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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: STANFORD

March 23, 2019

Stanford, California

Stanford - 79, UC Davis - 54

JENNIFER GROSS: First of all, congratulations to Stanford. They have an incredible team, incredible staff. A lot of the media have been talking about our relationship with their staff, and obviously today we were doing our best to beat them and fell a little bit short.

Also want them to know that we're going to be their biggest fans from here on out, and we really wish them the best in the rest of the tournament.

I just want to start by saying that this has been one of the most rewarding coaching experiences that I've had, and it's all because of Morgan and Kourtney and Karley and the other student-athletes that we have in this program. You know, I told our players, it's a grind what we do. For them to balance the rigors of an intense academic environment with demanding practice schedule and weights and everything that they do, you've really got to love it. And for our staff, too, the time that we put in, our heart and soul into our players' experience, and sometimes you get lucky because you get a group of people that are selfless and that care more about the team than they do about themselves, and that's what we have in our group this year.

They're a really special group of individuals that compete for each other, and there were tears in the locker room right now, of course, like a lot of times there are after a tough loss. But our tears were because this special season has come to an end and because these guys don't get to play together anymore, and I know for our staff the tears were also that we don't get to coach this special group anymore. That's disappointing, but I also told our team that when they're done with those tears that all I want from here on out is celebrating because this team deserves that. They have achieved so many things.

At the beginning of the season we talked about all the things that we want to accomplish, and this team checked one box after another, and they did that the right way, where they played together and they competed for each other, and I'm just a very proud coach right now.

Q. Morgan, you had 25, but it was an awfully tough 25.
MORGAN BERTSCH: You could say that.

Q. They threw a lot of different people at you. Can you talk a little bit about how they were playing you and how do you think you played?
MORGAN BERTSCH: Yeah, I mean, we knew coming in that they were going to try and throw different things at me. Whether that be putting multiple people in the key, digging, doubling, going one-on-one, and I think the thing that I had the biggest trouble with was them changing it up so much. It was kind of hard to get in a rhythm, trying to figure out whether the double is there, whether there's someone on my backside. It's kind of hard to make that read.

But obviously I didn't shoot a great percentage and all that, but I think it was just a game where we were just out there trying to compete and trying to have fun with each other, especially that being the last game I'm going to play with the twins and obviously this amazing team.

Yeah, it was a tough game. It was tough to get open looks. They're a great defensive team, so that's going to be a given. But yeah, we just came out there. We shot some tough shots, but we also kind of had a little bit of swag out there, hit some tough ones. But yeah, it was definitely a tough game, but I'm happy with the way that we competed.

Q. Morgan, you're from the area, so how did it feel before the game knowing that this might be your last game close to home? And then how devastating was that 15-0 deficit for you guys to overcome?
MORGAN BERTSCH: I think for me, it was kind of cool to be able to end my career here because half my family actually lives in Palo Alto, so I've grown up watching Stanford my entire life. Yeah, so I mean, I've come to Stanford camp multiple times. I used to watch them like growing up and stuff. So it was kind of cool to get to end my career in front of a lot of my family. They came out, all of them came out today, and so that was really amazing to just get to finish there in front of them at a school that I used to look up to all the time growing up.

It was really -- it was an awesome experience to just be able to finish with all this amazing team, the people that I love so much, and yeah, my family and my entire family got to see it, so that's also really special for me.

Q. Kourtney, what did you and Karley say immediately after the game to each other?
KOURTNEY EATON: I think she told me she loved me, honestly. I think that's what she said, and we hugged, but I hugged all my teammates. There were a lot of tears, and it was only because I don't get to play with these people again, or these coaches. It was just -- I knew my career would come to an end, but this season has been so amazing, I just didn't want it to end, so it was a little emotional, but just what a year that we had, and just really, they were happy tears today. When we embraced I just told all my teammates I loved them and how much fun I had this year playing with them.

Q. Coming out was there anything that surprised you about your opposition today?
KOURTNEY EATON: I don't think so, no. They're a really talented team, and yeah, that's what they showed us.

Q. Did you ever square off with the Hull twins?
KOURTNEY EATON: No, I actually didn't. I did hear about them, though, but no, we never got to play each other in Washington.

Q. Coach, you think you taught Tara and her staff only too well how to run your offense? What did it look like from your point of view seeing them in previous games going through that same offense?
JENNIFER GROSS: Yeah, yeah, we joked -- Joe, my husband, who's also on our staff, we joked the other day and said, well, maybe we shouldn't have told them everything, you know.

I've been really impressed with them. You know, I've had a chance throughout the season to watch a game here or there, but obviously this week preparing for them, we really had a chance to see how far they've come, and you know, we got to see them back in August and October right when they were starting their practice, and it's fun to watch. Honestly, it's funny to say that as you're preparing for -- you're preparing your scouting report, and at the same time you were saying, oh, wow, look, they're doing this, good for them, they put this in or they put in that wrinkle. I think they've done a tremendous job just really -- you know, they see what -- they know their personnel so well, and they've tried to make, they've tried to adapt the offense to fit their personnel, and they've done a really nice job with that, and their players are starting to get a feel for it. We always say it takes a full year to get a good grasp of the offense from the players' perspective, and they've really evolved throughout the year. We were really impressed with them. We don't run the offense, our team, quite like that anymore. Four or five years ago we were kind of running a pure Princeton offense. We're not doing that anymore. So for our players, we were having to re-teach them a lot of that stuff, so we got beat on a few things that we used to beat a lot of people on, and we were sort of expecting that because we were trying to take certain things away, and that was going to give them certain opportunities.

But they have an excellent team, and they're doing a nice job with the offense.

Q. Did we see -- well, obviously we saw a sneak peek at who's replacing Bertsch next year. Talk to Stobbart's game tonight. Is she a center or a point guard?
JENNIFER GROSS: You know, as we know, we love mobile posts that can shoot the ball, just like Morgan does. She can step out and play all over the floor, and Sage does that, as well. And this year, she really kind of backed up Morgan and played minutes when Morgan was out of the game just because we felt like we had so many wings and so many other players that complemented her inside. But Sage is a tremendous scorer from the outside, as well. She can really knock down the three, and we're going to start to work on her game in terms of her ball handling and her mid-range and trying to make sure that she's comfortable both in and out. But I was really happy for her. She was in the gym all week getting up shots like she's been all year, and we knew we would have to go big at times today, and we said, just be ready to knock them down, and she stepped up in her moment and she came up with some big ones.

Q. Morgan didn't get a chance to answer this because she got a little emotional. That 15-0 deficit and then being down by 20 after the first quarter, was that just too much to overcome?
JENNIFER GROSS: I think so, yeah. To be honest, our staff said, if we can just knock some shots down to start the game, we feel like we can keep it close, and then anything can happen. We just didn't. Unfortunately, I thought we got a couple good looks, I thought we rushed some shots. We just looked a little frenzied at the start of the game.

You know, as much as you tell your team, like, we're ready for this moment and just be us and just relax and stay loose, it is a different feeling, you know. We just didn't knock them down. So that was disappointing because when you look at the rest of the scores from the second through the fourth quarter, we played them tight, and I know -- who knows what could have happened. So it was a disappointing first quarter, and I think credit Stanford, they made everything. So it wasn't just us missing, they also made it. We were hoping that our defense could hold them down even in a situation where we weren't necessarily scoring, but they came out firing, they got hot, and we just built ourselves too big of a hole.

Q. Are you impressed with how tough your team played despite starting the game down 15-0?
JENNIFER GROSS: Yeah, you know, that's something we tried to keep talking about throughout the game was just don't play the score. Let's just keep fighting, keep battling, keep doing what we do. Having come back from 17 down just a week ago, I think there was a belief in our locker room that we could start to cut into this lead a little bit, and that was our goal was just to get a few stops, get a few scores, try to cut it. They just -- again, to Stanford's credit, they just kept making big shots, kept making the plays. Again, you kind of have to pick your poison a little bit. We're taking one thing away, and you're challenging them to do something else, and they did that well. But I was really, really proud of our team for their fight, how they competed through the entire game. We really -- I don't think we looked at the score much. We really just tried to play each possession to really do our best to get stops and scores, and that's all you can do in that situation.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: STANFORD

March 23, 2019

Jennifer Gross

Morgan Bertsch

Kourtney Eaton