PAC-12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 4, 2022

JR Payne

Mya Hollingshed

Jaylyn Sherrod

Colorado Buffaloes

Postgame Press Conference

Stanford - 71, Colorado - 45

THE MODERATOR: We welcome Colorado head coach JR Payne and student-athletes Mya Hollingshed and Jaylyn Sherrod.

COACH PAYNE: I'm not too sure what to say. Disappointed about the outcome of the game, proud of how we battled on the boards. We had a hard time scoring when we turned it over. Too many turnovers against a team that makes you pay for pretty much every mistake you make.

But Stanford's a great team. I think we're also a great team, very competitive game. And we just didn't score the ball the way we needed to to win today.

Q. It got pretty chippy at points. Do you think that Brink should have been tossed for throwing the ball?

COACH PAYNE: I have not seen the film. So I don't know.

Q. JR, you've sat at this press conference a lot of times when there wasn't any basketball to be played after this game. You know you have basketball to be played. So how does this inform what you guys do and what you want to do moving forward?

COACH PAYNE: Well, I just told the team, anytime you're playing basketball this late in the season, every time you step on the floor you have an opportunity to get better. We are no different.

And I think when you play a game like this and you play against a great team, you clearly can identify some areas that we still need to continue to grow. We very much have a growth mindset as a group. So that's what we'll do. We'll watch the film and find areas that we need to get better in order to be prepared for future games.

Q. Mya, what did you see transpire in that incident with Cameron Brink?

MYA HOLLINGSHED: Nothing, they just got tangled up. Two personal fouls. That's it. It was nothing more than that.

Q. Mya, at that point, either team or both teams could have sort of just used that for fuel, and it seem as if their defensive intensity picked up and it fueled their offense. Did it seem like that, that at that point -- because it was a tight game at that point?

MYA HOLLINGSHED: I just don't think we upped our intensity defensively. We were starting to get rolling on our offense and we were trading baskets at one point. But we weren't doing what we needed to do with a stop, score, stop. I think that's what ultimately led to that.

Q. Jaylyn, that stretch at the end of the third quarter when Anna Wilson scored nine in a row and pushed things out a little bit, do you feel that was an important stretch in the game?

JAYLYN SHERROD: Anytime a team goes on a run like that it's an important stretch, because as Mya said, we weren't getting stop, score, stop. So, we were kind of trading baskets at that point. That wasn't what we needed to do when we were trying to come back.

Q. Really going back to yesterday and today combined, you ladies shot 41 percent in the regular season combined, 31 percent in the tournament. Was it something about how the teams were playing you? Does it fall back on you ladies? What took place as far as the offense as a whole just from both games?

JAYLYN SHERROD: I don't think it's a single thing. I think we've just got to stay confident, shoot the ball with confidence and do what we do. I think we just didn't come out and shoot the ball well, and that's just the end of that.

Q. Now that you guys have the opportunity to reset after this and look towards the NCAA Tournament, what's the next week or so going to be like as you await selection but you recover, get the bodies right for the next big slug here?

COACH PAYNE: A lot of rest and recovery. It's difficult to play three games in three days, especially with multiple injured players and rotations changing and shifting. And so these guys need a lot of rest over the next couple of days and recovery.

And then we start just kind of like I said attacking some areas that we need to get better while we wait for the NCAA Tournament.

Q. I don't know if you know, tonight was Tara's 1,000th career win at Stanford. When you hear that number how do you react?

COACH PAYNE: I heard one of the reporters say she would get it tonight. And she did. And Tara has set the table for most of us that are coaching, as far as helping to grow opportunities for women in sport, helping to pave the way for people like me to be able to coach. She's the best.

She's the winningest coach in basketball history. And I'm proud to be a co-coach in the Pac-12. I'm proud to be a friend of hers and excited for the accomplishment that she achieved tonight.

Q. Sila goes out with one minute left in the first half. How much did that change things for you guys? You're missing Tameiya, but to take another ball handler and defender off the team, what did it do to change things?

COACH PAYNE: It changes a lot. Sila is one of our most active defenders. She's one of our most experienced players. And she's someone that plays a lot of minutes in multiple positions, at the same position that we already have an injury at.

So I definitely think it changed us. No excuse. We definitely have the philosophy it's next person up. When someone gets hurt, next person has got to do more. That's not an excuse but it does change the dynamic of the lineup.

Q. Just to go off of that. With these two injuries and this time getting ready before the tournament, you were talking about maybe changing rotations and things you might need to do. Can you just go into that a little bit more? Are there some other people that are going to have to step up that maybe haven't to this point of the season? And then, also, just you guys have played them very close in previous games the last three years, but just the challenge of going against Jones and Brink and what those two can do to you on a given occasion?

COACH PAYNE: The two, I think Arizona and Colorado were the top two defenses in the conference this year. Stanford also is incredible defensively. They only allow 54 points a game and hold their opponents to a low percentage. Part of that is you have multiple defensive players of the year on their roster.

And so they're long and deep. And so anytime you play against Stanford it's going to be difficult to score. I think everyone is injured at this point, as far as other teams around the conference and around country. So we're no different than that. We just need people to heal up.

I'm not going to speculate who is going to fill in. I expect Sila to make a recovery. I expect Tameiya to make a recovery. But as I said a minute ago, we were sort of next-person-up. So that's it.

Q. What kind of seed do you think that you should get going into the tournament? Have you looked at any of the bracketology? What do you think based on this is a really good conference, obviously?

COACH PAYNE: I don't know what seed I expect us to get. I have been prioritized on Stanford and Stanford alone. Yesterday my priority was our opponent and the day before it was our opponent.

I think that we have proven we've won, I don't know, what, seven of our last nine games in one of the best conferences in America. We're deep. We're one of the best defenses in the country. We rebound -- I think we should get a high seed, and I think that we've earned that, and I think the NCAA Tournament wants to see teams that are playing well at the end of the season, not a team that just started well, kind of fizzled through conference.

We're a team that has risen over the last month and a half and I think that's earned a very good seed.