BIG EAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 6, 2021

Doug Bruno

DePaul Blue Demons

Mohegan Sun Arena

Postgame Media Conference

Villanova - 78, DePaul - 72 (OT)

COACH BRUNO: Villanova did a great job tonight. And Coach Dillon does a great job with the basketball team, and the Nova players really did a great job. Maddy Siegrist is a great basketball player, as is Brianna Herlihy and Sarah Mortensen. They really do have three very tough players to guard. We've not defended well down the stretch this season. We didn't defend well tonight.

I'm proud of our players for coming back from the hole that we dug for ourselves. They did a really good job of finally getting into the moment and staying in the moment late in the ball game and bringing the game back to overtime.

But then Nova made -- that's what overtimes are all about, which teams are going to make the plays and which teams aren't. And Nova made more plays than we did in the overtime.

Q. In the last press conference, you talked about being proud of the team for what they accomplished this season in face of all the pandemic and all that. Can you talk a little bit about that?

COACH BRUNO: No, I'm very proud of our players on the pandemic front. These players came back here August 2nd. They got on the floor August 7th. And we are really proud to be the only team in the Big East not to have to be put on pause.

And at the same time I don't say that as a badge of honor or meant in any condescending way toward our comrades in the Big East who have been put on pause. So I don't mean that at all.

So, I am very proud of our players for our COVID discipline and putting themselves in position to not having been paused. And at the same time as long as a program that gets paused doesn't have players that are really, really sick, it's just a crazy year. So you deal with what -- you deal with your situation, and we weren't put on pause and our players were really, really good about their COVID discipline once we got back to the season. So I'm really proud of them for being this COVID-disciplined as they were.

Q. What's different from them when you played them the one time in Chicago? From when you played them the last time, what was different this time, this game?

COACH BRUNO: What's changed?

Q. Yes?

COACH BRUNO: In the two months? A lot of things have changed. I mean, I think Villanova has gotten better for sure. That's one thing that's changed. I don't know that we've defended the way I'd like our teams to defend. Our players understand that if I'm going to give them a green light to shoot quickly, that they have to defend. And I don't know if we ever bought into that concept the entire year.

When we're making shots and not defending, we're okay. But when we're missing shots and not defending, we're not okay.

And I just think Maddy Siegrist, I haven't looked at the stat sheet, I know she had 31 in the first game. We held her to 14 at halftime. I know she was on pace for 28. And so whenever she scores, she scores quietly, to me. What did she end up with?

Q. I think it was 30 --

COACH BRUNO: We cut her down to one. We cut her by one point this time. I mean, I think Herlihy is better. Mortensen is a really good player. And then the supporting cast of the Nova team really did a good job. Raven James, God bless Raven James. I don't know that anybody's really given her the credit in her time at Nova.

The kid can't shoot; the kid can't shoot -- I'm sorry I called her a kid. The young woman can't shoot, the young woman can't shoot, the young woman can't shoot. But all she does is make big shots when she needs to. And Raven James has done that for Nova over the last couple of years.

So the Raven James factor, the Runyan factor, those players did step up and make big plays for Nova tonight. That's important.

Q. Given that the schedule that your team has played, including the win over Kentucky and narrow loss to number two Texas A&M, do you have any thoughts on whether your team should be included in the NCAA Tournament?

COACH BRUNO: Absolutely, I believe we deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament. When I see other leagues telling the committee that 10 teams should be in for us -- when I hear that, absolutely I believe we should be in the NCAA Tournament.

But the committee -- I've always been a coach who's believed in our committee process. If you look back to our 24 NCAA Tournaments that we've been to, you've never heard Coach Bruno beef once about what our seed was, where we were sent or how the committee did this wrong or that wrong. You've never heard me beef one time in my life. Right?

So, I think the committee is made up of good quality women and men that really work very hard to put together a 64-team field and then bracket that field constructively. And I think they'll do a really, really good job. And of course we play Texas A&M to two points for the purpose of getting in the tournament.

We went through all kinds of hoops to get to play Louisville out here. And I screwed that up by pressing them the wrong way. So that score isn't nearly as bad as it looks. Beating Kentucky was a big win for sure. We have two losses to UConn.

So I think there's no doubt that we went out and scheduled people. And some of the other people campaigning for the right to be in the tournament, if you go out and look at who they scheduled, they didn't schedule difficult people.

But again, our committees work very hard. They don't get extra pay. They're going to figure this out and if they feel like we're deserving, then we're deserving. And if they don't feel like we're deserving, then we won't be deserving.

And look, what stinks about all of this is you can't have it back, but this is still a continuum of last year but it's not but it is but it's not. It's only a year ago that we put ourselves in position to have two home games in the NCAA Tournament that wasn't. And then that tournament goes away, and now you have to fight your way into a new tournament. And we'll see what happens. We'll just see where it all lays out and what happens.

Our players, because they have not been put on pause, they haven't had the rest -- I'm saying this with respect -- if a team has been put on pause and if any individual athlete has been sick, badly sick, that's terrible. If any human being has been badly sick that's terrible. But some people have been put on pause over third-party people not being sick and they've had a chance to rest during the season. So hopefully we'll be able to get a little bit of rest here and prepare ourselves for postseason basketball somewhere.