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NCAA WOMEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS AND FINALS: PORTLAND

March 28, 2019

Vic Schaefer

Portland, Oregon

THE MODERATOR: First up is Mississippi State and head coach Vic Schaefer.

Welcome to Portland, and your opening statement, please.

VIC SCHAEFER: We're excited to be here. Just awfully proud of my team, as I've said many times. This is a special group. Much has been documented and said about our group this year. Four new starters, losing a starter in the middle of January, two new kids to our starting lineup that haven't been here nine months. Really proud of where they are.

We're excited to be here. These young ladies have certainly accomplished a lot to date. We know we have a big task in front of us here. Just so impressed with Arizona State, their team. Again, know them well. I've played them several times throughout my career. We played them a year ago in the islands, had a knock-down, drag-out with them.

It was a tremendous basketball game. We were fortunate to win that one. Just extremely impressed with their team, Ibis and Ekmark have been tremendous for them. You can't take your eyes off of the rest of them. Ryan is another guard out there that can really shoot it. I'm really impressed with their point guard play, how hard they rebound it, run the floor.

We're going to really have to play well. We've had a lot of time to look at them and study them. I think our kids are excited, but they certainly have a great understanding of what's coming. You have to really take your hat off to them, they went and won on somebody else's floor second round, beat a higher seed. They're playing extremely well. Obviously, they're no stranger to the West Coast.

Our trip was good yesterday. Took us four and a half hours to get here. I'm not sure there's any further place we could have had to go travel to from Starkville to play in the NCAA tournament. We're excited to be here. Look forward to the challenge.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. You referred to the game in Cancun. ASU has essentially the same team back. Back to that game, what did you learn about ASU from that game?
VIC SCHAEFER: They, like -- their five has started 60 games together in a row. She has a heck of a team. Their chemistry, you can tell watching them play, it's really good.

That always concerns you when you play a team like that that's played together for so long. Their chemistry is good, they have a feel for each other, they know where each other is going to be. They know in certain situations maybe when something is taken away, they know what the counter is. It's an instinctual thing.

I think back to that game in the islands, it was like every other game I played against Charli's teams. They're tough, physical, aggressive, they rebound at an incredibly high level. Execution, I mean, you talk about an offensive team now that will just out-execute you. They're very impressive on that end of the floor, in my mind.

Defensively we're going to have to really be solid for a long time. Lots of teams will quick shoot you, take the first available. This team is going to get the shot they want at the time they want it.

Thinking back to that game we played a year ago, unlike any of the others. They're just a tough, physical, aggressive basketball team, and well-coached, obviously.

Q. Speaking on the chemistry piece, where do you feel like your team is in that regards? At this point in the year, you felt like Anriel and Teaira were starting to mesh well together. Your whole unit, what you're bringing off the bench, how well are they playing together?
VIC SCHAEFER: I think it's getting better and better. I walked out of our defensive practice this morning at Portland State feeling like that may be the best 30 minutes of practice we've had in a long time. It was because of our chemistry, communication, things like that.

It's getting better, to answer your question. That's the thing with this team, we've got so many new moving parts that it just takes a while. Especially on the defensive end, that's the piece that really is late usually coming. I'm hopeful that we'll continue to work and get better.

I do think we're getting better, though.

Q. Probably prematurely I'll ask you about coming to Portland at the selection show, now that you're here, what are you expecting the fan turnout to be like?
VIC SCHAEFER: Just like anywhere we travel. I think Bulldogs from all over, within driving distance, will be here. This team, our program, has become a real identity for Mississippi State. I'm very proud of that.

Our kids really relish that. They embrace it. They understand the responsibility that comes with it. So I expect us to have a great crowd here, to be honest with you. We've had a lot of fans everywhere we've been. When we were out here in December, we had a lot of fans at the Washington game.

I would expect us to have a good turnout out here.

Q. Obviously you guys have had some pretty commanding victories in the tournament so far. Have there been any moments when you felt like your team was truly challenged just in the games that have happened to this point?
VIC SCHAEFER: Oh, sure. I mean, Clemson's really good. If you're just talking about the NCAA tournament, Clemson was really good. We had one little stretch there in that first quarter where we were able to separate ourselves. We played really good defensively in the first half. That's the first team that comes to mind.

If you want to go back even into the SEC tournament, all those games, to me we're down I think five or six to Tennessee in the first round. Missouri was a knock-down, drag-out. Arkansas. All those games were at some point we had to really play well to separate ourselves.

I think you have to give our kids a little credit in that we were able to do that, find another level, then at the same time we know that every game, we've got to play well, people are coming for us.

The thing with this team is we've led from the front all year. They were picked first. It is so hard to lead from there. It's so easy when you're picked fourth to finish third, second or first. It takes the pressure off. But when they pick you first, that is a challenge for any team, I don't care if you're talking about professional or college. To be able to do that I think is really special. It says a lot about our kids.

That being said, we've certainly been challenged all throughout the year. I think any of the games you see where we may have won with a little bit of a cushion just I think speaks to maybe one run during a game where you were able to get away.

We played Tennessee in the regular season, and it was tied late in the third quarter before we separated ourselves and ended up winning that game. Every game comes down to a run usually.

Q. What is the matchup like for T in this game in the paint?
VIC SCHAEFER: She's going to go against a couple kids that really play hard. They're going to defend her at a really high energy level. They're going to be physical with her. They're able to match her physical capabilities. You might look at them and go, They're not 6'7", they might not seem as big. Trust me, they are physically capable of handling her. We've seen it before. They're going to really try to do that, use their quickness and athleticism, which they have.

It's an intriguing matchup, for sure.

Q. On the topic of T, she's played a lot of really good basketball in her career, a lot of that has come in the NCAA tournament. Aside from just being physically imposing, what is it about T that has allowed her to do that?
VIC SCHAEFER: Well, when you get to this time of year, your go-to players really have to perform. You have to give her credit for her focus. I call it, as you know, her interest level. Seems like this time of year she really gets interested and really gets focused. She's been that way now for about a month, ever since the Valentine's Day massacre, as I call it, when we got beat by Missouri at home. She has really locked in.

I think she learned in this game, she learned something. That says a lot about her. I know Johnnie spent some time with her watching film, Coach Harris. She realized some things she just can't do.

But for this time of year, you're absolutely right, starting back to her sophomore year, I'll even go back to her freshman year, she was about the only one that we had on the team that didn't look scared at Connecticut when we got beat in the Sweet 16 up there.

She's a competitor. She understands the importance of this time of year. Nobody did it better last year. I mean, she averaged 20-something rebounds a game in the NCAA tournament. That's crazy against the competition that we played against.

Q. You have a common opponent in Oregon. Is there anything you've learned particularly because you played Oregon, studying ASU games against Oregon?
VIC SCHAEFER: When I watched that game, I was strictly looking at Arizona State. I certainly wouldn't want to tip my hat on anything that I learned from them other than you learn in watching those two teams play how competitive both of them are. Obviously Arizona State had a chance to win both games. That's very impressive from my standpoint.

Obviously playing Oregon, I've played them now three straight years, have a great deal of respect for Kelly and his program and those players, know how good they are. To see Arizona State compete with them, play them down to the last possession really in both games, is quite impressive.

Coach Turner Thorne and her team, they have our undivided attention. We know how good they are. She is a tremendous coach, her staff is tremendous, her players are tremendous, we understand what's in front of us. We're going to have to play awfully well tomorrow night.

Q. When Chloe went down, obviously Andra had to come in and step up. Seems like it's been a seamless transition, now she's performing here in the NCAA tournament. How confident are you in her if she needs to step up? If her number is called, how confident are you that she can be the one to get it done?
VIC SCHAEFER: Well, I'm very confident. I'm confident in all of our team. I think 1 through 10 on our bench has played some big minutes for us throughout the course of the season.

Andra has played and had some big games for us. I think what she's doing right now, people realize in a scouting report is you better not lose her. She's very similar in that regard to Blair. You better not lose her, she'll make you pay. She's shooting the ball at a very high level. She allows you to stretch the floor a little bit and create spacing for your other players.

I think it's really important in our offense that she's able to do that. Defensively she's gotten better. She tries on that end. That's all I can ask. I just want to see kids try. I want to see them make an effort to try to defend. And she tries. Again, at the end of the day, that's all I expect from any of our players.

A lot of confidence in Andy. She's got a lot of confidence in herself. She's a very confident player. That goes a long way with your student-athletes. If they're confident, if they're walking with a little bit of an edge or a chip on their shoulder, they usually tend to be able to back it up. We make sure that they can.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much. Best of luck tomorrow against Arizona State.

VIC SCHAEFER: Thanks for your time. Praise the Lord and go Dogs.

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