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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 6, 2020Gary BlairShambria WashingtonChennedy CarterNashville, Tennessee Arkansas 67, Texas A&M 66 THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Texas A&M. We'll open with a statement from Coach Blair. GARY BLAIR: My kids played one heck of a ball game. We shot well enough. We missed some golden opportunities in the last quarter. We had layups not go in. We had put-backs not go in. A couple costly turnovers. But I wouldn't change a thing that we did in the ball game. Injuries happen. It hurt us big-time when Ciera went out. It could be pretty serious. It's not just a sprained ankle. But we've dealt with injuries for the last two years and we'll find a way to overcome it. But my basketball team played their guts out. They played hard. You got to want the ball in that situation. We wanted Carter on the drive. We were crashing the boards. Obviously she was going through four people. Obviously we thought she got hit on the wrist, but the referees didn't. It's up to us to be able to make the shot to go through. But Chennedy Carter wants the basketball. That's the most important thing you've got to be able to have as an athlete, that somebody wants it at the end and can wear it on her shoulders whether she hit the shot or she missed the shot. It was a great ball game. The three at the end that Shambria hit, that was huge. That was our only second shot of the ball game. That she did under pressure. She directed our ball club, played great defense the whole night. Give them credit. Daniels came in and hurt us with 13 points. I thought we did a pretty good job as you can do on Tolefree. Dungee got a couple baskets at the end that hurt us. Sometimes it's easier being David coming from behind than being Goliath always in the front and in the lead. We led the whole ball game. Sometimes it's hard to be able to keep going. Our kids, I've got nothing but great things to say about these two young ladies up here and the ones that are crying their eyes out in the dressing room, because we know how hard we competed. We'll go down to the NCAA tournament, our season is not over, we'll go on the road like big boys and big girls. Wherever we're sent, we'll do our best to represent Texas A&M and the SEC. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Chennedy, walk us through the last shot. CHENNEDY CARTER: Nothing. Make the shot. Missed the shot. Tough play. Tough to walk through a play like that. I felt like consecutively I got hacked a lot on my middle drive. I don't know what you want me to say. I just missed the shot, man. Q. Obviously a tough time, but you have a decision to make coming up about the WNBA. When will you make that decision? CHENNEDY CARTER: I'm just focused on the rest of the NCAA season. GARY BLAIR: That's not a fair question after we just played our guts out, sir. That's not a fair question. Has anybody else got another question? Q. Sham, this is a significant loss. It's not looking good for Ciera. Still a lot to play for this season. Elaborate on that a little bit. SHAMBRIA WASHINGTON: Our season's not over. We're going to continue to get better, go back to the drawing board. We have a lot of practices ahead of us. We still have fight. Losses happen. It's just how we bounce back from the loss, what lessons we learned. It's not a loss if we learn valuable lessons. We grow from this, stick together as a team, block out the naysayers and be the women in the arena and just take care of our business from here on out. Q. I've heard Coach Blair talk on many occasions about respecting the game, working hard. Describe how you as a team have worked hard behind the scenes to get where you are today. SHAMBRIA WASHINGTON: Well, hopefully from here on out we played hard enough that it won't be a question about what we do. We play hard. We stick together. We're Aggies at the end of the day. We're trying to represent Texas A&M the best we can. You can't fake the harvest. Our work started in the summer, last off-season. We're going to continue to grow, stick together, get better on film. The season isn't over. We still have time to improve. These few weeks we have between now and the NCAA tournament is when we put extra work in and improve to be better players. Q. Sham, looks like you made life difficult for them on the perimeter most of the game. What was the approach coming in? SHAMBRIA WASHINGTON: We watched them play yesterday. They got hot against Auburn. Their team is capable of getting hot. They shoot a lot of threes, a lot of them go in, some of them don't. Sticking to our principles, being true to ourselves, playing out of a stance, sticking with our schemes, our game plans, being active in gaps. Kudos to them. They knocked down shots when they needed to. Respect to them. I don't take anything away from them. They hit shots. That's all. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies. We'll continue with questions for Coach Blair. Q. You knew they like to shoot it. A lot of that comes in transition usually. How much of that offensively on your end was able to keep them from doing that most of the game? GARY BLAIR: I think our transition defense was outstanding. They only had five points on the fast break. Tolefree and Dungee were most of the time not getting a trailing three. Tolefree can put the ball on the floor as good as anybody in this league after she shows shot. Sometimes Arkansas is a streak team. They streak good, they streak bad, but they have no conscious. They can miss five in a row and they can come back and hit four in a row, or when it's time to drive and make the last shot, they can do that as well. Give Coach Neighbors a lot of credit and his staff. They've done a good job. I don't think neither one of us are real happy with our whole total play of the game. I think we're both happy with the effort and the fight and how hard and how many minutes all of our kids had to play. We're both NCAA teams. Like last year when Mike beat me, he knew he had to win the next game, the championship, to have a chance to go to the NCAA. But it's also a good thing about the WNIT, four big-time teams are going to the NCAA that were all in, Northwestern, TCU, Arkansas, and the other one I can't remember who it was, but four teams that used the NIT to get to the NCAA. Sometimes the WNIT might stand for 'women not in tournament', but women on their way to the next level to the tournament. I hope those teams that do not make the NCAA will sit there and go to the WNIT. We won it in Arkansas in '99. I went my second year to Arkansas. It's been very good. I just want to give Arkansas a lot of credit for not giving up. When they got real close and we cut that thing right back up to six or seven points, I thought we showed a lot of grit and character and making the shots when it counted. My bench played very well. Anna Dreimane, most of you cannot even pronounce her name, and I cannot pronounce the last one pretty good, but she played great today. Give her a little bit of credit for coming in and taking Ciera's spot when we were in foul trouble. Q. The tempo and style of the game played to your team's strengths. You can't imagine a better scenario with the ball in Chennedy's hands at the end. That's what you would want. What do you see in Arkansas in the way they were able to handle the game although it didn't play to their style? GARY BLAIR: Arkansas's strength is their three-point shooting, the no fear. What were they were down, 12-0 to us or something like that? Yesterday they were down 8-0. They're not afraid of getting behind. I probably would have panicked and called two timeouts. Mike's temperament is a lot better than mine sometimes. I have a veteran team. We have to learn how to play through it. Arkansas is going to have their work cut out against South Carolina. They know it. But who cares. They're on house money. They're trying to get a higher seed. Tolefree is not going to have two bad shooting nights in a row, but neither are we. When I get the ball to Chennedy at the end, or when Russell Westbrook has it or James Harden has it, you want to get all the way to the hole because you have the best chance. But sometimes you have to shoot the four-, the five-footer because everybody is coming out at you. The one she would like to have back is when she drove the baseline and didn't jump back into it and rim shot. I'd like to have a lot of our shots back that we missed down the stretch. Hey, I think we got better as the game went on because we had to play without Ciera and some other kids stepped up. We dominated the defensive boards the whole night. So I had to slow down the offense, run some sets. The problem is when we ran some of the beautiful sets that we ran in the second half, we just missed the shot or missed the layup. We have to do a better job of cleaning that up. Q. When I see you on the sidelines, I see a wise, seasoned coach dispensing wisdom to all his players. We're never too old to learn. What have you learned from your players this season? GARY BLAIR: A lot of times as you get older you learn to fight through adversity. We fought through eight games without Chennedy Carter and went 4-4. The other kids got better because of it. They had to step up. I liken this ball game here, we started to go to Kayla Wells because we didn't feel like Tolefree in foul trouble could stop her, and she didn't. I probably should have called more calls. That's on me. But we were a little bit surprised that they played this as much man as they did. We were ready for the jump or the zone. They came out and just said, Hey, let's go for it. I learned about my players, it hurts right now. Doggone it, they're hurting. That's what you want in sport, to be able to sit there and understand when losing hurts worse than winning feels good. That's the way sports should be. That's what I've learned about my players. But I appreciate the media that's here. Sir, you got the best-looking hat in the room right now. I thank y'all. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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