BIG EAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 7, 2021

Geno Auriemma

UConn Huskies

Mohegan Sun Arena

Postgame Media Conference

UConn 84, Villanova 39

THE MODERATOR: We welcome in UConn head coach Geno Auriemma after the Huskies' semifinal win.

GENO AURIEMMA: As I said to our team in the locker room, there's -- you know, it's a great feeling when you watch a team play late in the season and all the things that you've been trying to work on come to life. It makes the kids feel like all the work and all the effort they put into it are worth it.

Everyone that played played their role perfectly. We made very few mistakes. That's two nights now we made very few mistakes defensively.

Again, there are times when we play a certain way a really, really good Villanova team, you know, we make it difficult for them to get the shots that they want. I watched them play last night, and they were absolutely great. They were great. Maddie Siegrist was great. Just an unbelievable performance. So we knew coming in it was going to be a tough matchup for whoever was guarding her. We just did an amazing, amazing job. That's all I can say.

And then Christyn Williams finally realized how to just play to her potential and play to who she is, and it was really great to see because she's been struggling with that all season.

Q. Hey, Geno. You said yesterday that Nika was as tough as they come. Did having her out there just to start the game almost get you off on the right foot, just having her out there and not having to jump through a bunch of hoops with the lineup?

GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, when we left here yesterday, obviously, we weren't sure the extent of what happened, but overnight she did everything she was asked to do. Our athletic training staff, Janelle did a great job with her and was able to come to shootaround this morning and looked good and then worked on it again today.

She is a tough kid, and I'm sure it hurt, and she played through it anyway. We didn't play her as much as we would have liked, obviously, because tomorrow is going to be -- either way, whether it's Creighton and we've got to chase them around or whether it's Marquette and how physical they are, it's going to be a tough assignment for her tomorrow night as well.

Q. Geno, when we talk about Christyn's best games, it always seems that she really starts it at the defensive end. Have you continued to try to emphasize that to her? And just a followup question quickly, did you have a reaction when Kenzie Gardler made that three-pointer?

GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, Christyn's taken on a defensive mindset for a big part of the second half of the season, and it's allowed her to focus on the entire game, not just one aspect of it. I think sometimes she overthinks the game and complicates things for herself. Everyone has to be who they are, and she's a scorer, and she should act like one and talk like one and walk like one. Every time she steps on the court, she should be ready to score.

I think today was the culmination of her being great defensively on a really tough assignment and just letting the natural part of who she is happen on the offensive end. We're a championship team if Christyn Williams plays like that. I don't know if we can be if she doesn't play like that, but if she plays like that, we're a championship team.

As far as Kenzie Gardler making that three, I'm not surprised. Her father and her grandfather wouldn't have taken nearly as long to get that shot off, I'll tell you that right now. They would have pulled the trigger on a bunch more too. It's part of the DNA. And her mother, to be honest with you. There's a lot of shots in that heritage.

Q. Hey, Coach, not only with Christyn Williams on Maddie Siegrist, but can you describe just how seriously your whole team took their defensive assignments?

GENO AURIEMMA: Well, as I mentioned at the beginning, for two nights in a row now, we said, here's the game plan. This is what we're going to do, and here's how we're going to do it. Jamelle last night and Shea tonight put together two great game plans. This is how we're going to defend it. This is what everyone's responsibility is. It's not one person that's going to get it done. It's a team effort.

You know, it worked as well as you can possibly hope that it will work, and at this time of the year, that's exactly what you need to win. You need that kind of effort, that kind of execution on the defensive end for sure.

Q. Geno, if I could follow up on your defense, with the presumption that most of the kids you get out of high school are scoring stars and concentrate mostly on offense, when you get them, is it more a matter of teaching them how to play defense or teaching them how to want to play defense?

GENO AURIEMMA: Well, with very few exceptions, I could probably name them on one hand, in 37 years, I don't remember one kid ever coming to Connecticut going, Coach, I don't care if I shoot the ball one time, I just want to be the best defensive player in the country. You don't hear that very often, if at all.

So when they get here, they all think they can shoot their way into the lineup, and they don't voluntarily say I'm going to be really, really good defensively. But it doesn't take long for them to realize that, in order for them to get any shots at the other end, they're going to have to become really good defensively. So they come here knowing they can score, and they leave here knowing, if I learn to play defense and get really good at it, Coach will give me an opportunity to score.

Q. Hey, Geno, if you end up playing Marquette tomorrow night and you just played them earlier last week, does that help you guys sort of lock in, hey, you know, they did these things against us a week ago that we had some issues with, for the third game in the third day, so to speak, as opposed to you hadn't seen them recently and they didn't give you that trouble towards the end of the game?

GENO AURIEMMA: I told the kids in the locker room before the game, I said, listen, these are not supposed to be easy games. If they turn out to be easy, that's fine. That's fine. But these are not supposed to be easy. This is tournament time. This is March, and the games are supposed to be difficult, and they're supposed to be between teams that have seen each other more than once. So there's not a lot of trickery going on. They're supposed to be knock-down, drag-out affairs, and you have to be willing to grind it out, if that's what it takes.

And if it's Marquette tomorrow night or if it's Creighton tomorrow night, we have to go in expecting that. If it turns out to be something other than that, fine, but that's not our expectation. Our expectation is this is going to be really hard, and it's the expectation that we're carrying into the NCAA Tournament too when we leave.

Q. Thinking back to the first time you guys played Villanova this season, you guys actually struggled against them defensively in the first half. How would you describe the biggest areas of growth on the defensive end comparing the beginning of this season until now? Like what areas on defense has your team really been able to make that growth so you guys are doing what you did today?

GENO AURIEMMA: You know, that was back in December. We had not played any games in November, I don't think, and we played like three or four games in a row, and that was the last one of a bunch, and they were all league games. Villanova is never easy to play. I don't care if you play them in December, if you play them in March, it doesn't matter. They're a very difficult team to play defense against.

So when you first play them, you're not ready for all the things that they do, and the younger you are, the less you're ready for them. We were talking about it as a staff. We said, you know, it's been seven years since we've been in this league, and seven years ago, when we left this league, everybody we played played a different style of basketball. Rutgers had their style. Notre Dame had theirs. Louisville had theirs. Syracuse had theirs. DePaul had theirs. Marquette had theirs. Everybody had a different style. West Virginia had their style, and Villanova was somewhat unique.

We come back seven years later, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, every night it's chasing five guys around the court who are all great three-point shooters. So the league has changed a lot in seven years, and us as a coaching staff, and certainly our players, it takes time to get used to that, and the more times you see it, the more times you experience it, the better you get at it.

I think the communication is better, the positioning is better, the timing on some of the switches is better, the understanding is better. You hope as a coach that's what happens, but for anybody playing them for the very first time, God bless you. Trust me, I've been there 30-some years.