big 12 conference. We go a 30-minute flight to Oklahoma and Norman, but we also go a three-hour flight to West Virginia. So I think it's definitely similar to us. Not every game is close, but not every game is super far away. Louisville is a beautiful city. We got to go explore some of this last night. The team got to go walk around, so I think we're all super excited to be here. Q. As a follow-up, how long was the flight from Manhattan to here? KAYLA GOTH: Hour 20-ish. Q. You're talking about having new opponents about playing in conference season for a while. What have you seen so far from Michigan on film and what are you looking forward to playing against them tomorrow? KAYLA GOTH: Yeah, we're obviously extremely similar teams when you look at us statistically. They obviously run a really good high-low game with No. 30 and 00 inside, and 15 kind of adds to that, a little bit of a new dynamic to that high post area. They've got a couple of good outside shooters in No. 10, and they have the ability to kind of spread you, so hopefully being aware of that high-low, but also being aware of what's outside and being aware of shooters. PEYTON WILLIAMS: Yeah, I'd say minimizing like inside movement is going to be a big key to the game, I think, just from the film that we've watched so far. Yeah, like find the shooters and keep your hands high I think on defense, and offensively being able to move the ball. They have some big players, and understanding and recognizing that we struggle with that sometimes. And so I think moving the ball in smart ways I think will be a key for us, as well. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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