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BIG TEN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 6, 2020Brenda FreseShakira AustinStephanie JonesTaylor MikesellIndianapolis, Indiana Maryland - 74, Purdue - 62 BRENDA FRESE: You know, I thought you saw a team in Purdue that was extremely hungry, extremely talented. I thought they battled for 40 minutes. Really showed why we should have eight teams into the NCAA Tournament. They gave us everything that they had for 40 minutes and really made us work. But I thought once we were able to kind of settle in with our first game, I thought the first quarter took us some time to be able to kind of get acclimated and get our game legs back under us. I thought we were able to find a way to make plays, and we were making plays for each other, sharing the basketball, defending three players, when you talk about with double-doubles, I thought did a tremendous job both on the glass and sharing the basketball. Q. Taylor, your second straight game of 22 points with six threes. One point shy of career high and one shy of a new career high with triples, as well. How are you feeling right now? Seems like you're really on a hot streak. TAYLOR MIKESELL: I feel good, but just trying to survive and advance at this point. Really we're looking forward to tomorrow's game right now and just trying to stay hot from behind the arc and as a team. Q. Shakira and Stephanie, you guys both had double-doubles with rebounds tonight. Do you ever get competitive about who gets the most? SHAKIRA AUSTIN: Yeah, I would say we're pretty competitive. It starts in practice, like we're always just competing, just going back and forth with each other, and it shows on the court. She's just -- Steph is so consistent. She's always just cleaning up for everybody else, and it just showed in the stats with her doubles, and she's -- just the plan is to keep it going for the rest of the tournament. STEPHANIE JONES: Yeah, I would say we're both pretty competitive when it comes to it. We just push each other, make each other better. Q. Shakira, how have you seen Taylor either grow or kind of, I guess, adapt to the season throughout the year? SHAKIRA AUSTIN: Taylor has grown so much from the beginning. Her confidence has maintained the whole season, but just making sure that we keep her confidence up in this last part of the season because this is when we're going to need her the most, and just making sure that she keeps shooting. It might not fall, but we're still going to keep pushing for her to keep putting the shots up and just being aggressive, like she is. Q. Stephanie, it's obviously an interesting defense that you guys are playing with the pressure you have. How important is it for you guys to be able to maintain these switches in the defense, and how is that sort of different from what you've had the last three years? STEPHANIE JONES: This year is very important for us to stick to our principles of pressuring the ball and having that line knowing that we have each other's back, compared to the last three years where it was more like of you guarding your person. It wasn't as like a collective unit. I think this year we've done a great job of getting to that point of trusting each other and really having each other's backs. Q. Stephanie and Shakira, in the second half especially, the third quarter looked like you guys kind of started to get inside more and find more success, and I know you had a fast break lay-up and were pushing the pace. Was that a halftime message to get inside more and take advantage of that instead of settling for perimeter shots? STEPHANIE JONES: Yeah, coming out of the locker room, our message was definitely to be more aggressive and not settle so fast. Like I mean, we knew that we had Tay being able to knock down shots outside, but just to be able to go inside-out first and like look for the open shot and just be patient with it. SHAKIRA AUSTIN: Yeah, first half we were rushing a lot of shots and not finding what we usually find, so just making sure the second half the message was to play the gaps and play slow, and don't let them speed you up because they're giving us whatever we want. Q. Coach, you talked a little bit about the sort of slow start, trying to get your legs underneath you. What specifically were you seeing out there, that the defense was maybe a little lax or what was your message? BRENDA FRESE: Yeah, I mean, we were late on a lot of -- they did a nice job driving and kicking. They hit some big threes that first quarter. They hit four threes. They ended the one with a bank shot. The second quarter we were able to clean it up a little bit more, when you talk about they were only able to get one three off. Obviously when you get Kaila in early foul trouble, I thought that impacted her, it impacted our team, not having her on the floor for the minutes that we like to have her. Q. Purdue has Harris and Diagne down low. What do you do to ready the team to go against great rebounders like those two? BRENDA FRESE: Man, they were a handful for us. We were trying to get some quick box-outs on them, trying to be able to push them back, but they were able to expose us at different times, I thought, with some of the mismatches. But trying to put the work in early, and then they exposed us when we were late. Q. Brenda, Taylor had a little bit shakier start to the season. Since conference play have you seen her settle into the point guard role? Is it getting used to the defense? Is it kind of a combination of all those things? BRENDA FRESE: Yeah, I think, I keep telling her it's the rest that we've provided for her to get to this point in March where she wasn't last year. She definitely -- Taylor is such a winner, and again, all season we've asked her to run duties at the point guard position, has done whatever it takes, but we took her out of her natural position, and so that took time, and selfishly it impacted her with how she was playing the game. But I think now as we've been able to get in some comfortable rotations and with our freshmen settling in a little bit more, it's made it a lot easier. We've been able to find her easier. I think of that skip pass that Blair had, which I think really broke the game open. We're just making more plays like that to be able to find her. Q. How important was the offensive rebounding when the shots weren't falling? BRENDA FRESE: Well, I sort of joked at halftime, it reminded me of our Iowa game there when we were getting all kinds of offensive rebounds, not putting them back. Didn't want the same outcome, though. You know, it was important to get on the glass. We talked about it at halftime, just settling in. I thought we got those O-boards and rushed shots. I thought there was times where we could get those O-boards and be able to kick them out because Purdue's length is extremely difficult to be able to shoot over, which you saw with the amount of blocked shots that they had on us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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