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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 4, 2020Robin PingetonAijha BlackwellJordan ChavisNashville, Tennessee Missouri 64, Ole Miss 53. THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Missouri. We will open with a statement from coach, then direct questions to the student-athletes. An opening statement, please. ROBIN PINGETON: First of all, I appreciate you guys coming out and covering the tournament. Hats off to Coach Yo and her staff. It's pretty remarkable, that team, just their ability to continue to stay the course and compete. Said it to our girls before we played them, that their record is really deceiving. They're in pretty much every game. They play so hard. Very resilient team. They're not going to go away. They're going to play for 40 minutes and they're going to go on runs, they'll have stretches where they're knocking down shots and stretches where the ball is not falling for them. Those kids are really, really competing hard for 40 minutes. Proud of our kids. We bent but we didn't break. Obviously again continue to have some issues with our turnovers. They scored way too many points off our turnovers. I thought we went in stretches where we looked really sharp, had stretches where we didn't look so sharp. But overall I felt like we maintained that mentality of playing to win and not to lose. Made some big shots when we needed to. THE MODERATOR: Questions for our student-athletes. Q. Aijha, you've been playing hot as of late. Coach said on Monday for you guys to continue in the tournament, you need everybody on the court to contribute. How important is it for you moving forward that all players scored today? AIJHA BLACKWELL: It's very important. When everyone is scoring, everyone is happy. When everyone is happy, we're all playing good basketball. It's very important for everyone to get touches and get a chance to score. Q. Jordan, talk about your first tournament and your mindset going into this one, how they differed. JORDAN CHAVIS: I mean, right now all I'm thinking about is one game down, we got more to go. That's all I'm really focused on. We got Tennessee coming up. I'm excited for it. Q. Talk about your first quarter. Had a hot start. JORDAN CHAVIS: Yeah, throughout the game I don't really think about it. Yeah, I had a little heat check, but I just got to keep shooting and contribute the ball around. I feel like during the game we each did that. I didn't really have to get my shot up. You saw the score, we won, so everybody got the ball, everyone was scoring. That's all that matters. Q. Jordan, you have a lot of familiarity with Tennessee. At this point what kind of things are you thinking about, mentally preparing for a matchup? JORDAN CHAVIS: I mean, I feel like it's different every year with us. This year we've already played them once. We already know the feel of how they play. I'm pretty sure it was, like, we only lost by 8 or something like that. It wasn't too bad. I feel like if we stay consistent, like we usually do in our fourth quarters and we're playing hard, if we play hard all four quarters, it's going to be a good one. Q. Aijha, your starting lineup is so unique for Missouri, you, a freshman, then all of that senior leadership. What has that experience been like for you? AIJHA BLACKWELL: It's been great. In the beginning of the season, coming off the bench, I had to get a feel for the game. Starting with the seniors, they're like my mom on the court. They tell me what to do, how to do it, get out of my own head, keep me going (smiling). Q. They have a lot of experience with this event. What did they tell the younger players about what to expect this week? AIJHA BLACKWELL: I know specifically Amber, she was like, Be patient, don't look at the crowd as much. This is a big stage, so just stay poised, play my game as usual. THE MODERATOR: Ladies, thank you. We'll continue with questions for coach. Q. It seemed like every time they made a run in the first half, you all answered. Talk about how big that was. ROBIN PINGETON: It was huge. You see that out of Ole Miss. Like I said, I'm so impressed with how hard they play. It does not matter what the score is. They can be down 20, and they'll be right back into the game. They played Mississippi State to a single-digit game in the first half. They still made a run at them in the third half [sic]. It's the common theme for Coach Yo's team. They don't lay down. They're going to continue to compete. Their challenge is putting those stretches together consistently. But I said it to our girls, their record is very, very deceiving. You're going to have to compete for 40 minutes. We knew that they'd have stretches and make runs, we were going to have to answer. Q. What kind of things do you think didn't go so well today that should be corrected before Tennessee? ROBIN PINGETON: Still a little disappointed with our ball movement, especially early on. We have a tendency to hold onto it a little bit. I really felt like when we are in the area of six to eight passes per offensive possession, we usually get a pretty good look. Felt like we tried to force the action a little bit, especially in that first half. Then just some careless turnovers which continues to hurt us. I mean, when a team is scoring, I don't know what the final stats were, but it feels like they had 20 points off our turnovers. A handful of those were controllable. It's trust in the movement versus force in the action. That's something we're going to continue to talk about until that final horn sounds. Q. You got outscored a little bit in the fourth quarter. What did you tell your players in the timeouts to keep composed? ROBIN PINGETON: We had some interesting rotations out there. I think that probably played a part in that. We were just trying to be mindful of minutes. We had a good little lead going into the fourth. Certainly you play to win one game at a time, but at the same time when you have a little bit of a lead built up, you like to make sure you're trying to keep legs a little bit fresh for tomorrow, especially back-to-back games. I think a lot of that honestly was the rotations that we had in that fourth quarter. Q. In the tournament setting where you have games on consecutive days, how does that impact the way you prepare between games? ROBIN PINGETON: I think that's why you play in tournaments usually around Christmastime, maybe sometimes around Thanksgiving, depending on how your schedule works out. Try to emulate that a little bit. If you're a competitor, you love it, you absolutely love playing back-to-back-to-back. I promise you they would rather be playing games than having practice. I think at this point in the season everyone's tired, everyone's beat up, but that's when adrenaline kicks in. Survive and advance, live to play another day. I know as a coach, you're excited you don't get any sleep at this time of the year because that means you're still playing. Q. Talking about everyone contributing. What do you feel you're seeing from your players? How key is it moving forward you get everybody involved? ROBIN PINGETON: We talk with our team about this all the time. 92% of the time that you're in a game, the ball is not in your hands. How are you going to impact the game when the ball is not in your hands? Unfortunately I think sometimes as players you get so wrapped up. If you're scoring the ball, if your shots are falling, just trying to get them to understand that you can have such a huge impact regardless if you're making shots or if you're getting shots. Unfortunately that's not an easy thing to get through to your student-athletes. I'm sure I didn't get it when I was playing either just because that's how we're wired. To understand the attention to detail, being assignment correct on scouts, understanding shooters, drivers, how we're defending ball screens, just being engaged in each possession, and one possession at a time. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. ROBIN PINGETON: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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