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NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: WOMEN'S FINAL FOURApril 5, 2019Geno AuriemmaKatie Lou SamuelsonNapheesa CollierChristyn WilliamsTampa, Florida Notre Dame-81, UConn-76 THE MODERATOR: We are joined by UConn. We'll take an opening statement from Coach Auriemma. GENO AURIEMMA: Well, I mean, obviously we're incredibly disappointed that we didn't win the game. But we played a great team. They played really, really well when they had to. We knew going in that we had to make a bunch of shots. When we went in at halftime, after holding them to 29, it's now 30-29, then you know they're not going to stay -- then we still had a chance. We just weren't good enough tonight to do it. I mean, it's not anything other than they were just better than us tonight. They were better than us when the season started and they were better than us tonight. They had more good players play better and contribute more than we did. That's just the way the world is. They deserved to win, and we didn't do quite enough to win. That's it. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Katie Lou, in the last couple of minutes, what did you need to do that you couldn't get done? KATIE LOU SAMUELSON: We needed to step up, make big plays, get stops. They just made more big plays than we did. Q. The third quarter you had was awesome. 15 points. Did coach say anything to you at halftime to get you going offensively? KATIE LOU SAMUELSON: I think he didn't have to say anything specifically. I know what I need to do better in times like that. I didn't do enough in that first half. Q. Katie Lou, you were up nine in the fourth quarter. Did you feel you had the game in control then? KATIE LOU SAMUELSON: I mean, yeah, we felt confident, as we should be, in ourselves. We knew that they make big plays. When it came down to it, we didn't get the stops we needed. NAPHEESA COLLIER: Yeah, being up nine in the fourth quarter is a good position to be in. We did feel confident in that moment. Then after that, we weren't making, as Katie Lou said, the points we needed to and maintain the lead and extend the lead. CHRISTYN WILLIAMS: Like they said, we felt confident, but they made some big plays at the end. Unfortunately we weren't making the shots we needed to make, so... THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies. We'll continue with questions for Coach Auriemma. Q. Arike in the fourth quarter had 14 points or something. That's her time to shine during the NCAA tournament, a fourth-quarter player. Is that fair to say? GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, I mean, I don't think it was any mystery who was going to be taking the majority of their shots in the fourth quarter. That's the way they've always played since Arike has been there. She still has to make those shots and she did. She's an almost impossible matchup one-on-one, you know. We knew that going in. We knew that they were going to score X-number of points. We knew we had to make shots and we didn't. I thought we did everything else right, but shots we've been making all year long, we didn't make them. Like I said, that happens at the Final Four. Everything changes, you know. Unfortunately we didn't have enough. We didn't have enough. They had so many layups that we can't get. A bunch of the layups we did get, we didn't make. They're able to get layups almost any time they want. We just don't have the ability to do that. Q. Could you reflect a little bit about Napheesa and Katie Lou, five losses in their entire career, yet disappointments at the Final Four. GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, five losses, and three of them are here, huh? We said that in the locker room. It's not apparent sometimes while you're teammates with Lou [Katie Lou Samuelson] and Napheesa, it's not apparent until after they're gone, how much they did for you, how much they contributed to your success, how much you're going to miss their presence every single day, on the court, off the court, doesn't matter. Losing a game is part of life. You lose. You get beat. Whatever the case may be. But there's always tomorrow. There's always another game. There's always another season to get ready for. The thing that stings the most in your locker room, if you've ever played, is you look around and there's some people in the locker room that aren't going to be back next year. That hurts way more than the loss. That hurts way more than the loss. When you realize that two people that you've shared so much with are not going to be around any more. It's especially true with these two because for such a young team that we have, such an inexperienced team in a lot of ways, those two really had a huge burden to carry all year long. You saw us at times today where we looked like the best team in the country. Then you saw us at times today where it was a real, real struggle for us. Those two, they bore the burden of that every single day, every single game. I can't be more proud of kids than I am those two. Q. What did you think you specifically needed to do when you were up nine to seal the game? GENO AURIEMMA: Well, when we got up nine, two things we knew were going to happen. One, they're going to pass it to Arike and she's going to go one-on-one and score. Two, they're going to throw it into the post, whoever Megan is guarding, because there's a huge mismatch in there. That's exactly what they did. I've always said coming in here, all the time, there's certain things that when you have a certain kind of team, there's certain things that the other team can do to you that you don't have anything that you can come back with and say, Well, I know how we can get a stop, we'll trap them. Well, that doesn't work against these guys because they always find the open guy. It's either for a layup or a wide-open three. You have to be able to get stops playing one-on-one. When we had Liv [Olivia Nelson-Ododa] in the game, it was much more difficult for them to get those shots. When we have Liv in the game, our offense isn't as good as it can be yet. That kid is going to be a dynamite player. She really stepped up today, her and Christyn. But, yeah, we knew coming in there's things Notre Dame does that we don't have an answer for. I've had those kind of teams a couple times (smiling). Q. Two of your players go 40 minutes, one 39, one 38. Did you feel fatigue was an issue in the fourth quarter? Because of that, did you play a little more zone than normal? GENO AURIEMMA: No. We were going to play a variety of defenses. I thought there was a long stretch where zone was our best defense. I don't think a lot of their guys sat on the bench either. So this was a game where those last five minutes, somebody was going to make plays and somebody was going to win. It happened to be them. I don't know that there's anything that we could say we're going to kick ourselves because we should have done this. The shots we got were pretty much the shots we wanted to get. When was the last time you saw Lou miss a wide-open layup in the line? Or Napheesa air ball a seven-footer? Probably hasn't done that in four years. We got the shots that we wanted. But, again, against a team like Notre Dame, you only get so many chances and you need to capitalize at every one of your chances. When we played them at their place, we did. When we played them here tonight, we didn't. The first half, you can't defend them any better than we defended them that first half. They probably went in the locker room saying, We played lousy and we're down one. We went in the locker room saying, We played lousy, but we're still up one. That should have been a 15-point game at halftime. Q. The shots you described that didn't go in, is it different if last year or the year before goes differently than that, it's just all about X's and O's, or is this just a moment where what's happened the last two years shows up in the last two minutes of this game? GENO AURIEMMA: No, I don't think what happened last year had anything to do with what happens here. I just think X's and O's is way overrated, you know. I know some of the dumbest coaches in the world that have won a lot of games because they got the best players. To me, X's and O's is you get your players in the right position. If they make shots, then you're going to win. If they don't make shots, you're not going to win. Whether it's in high school, college, pros, it doesn't matter. You have to make plays. It's not about who has the best offense or who has the best scheme. Two years ago they threw the ball to Brianna Turner as much as they did today, and she wouldn't make those shots, she wouldn't make those free throws either. You got to put yourself in a position to be successful, then you got to finish the play. It's quite simple. Sometimes we try to make the game really, really complicated. It's not. It's not complicated. Most teams are going to give you a chance to win the game. They gave us a chance to win the game, and we weren't good enough to win it. There's nothing wrong with that. They were better than us. They still had to win it. They still had to make those shots. When they were down nine, they could have missed the next five shots, we would have went up 17, but they didn't. Why? Because they're defending national champions, they have five All-Americans who are really, really good. Like I said, I remember being in that situation a couple times (smiling). THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. GENO AURIEMMA: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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