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BIG TEN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 6, 2020Kim Barnes AricoNaz HillmonMaddie NolanHailey BrownIndianapolis, Indiana Michigan - 67, Northwestern - 59 KIM BARNES ARICO: I thought it was a heck of a ball game. Northwestern is an exceptional team. They've had a tremendous season, and they've received so many honors, and I have the utmost respect for their coach and their program. But we had an opportunity to play them twice this season, and both times we played them pretty well, and the last time we had to play them without Naz, who had an injury, tried to come back in that game but wasn't 100 percent. So we felt coming into the game that we would be able to give them a real good game. We also knew the importance of this game, which I think was really important to our team, to put ourselves in a position for the NCAA Tournament and for the best seed possible in the NCAA Tournament. So when you have an opportunity to beat a No. 9 RPI team, it's a really great win for your program. Just proud of our team, proud of the way that they responded, proud of the way that they handled themselves down the stretch. Real great win for us. Q. Maddie, you've had to grow in the second half of the year. How would you describe kind of this journey; now you're stepping up and taking critical shots compared to, let's say, January and how would you describe what you've had to go through? MADDIE NOLAN: Obviously a new role for me just starting the season, but I think I give a lot of credit to my coaches and teammates, instilling that confidence in me to shoot the ball. I think a couple of games ago I wasn't as confident and they'd be like, you're wide open, you need to shoot it. So just putting that in me really helped. Q. Hailey and Naz, can you talk about how once the shots started falling for Maddie how that kind of picked everyone else up? HAILEY BROWN: I mean, I think that it's been consistent all year. Whenever we've proven to hit the outside shots, teams have had to come out in the paint, can't be as clogged, and it opens things up for Naz. So yeah, it has really helped us and when we moved the ball we're getting those outside shots. NAZ HILLMON: Yeah, I think it definitely helps us, like Hailey touched on a second ago. It really opens up the floor for us. That's when Amy can get her drives or AK can get her drives, and we can dump down into the post. We just get so excited for Maddie. We know how much hard work she's put in, and her hitting those shots gives us a momentum boost. So we really enjoy that. Q. Naz, another 20-point game, and you started five-for-five. What led to that hot shooting start? NAZ HILLMON: I think my teammates really focusing on getting me the ball early, trying to get me early touches to determine that we wanted to get the ball into the paint, we wanted to try to draw fouls. That's how we wanted to get our quick scores, but my coaches and teammates put me in great position to get those close-to-the-basket shots and also rebounding on the offensive glass. Q. A couple times there in the fourth quarter after you guys extended the lead, Northwestern was able to punch back, get it back within one possession. What was the key to kind of maintaining your composure, finding a way to score a bucket and extend the lead back again? NAZ HILLMON: I think our first thing was making sure that we got a stop on defense. We often say that our defense is what fuels our offense. We can't get transition buckets if we don't get a stop first, because then they're able to pick up our point guard 94 feet. So really just try to get stops, making sure that we made the right reads and the right plays. Trying to put everybody in the right spot. Oftentimes you saw Maddie was in the right spot. Hailey was in the right spot. I was in the right spot. Focusing on defense first and then making sure we're putting people in the best positions that we can so they can get their best shots. Q. Maddie, there was that play early in the fourth quarter where you got the ball, shot clock winding down and you hit a tough shot. Can you talk about how the confidence has helped you with shots like that? MADDIE NOLAN: I mean, just clock winding down, I got the ball passed to me. I knew I had been kind of hot from three from the previous shots. So just kind of getting a ball up on the rim at least because we know Naz, HB, AK are going to be down there to O-board it if I do miss it. So just getting a shot on the rim. Q. You mentioned you've had the chance to play Northwestern before today twice; can you talk about the decision to really focus on defense on locking down Lindsey Pulliam tonight? KIM BARNES ARICO: Yeah, we did a tremendous job the last time we played as well. So the first time we played them I think she had 30 points against us. She's obviously an exceptional player, can score in so many ways and has really improved her game from last season to this season, but we have a great defender in Akienreh Johnson, and we really challenged her when we played her at home, and I think she was 1-for-10 against us the last time we played them at home, and tonight we did a great job on her, as well. So our kids take pride in their defense just as much as they do on the offensive end, and I think that was a focus of Akienreh, is I'm going to lock down the other team's best player, and she really stepped up to that challenge. Q. Maddie has obviously grown a lot as a scorer the past two games. Talk about what you've seen from her. KIM BARNES ARICO: Yeah, Maddie is playing with an extreme amount of confidence. You know her story probably as well as anybody, and if there are any Indiana people in the room, they probably know her story, but she's a kid who had a significant, significant injury in high school, and at the beginning of this season, we weren't even sure she would ever make it back on the basketball court, true story. And Hailey and Naz spoke to how hard she's worked, and she had to play with a knee brace just to be able to go out and run around. In the beginning of the year as a coach I wasn't even sure she was going to be able to get any minutes, and now here we are, six weeks ago she was playing 30 seconds a game, and now she's playing 38 minutes a game. But just perseverance, hard work, and playing with a ton of confidence. She had an incredible high school career at Zionsville and she is off to a tremendous start as a freshman for us. Q. Can you expand on Akienreh's game? She totally filled the whole stat sheet up. KIM BARNES ARICO: Yeah, that's something that we talk about in the locker room a lot because sometimes Akienreh's numbers don't show up in points. Sometimes they do. She's had plenty of 20-point games. But sometimes they don't show up in points, and she's not the one coming to the interview, and she's not the one going on the TV screen. We just try to tell each person in our locker room how valuable their role is, and really to try to embrace that role because her stat line is incredible. It's not necessarily points, but her rebounds, her assists, her steals, and her ability to guard the other team's best player has been something special for us. So she's just had an incredible game, and she's been great for us all season long. Q. Yesterday you had a slow start, but today was a different story. What was the change in your approach for today's game? KIM BARNES ARICO: You know, I just think we got going early, and I think that helped our confidence really. We didn't have much time to work on their match-up, and they play a different defense than anybody that you're going to face. But thankfully we have played them twice, so we kind of went through our sets today at shoot-around that we typically run against them, and we found Naz early, and she got going and she rarely misses. She really got us going early, and then to knock down some outside shots when Maddie started doing that, I think that gave us a lot of confidence. But even though that's the case, we knew Northwestern was going to make a run. I mean, they're such a great team. And yesterday we talked about we were on the opposite side of that, and then we had to make a run. We knew that they were going to -- it was going to be a game of runs, and we just had to put ourselves in a great position, and thankfully we were able to do that down the stretch. Q. You mentioned how you guys were able to take Pulliam out of the game in that second match-up, and really their offense was really limited in that match-up. Did you guys do anything differently schematically or in terms of focus in this matchup than in that second one? KIM BARNES ARICO: Yeah, we talked about this in the locker room afterwards, as well, and I don't know if you guys picked up on this, but Amy Dilk went 94 feet against Veronica Burton, and I thought once she took the ball out of her hands, that changed -- they couldn't get into their flow of what they wanted to do because she typically brings it out. And Amy is a player that has to face that every day because she's our primary point guard, so she faces that 94 feet of pressure all the time. So finally she did it to somebody else, and I think it really got them out of rhythm because I think somebody else had to initiate their offense, which is something that they weren't accustomed to. I thought that really helped us down the stretch. I also think if you have a defender like Naz Hillmon who's strong and physical and can guard any post, but then she can guard your 4, your 3, your 2, your 1, you're able to do a lot of different things. So when Abi Scheid was coming off those flare screens and trying to present mismatch problems for our post player, Naz Hillmon is a player that doesn't get caught up in all that stuff because she can move so well as a post player. So I think she really provides a great defensive match-up for us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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