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MOUNTAIN WEST WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 2, 2020

Las Vegas, Nevada

San Jose State - 67, UNLV - 48

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by UNLV Kathy Olivier and student-athlete Rodjanae Wade.

COACH OLIVIER: Well, you know for us, we just played San Jose State, and to come back and turn around three days later and play them again, that was tough. But our players were very determined, and they really wanted this one. An incredible performance by R.J.

She had just so much heart and so much drive and so much spirit the entire game, in the huddles and grabbing all those rebounds. To have a 20/20 performance, I wish we could have been better for her. But you've got to give it up for San Jose State. They did a really good job of hitting shots when they needed to. And we just turned the ball over too many times and they took advantage of that.

THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. R.J., you went out in the fourth quarter. Looks like you were clearly frustrated. Did you feel like you had to almost carry the team on your back today?
RODJANAE WADE: Not really, I felt like we have a lot of weapons on our team. I feel like at certain times I get frustrated with myself because of things I feel like I could do better. But it's never, like, within the team because I know that we'll come together and we'll make things work. So no.

Q. And to get a 20/20 to end your college career -- I know you wanted a win, but from a personal standpoint to go out like that, what does that mean to you?
COACH OLIVIER: It means a lot. It's big time, excuse me, but it's big time. And it sucks that we didn't come out with the win. But it just feels good that I was able to contribute and play for this team for four years.

Q. If you look back at this season, what are some of the lessons that both of you will take on this season and then moving forward into next year?
RODJANAE WADE: So hopefully I get to take my career to the next level. So, right now I just think about leadership and I know I'll be coming in as a rookie or whatever. So just take the things that I learned from here, my fundamentals, my happy spirit and try to just take it over to wherever I go and make the best out of it.

COACH OLIVIER: For the returners, I think obviously the coaches are going to sit back and evaluate the season. But we think about player development and how far R.J. has come, and for her to record back-to-back 20-20 performances is incredible. Her first year she didn't play a lot, probably played five minutes a game, if we look at the stats.

She's come in as one of the top double-doubles in the country, which is amazing. Hopefully our freshmen, we're going to talk about that with our freshmen and how better she can get. With R.J., she played with a lot of talented upperclassmen, and I thought R.J. paved the way for our freshmen to see what it's about and to see how to play hard and play with that kind of passion for UNLV and the Lady Rebels.

When I think about it, I love our freshmen. We have eight new players. We're super young. And we have four seniors that really did a good job of being good leaders, like R.J. said. She takes away the leadership. She did a great job being a leader along with TT, Haley and Mara.

And for us it will be a new beginning. And I know R.J. will be right there. She'll be texting just like these other people did. Today, I had Linda Frohlich, who, I believe -- R.J. might have beat her double-double performance, which is incredible. Linda Frohlich was one of the best players in the country, let alone at UNLV.

So for us, we're very proud of R.J. We know she's going to have a great future. And we're proud of the people we have in our program. We had a great little winning streak. We just need to know that the intensity and that kind of drive and passion has to be there every day. We can't be inconsistent to be a successful team.

Q. San Jose State had over 20 turnovers as well. Did you feel like if you cleaned things up on your end a little bit this is a game maybe that could have been right there, a chance to win? If you cleaned it up on your end, considering that they were pretty sloppy too?
COACH OLIVIER: I thought our defense was good. I thought they were ready for our defense. But they do a good job of playing fast. I didn't think that we did a lot with their turnovers, where I felt they did a lot with our turnovers.

And they scored probably -- it says in here that they scored 29 points off our turnovers. So that just kills us. We're not a team that's going to score a lot of points. I was mad at R.J. for not getting a 30-30. She just got a 20-20.

But we're a team that, we hang our hat on defense. We talk about it all the time. I thought we were very active in that first quarter. But San Jose kind of got used to it. And Jamie's done a great job with her team.

And I think they're a team that's playing well right now. So we'll see what happens. Anything happens in the Mountain West Conference tournament. Anything happened all year. I thought this has been a very competitive season for the women's Mountain West and it's been fun. You can't go into any game thinking you're going to win. You have to go in ready to play no matter who you play.

Q. Not just today, but coming down the stretch, where you leaned so heavily on R.J., was that the issue, that other players probably didn't come through to maybe take pressure off her?
COACH OLIVIER: You know, I actually said to our radio guy, Wyatt, I said, it's kind of like the Michael Jordan; you know how people used to kind of just watch, watch Michael Jordan play? I felt we were standing and waiting for R.J. to make something happen with two or three people on.

You can't do that. I love that R.J. said we have a lot of threats, which we do. But we have to have better spacing. We have to move better without the ball. And we know that and we did that at times this season but we just didn't do it consistently. And that's something that coaches have talked about, just our spacing and our ball movement along with our body movement.

We've got to continue to move and our defense. It's one of the best in the country. We're super proud of that. We played some really tenacious, gritty defense all year. But we have to get better on the offensive end, and we all know that.

Q. R.J., Coach noted a little bit the struggles on offense. Anything in particular that San Jose State did that took you out of any chance to get in a rhythm?
RODJANAE WADE: I would say they played a lot of pressure. They're really good with clumping up on us and making it hard for us to see things, like, as far as getting to the basket and stuff like that, as to where they're pretty spaced out on their team.

So they always have us spaced out on defense. But we don't know how to space out enough to get them out of, like, the way. They're more of a clumped-up team. So I feel like at times that was frustrating for us to find out what to do and what moves to make, but we went through it.

COACH OLIVIER: They collapsed. They play a lot of zone. And that's hurt us all year. And then our defense, we're more -- we're going to play man and we're going to be early digs. And San Jose liked that. They did a really good job. Come on, Jamie's done an amazing job this year.

I'm sure they're going to take care of her over at San Jose and for us we have to get better at zones. It's been our bugaboo all season.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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