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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: LOUISVILLEMarch 22, 2019Jeff MittieeChristianna CarrRachel RankeLouisville, Kentucky Michigan 84, Kansas State 54 COACH JEFF MITTIE: Congratulations to Michigan. They played very well. I thought they played very well. They did a great job on our top two scorers and made us go to third and fourth things, and thought that we struggled with that most of the day. Most of our plays were individual plays. Really struggled to play in sync with each other and I think that's a credit to Michigan's defense and then they just whooped us on the glass for second and third chances, which was a problem, but not very competitive for us on the glass today. Q. Your three-point shooting brought the team pretty close. CHRISTIANNA CARR: Honestly, being a shooter, you want to be able to find the best shots possible within our offense, and you know, we kind of noticed that things weren't really working inside. As they knew that we were forcing the ball inside, forcing the ball inside, it opened up three point shots as well. What Rachel and I told each other before every single game, get your feet set, get ready to shoot the ball and take open shoots. I feel like we did what we usually do and we just take our open shots whenever KG passes it to us and that's kind of what helped us out there. Q. To either of the players, but how did Michigan's press early in the first half, or late in the first half, kind of help them extend their lead and kind of cripple you guys offensively? RACHEL RANKE: Just put on a lot of pressure that we couldn't handle at the time. We weren't taking care of the ball very well. We were making careless plays and we weren't running press plays correctly throughout the last 30 games we've played. They just sped us up, and we just did not handle it very well at the time. THE MODERATOR: Anything else for the ladies? Q. Seems as though they used their height advantage quite well. Would both players talk about that and how difficult their height advantage was to them in allowing them to kind of do what they wanted to in the paint, especially later on? RACHEL RANKE: Well, we've played against pretty big teams, you know, having Baylor in our conference. So we've been used to playing against height. I think what we struggled with was we left a lot of plays on the floor. We didn't finish defensive plays. We gave them a lot of second chances on boards. Just not getting underneath and getting aggressive enough under there was a big problem for us. CHRISTIANNA CARR: What Rachel said. We don't struggle with height adds much because we played in the Big 12 and we face a lot of Kalani Brown, Lauren Cox, girls like that. But one thing that killed us today that I didn't feel like we had was a tenacity to go after the ball and they got a lot of second chances on us which really did kill us in the second quarter going into the second half. Honestly, I don't think it was their height. It was just we lost the will to get the ball more than them, and so I think that ended up going into a lead and we kind of lost it from there. Q. You're both underclassmen. How take this experience and grow from it in the future? RACHEL RANKE: It was fun. I had not been to the NCAA Tournament yet. It was an expectation for us this year but like Coach said, getting to the NCAA is cool and all, but you want to advance. Losing the first round is tough and it's hard. I'm definitely going to remember this all off-season and all next year. You know, it's going to be the same goal. Same goal next season. We want to get back to the NCAA Tournament, but we want to advance. CHRISTIANNA CARR: Going off what Rachel said, last year, coming to K-State and going into our work outs in the summer, they kind of drilled that mindset into us not only as a freshmen but new players, as well; that they didn't like the way that they finished last year and that we were going to attack this year with everything that we got. Honestly, I feel like now that we kind of have been through, we got a taste of what it's like. We didn't get the best taste of it, getting a loss today but now we'll be able to drill into our new players this summer and kind of set that mindset and that tone of how we're going to attack this year so we can not only get to here but advance and keep advancing and keep advancing. Honestly I just think it's going to start in the summer and we're going to get back to work, and that's the only thing you can do is just focus on what's ahead and get back in the gym. Q. What did you think of the way Michigan was able to take control of the paint? COACH JEFF MITTIE: I thought they owned the blocks. This was a horrific performance by us down low. There's no way to sugarcoat this: We did not play very well. We were not physical enough. We were not committed enough to what we talked about. You know, Michigan comes in, they don't make a whole lot of threes and it appeared we were flying at people as if they were really good 3-point shooting team and we're supposed to be what we call, squeezing the post and getting extra help around there, not only for the first attempt, but for the offensive rebound, and just a really poor job of getting that done. I did think early, we were pretty scattered. We were a little -- if anything the press did, it might have got us out of sorts, not just with the turnovers, but also just in our discipline to do what we needed to do at the defensive end of the floor. Because, as they mentioned, we were not very sharp and in sync, and we were on press break every day. It's not something that we do only when we play a pressing team. We do it ten minutes every day. We play a pressing team, we do it maybe 45 minutes in terms of attacking. But we certainly got out of sorts in that stretch and struggled. You mentioned the threes. The threes that they made to get us back in it in the second quarter were really just individual plays. There wasn't a whole lot of team plays to get those threes, so they really stepped up big in that stretch but ultimately we needed to play better as a team and we just never did. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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