SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 5, 2021

Khayla Pointer

LSU Lady Tigers

Postgame Press Conference

Texas A&M 77, LSU 58

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Khayla Pointer. Questions, please.

Q. This has been a familiar scene at times where it was a cold night, wasn't a lot of support in terms of balance. It caught up with y'all. Just couldn't stop them.

KHAYLA POINTER: Yeah, when I look at the stat sheet, they had a lot more production. When a lot of people talked about our game yesterday, it was us having a huge contribution from the bench. Starters played really, really well. Had five or six people really, really have a great game for us which led us to the win.

Today, it was almost like we just didn't come to play honestly, if I'm just going to be real. Seems like we gave up in the third quarter. Some of us were already checked out. You can't be that way, right?

Texas A&M is a great team. They just won the SEC regular-season championship. We know them very, very well. But tonight, this morning, we didn't come to play. That's how it is.

Q. As a senior, it has to be very disappointing for you. I think y'all have talked about the LSU way and brand, the fight. You feel like that was missing?

KHAYLA POINTER: Yeah. That's a little bit why I was upset. The scoreboard was what it was. You never show that. You never show that you're defeated. You never give up. I got on my team about them. I got on them, Hey, it's third quarter, I think we might be down 14 to 16 points, we already look like the game is over. You never know what can happen in 10 minutes. You never know what can happen in six minutes, eight minutes.

But when you are already telling yourself that you've lost the game, that's the first problem. When you don't believe that you can come back and trim a deficit, that was the problem for me. I was very disappointed in my team tonight for their lack of fight when adversity hit, and for us not to go down swinging.

Q. Defensively in both the times you played Texas A&M, you did a pretty good job on the interior people. Today they had a plus-26 point advantage in points scored in the paint. How difficult were they tonight to guard?

KHAYLA POINTER: Yeah, well, I think earlier we had Faustine Aifuwa and Awa Trasi both with two fouls at the very beginning of the game. I know with had to go small ball. N'dea and Ciera, they're great post players. We were down there banging with them.

The second half we weren't doing great with our ball screen defense. We let Jordan Nixon get to the lane, Alexis Morris had a few layups. We just didn't communicate on those screens.

We didn't defend the paint today, this morning. We gave them a few kick-outs. We made it too easy for them. That's not usually how LSU plays.

Q. Is this it for you or have you made a decision?

KHAYLA POINTER: I'm honestly not sure, to be honest. I guess now, it's still in the season, I was still in the moment. I guess now I'm going to take some time, talk to my family and stuff, see what I want to do. Not sure if I'm going to go pro yet or come back and use my extra year.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us this afternoon. Appreciate it.

KHAYLA POINTER: Thank you.