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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 5, 2020Nikki FargasFaustine AifuwaKhayla PointerGreenville, South Carolina LSU 73, Florida 59 THE MODERATOR: We are joined by LSU. We will open with a statement from Coach Fargas. NIKKI FARGAS: I'm just very proud of this group and their effort and intensity to play hard for 40 minutes. When you're at the SEC Tournament you know that the best in the country is here because you got some of the best players in the country and you got some of the best coaches in the country here at this one event. To see this group go out and play like they did, like a family, they played together, they supported each other, that's the type of basketball that to me is going to win you a lot of ball games. A lot of credit to Florida. They've got a talented team. They're going to continue to get better. But I also think that our team is talented, and we did some really good things today. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for the student-athletes. Q. Faustine, did you realize you were 4-4 in that second quarter? What did that feel like? FAUSTINE AIFUWA: No, I didn't know I was 4-4. It was all my teammates. They put me in right positions to easily score. I knew I had to do my part for the team so we could get a win. Q. Was there a concerted effort to kind of get something going in the paint in the second quarter? FAUSTINE AIFUWA: No. I knew paint touches were going to come as the game came along. We worked the game, stayed aggressive. We got easy baskets through going to the rim or through post touches. Q. Khayla, second quarter, 90% shooting as a team. As a team, how did you turn some of those stops into buckets on the other end? KHAYLA POINTER: Yeah, I think we were just playing hard. Going into the game we really wanted to focus on our defense, making sure we were bringing intensity against steals, passing lanes, deflections. We knew if we played our defense, then it would lead to our offensive game. When we're playing really well on the defensive end, we're playing really, really well. Trying to establish that at the beginning of the game, and let everything else take care of itself. Q. This has been a season of some ups and downs. Does it seem like this is a game where you can kind of build some momentum, trend upward? KHAYLA POINTER: Yeah. It's always great to get that first win in the tournament, I would say. SEC is a great league. Any given night any team can get beat. It was really a matter who came to play. We wanted to be the hardest working team. We're going to build on this. We're going to go home, watch some film and get ready for Mississippi State tomorrow. Q. Faustine, Coach talked about how LSU played like a family. Has that been the case all season or where in the season did that start to click for you guys? FAUSTINE AIFUWA: No, it was definitely all season. Especially when Ayana went down, we knew we had to step up for her and for this team, just to play aggressive and kind of play like her for us to end up with the win. THE MODERATOR: Ladies, thank you for your team. We'll continue with questions for Coach Fargas. Q. The second quarter, that's the story of the game. Goes without saying, defense translated into offense. Was there a concerted effort to be aggressive and get stops and turn that into points at the other end? NIKKI FARGAS: Well, we wanted to disrupt a very good offensive team like Florida. I really challenged our team every time I could get in their ear, deflections, get our hands on the basketball. Deflections lead to steals, steals lead to transition baskets. We did just that. I really felt like that opened the game for us. That was an unbelievable percentage for us to shoot. We have not shot 90%, even when we had Mitchell. But this group, they are believing in each other. Their assist-to-turnover, when you have 19 assists on 11 turnovers, that's a team that's playing together and playing like a family. Q. How instrumental is Khayla in helping with that? Talk a little bit about her development. NIKKI FARGAS: Khayla's role is one of a leader. She is somebody that we want the ball in her hand, especially when it's late game, especially when teams are pressing us or there's a lot of pressure. I like the fact that Pointer distributes the basketball and she will make her teammates look good. But the part that we challenge the rest of our perimeter players to do was to also be of service and be an assist to her. When you look at our stat line, we have several players that had assists on the night. Tiara Young came off the bench, three assists, Mercedes Brooks had four assists. It became a team effort to make the extra pass, let's find the better shot. That's why our offense was a lot more efficient in this game. Q. How important is a good showing in this tournament to your NCAA prospects? NIKKI FARGAS: Well, you want to continue to increase your opportunity to have a higher seed in the NCAA tournament. We know that our body of work that we've done this year should allow us to be a team in the tournament. You want to definitely continue to get better. Playing against some of the best teams in the country right here in your conference is going to help prepare you for NCAAs. There's a lot of great players here. There's a lot of great coaches. This tournament is about as tough of a tournament to go through when you're playing Mississippi State, the next team on the list, you have Kentucky that's ranked, you have South Carolina, you have Texas A&M. It keeps going on and on. There's not a better conference that can help prepare you for NCAA than this conference. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. NIKKI FARGAS: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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