BIG EAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 5, 2021

James Howard

Georgetown Hoyas

Mohegan Sun Arena

Postgame Media Conference

Creighton - 56, Georgetown - 42

COACH HOWARD: I thought the girls played hard. It's good to finish shots. Today we had 59 attempts and they were efficient with 44. But they went to the free-throw line I think 28, 29 times and it's a big difference there.

So made a run. Thought we'd be able to cut back into it. Had some breakdowns, but proud of the girls and their fight all season.

Q. How much does Kelsey Ransom embody that fight?

COACH HOWARD: 100 percent. I think everything that Kelsey gives is 110 percent. She's still learning a lot about the game, but her effort, she means well. She wants to do well. But I love her effort and her heart. Now, we want to try to continue to develop the overall of her game. But she's everything. She drives the bus.

Q. It looked like Creighton was kind of loading up all the defenders in the paint to deny post touches and force one-and-done possessions. When the jumpers are not falling what can you do to initiate offense and get second-chance points?

COACH HOWARD: We tried to run ball screens late. Had a little success in bringing them out. But it still called for the post player to be able to pop, and they needed to make shots. I knew coming in from the last game that Creighton would set the 4 and 5 players in the paint and take away the penetrations off of Kelsey Ransom and Jaz Harmon. When you look at the percentages of shooting from the outside, our post players haven't shot the ball very well. So it was a very good strategic plan to try to take away the penetration.

The good thing early on was that Shanniah Wright came in and knocked down a couple, a short-corner jumper and then a 3 ball. And when you can play and stretch the floor it opens up the blocks. But they took away the blocks by just setting two players in the lane.

Q. Seemed like every time you started off Creighton was able to get Temi Carda to her kill spots today whether it was going right or left, making plays for herself and her team. From your perspective what was difficult in terms of being able to corral her?

COACH HOWARD: Could you repeat the first part?

Q. Temi Carda was able to get to her kill spots today. I just was wondering what was about keeping her contained and stop her from making plays for her team?

COACH HOWARD: Lane line penetration. I thought that we worked on, coming out we knew she was going to be the focal point. She's a senior. She's a vet. And even when we played them the first two games, the ball is going to be in her hands. Vets make plays and she made great plays for them. She broke us down on the dribble, we didn't get the rotation we were looking for when we got beat.

And she's very crafty. You know, once she picks it up she's still not dead; she's going to use her pivot. She's going to give you that little shot behind. She reads defenses very well. But I thought we should have had better rotation to come over and make her pick it up early, and we never got to that rotation.

Q. Can you just talk about that third quarter? Get down there by double digits but make that 11-0 run. Could you talk about that spread? You guys definitely are showing a lot of resiliency during that third quarter.

COACH HOWARD: Yes, the thing that we did was just run some ball screens. We ran the 15 ball screen in the middle of the floor, tried to get Kelsey Ransom downhill. And then we popped the post because we saw how they were dropping their 5 player. And we were able to get that pass back up top and either knock down or Kelsey got to the rim and made something happen.

When you are having that with the way they were playing, it gave us a little bit of momentum. And we saw the play off of that. And we came down -- I think it got down to almost like one possession. It was like -- we were down two for probably like two and a half minutes. And so we came down. We didn't get anything. We forced something really quick. We got a turnover there.

And those are the things that haunt you, come back later on, because three possessions later Carda comes down and she scores. Or we come off the corner shooter and they knock down a 3 and now it's back up to five or seven.

I just felt like it was vets making plays, and we're still learning how to get the ball in the right places and finish it off.