NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST FOUR - INCARNATE WORD VS HOWARD

March 16, 2022

Jeff Dow

Tiana Gardner

Jaaucklyn Moore

Incarnate Word Cardinals

Media Conference

Howard 55, UIW 51

JEFF DOW: First of all, obviously just unbelievably proud of everybody associated with our program, namely our student-athletes. This was a tremendous run. As we told them earlier today, we've already won. There was no pressure going into tonight's game. Of course we would have liked to have won, but to go on the run that we did just to get here, to win four games in four days, and obviously tonight was our fifth game in seven days, that's obviously a little bit unique.

But I thought their competitive nature never changed. They stayed together, played with each other and came together at the right time of the year, and like I said, just really proud of everybody that contributed to this.

Tough loss, obviously. Sometimes you can point to one stat, sometimes you can't. Tonight you certainly can. The rebounding is certainly what killed us, getting out-rebounded by 19 and minus 20 on the O-boards. These guys know one of the things we talk a lot about is second-chance points, meaning just like what it sounds, after you miss you get a second or third shot, and in a very close game we got outscored 21-3 in second-chance points, so that's tough.

We knew that coming in. That was a big part of the scouting report coming in, how well they were going to go to the O-boards, and they certainly lived up to that.

Q. Obviously you're disappointed right now, but when you look back and what you accomplished this season, what does it mean for this program moving forward?

JAAUCKLYN MOORE: Obviously of course right now we're feeling a little disappointed because we knew we could have had the game, like it was in our hands. We had all the -- I don't want to say momentum, but we had the opportunity to close out the game. We just couldn't do it.

Of course we're still happy, being Southland Conference tournament champions, so that feels great. It's just hard to see that right now I feel like, but of course we're all really proud of ourselves.

TIANA GARDNER: Yeah, I agree with Jaaucklyn. Today's game doesn't take away from anything that we've done over the past week in the Southland tournament. Every game, like Coach Dow said the last press conference, every game we're making history, and today the game didn't go our way.

There's definitely other things we could have corrected, things we could have did better. So just hurts knowing we could have gotten the game and we could have been playing still.

Q. Coach was talking about the rebounding. What was the biggest difference in you guys' minds on the offensive glass for them?

JAAUCKLYN MOORE: So Coach Dow always tells us we've got to have all five in rebounding every time a shot goes up, so there was definitely moments where we'd have some of us, I guess, just standing watching or we'd be looking up to get the rebound. We clearly weren't out-jumping any of them.

It was all about putting a body on somebody, which we clearly didn't do a lot of the time. They had 22 offensive rebounds, we just never did what we were supposed to do.

TIANA GARDNER: Yeah, I think at the end of the day they wanted every rebound more than we did, and it kind of showed how many times they would get multiple O-boards in one single possession. Even if they couldn't finish it up, it was like O-board, O-board, O-board.

I think like definitely just like the blocking out and just not even having inside position like what Coach Dow says, it isn't enough.

Q. I know obviously the loss is fresh now, but what do you think you might remember the most out of this whole experience of being able to say that you played in an NCAA Tournament?

TIANA GARDNER: I think it just really does mean a lot. Not a lot of teams, not a lot of players get to do this, have this experience, and like the loss is pretty fresh, but yeah, it definitely doesn't take away from how far we've come and just where we are now.

JAAUCKLYN MOORE: Yeah, I agree. Of course you don't want to end the season on a loss, but it still feels good winning the tournament and everything.

We didn't have the greatest season we could have, but we pulled it together at the right time and ended up getting rings.

Q. Coach, same thing I asked them about, obviously disappointed right now, but looking back at the season what will you remember and everything that was accomplished?

JEFF DOW: Well, needless to say I'm going to focus on what happened last week. Like these three alluded to, we would have liked to have had a better record. I think you pointed out yesterday we had 19 games in single digits. Now it's 20. 20 games that were relatively close, and so many of those came down to a possession or two. Right there obviously we won some, we obviously lost some in the process, whatever, but it's tough to put into words. Like I said, the accomplishment.

Going into last Thursday's game and the running joke, I said, this is the biggest game in school history. So last Thursday we were in the 11:00 a.m. bracket the first couple days, so just beating Nicholls State, Jaaucklyn Moore was going on a 6-0 run the last 13 seconds and hitting a buzzer beater, obviously moments like that are great for Jaaucklyn and our team, and then of course knocking off the 4 seed, the 1 seed, the 3 seed in successive days certainly is a testament to not just their physical toughness but their mental toughness, to bounce back day after day after day and respond like that.

Even tonight, obviously as a coach you're paranoid about a lot of things. You just don't know how they're going to react. We did play six sophomores and three juniors. This is a first-time experience for these guys, and you just don't know are they going to run out of gas, are we going to get off to a slow start. We didn't get off to a slow -- we were up two at the end first quarter and we scored 19 points. The other day we scored five in the first quarter of the championship game, so I thought we settled in.

It wasn't for lack of effort. They were trying to do the right thing.

I think it's going to be great for our program, and I said this the other day, I don't mean to be redundant, but obviously not just for women's basketball, for UIW athletics, obviously as we're transitioning into a new conference, into the WAC, and then great for our university as a whole, certainly to be on the big stage tonight, the first ever play-in game in NCAA women's basketball history, the first game of this entire NCAA Tournament, the stage was ours tonight.

I thought we represented ourselves well. Did not embarrass ourselves by any means. We were right there.

Excited about the future, obviously, but like I said, really feel good, all things considered, what we accomplished over the course of the season.

Q. You touched on it just then, the young team you have, the sophomores and the juniors that played. How do you feel about what's coming back next year and how can you build on this run right now?

JEFF DOW: Real excited. Just to kind of give you a little more perspective, last year I believe -- depends on which player we're talking about, but we were quarantined on six separate occasions for 14 days. We played all of 15 games.

Chloe Storer, the young lady, No. 13, from Australia couldn't get to our country until December 12th through no fault of her own, going back to last year, her freshman year. The kid played one game all of last season. She was so far behind.

Now because of injuries and whatnot, she gets pressed into service and the last week plays five games and had a lot of DNPs this year and came up huge and made a lot of big plays for us.

That's an example of what I'm saying in terms of the future and what we could have.

Obviously Jaaucklyn Moore has really only scratched the surface on how good she can be as a first-team all-conference player as a sophomore. Tiana Gardner I think really tournament MVP, now she's going into her senior year with that under her belt, that confidence, as well. And then obviously there's a host of other players that chipped in, as well, over the past week.

Again, with some of the -- I should say one of the young ladies that was unfortunately out with an injury, Brenna Perez, that's another sophomore coming back that played quite a bit this season, and not to mention our incoming recruits, as well.

Great experience. Again, we would have all liked to have been here another couple days. My six-year-old daughter Helena back there was really wishing we'd be here a couple more days. If you know anything about kids, they love hotels and indoor pools. So we would have liked to have been here a little bit longer.

Just to have the experience, we knew what we would have been up against on Friday night, trust me on that, and it was very classy of Coach Staley and her staff and players to be in the tunnel waiting for us as we came off the floor and congratulating us on the season that we had.

Like I said, just unbelievably proud. I apologize if I forget anybody, but there's a lot that goes into this. In no particular order, Dr. Evans is going to commend me for being a smart husband, but I'm going to thank my wife. I'm going to refer to her again as Dr. Emily Dow, but Emily, my wife, and our two children, Chloe and Helena, it's tough being a spouse of a coach from November to March, and probably even tougher for the kids. So their patience, and it's been great having these guys on the ride with us in the past seven days and them being right there. Dr. Evans, our president of our university, again, first-class guy and so high on athletics. Obviously our athletic director Richard Duran, our associate AD DaShena Stevens, Kenyon Spears, Angela Lawson, Tony Dollison, a lot of people that have a hand in this.

I'm just extremely proud to be a part of this university, be a part of this program and just like I said, just really excited about what the future holds.

Q. I'm just curious with this whole experience, especially with this being the first year that the women are doing the First Four, what's it been like for you to take the program from the whirlwind that was last week, finding out where you were headed Sunday, having to kind of quickly make that turnaround, and now that you're kind of through it, too, I guess generally speaking what do you kind of like or feel about the idea of having these play-in games to include more teams -- how do you feel about the idea there are these play-in games to make it to the first round?

JEFF DOW: Well, to answer your question about just kind of describing the experience, I think the word that's been tossed around a lot is "surreal." You almost have to pinch yourself and you just can't believe it, that this just happened, and just the nature of how we did it.

But it was one of the things that we kept talking about even in defeat. Sometimes it's tough when you're standing in front of the room after a loss, a close loss, whether it was Houston Baptist, the No. 1 seed, a team that swept us in the regular season, it literally came down to the final couple plays both times, and still trying to convince your players, we can beat these guys, or McNeese State, another team that swept us. We blew those teams out in the conference tournament.

So obviously our players certainly bought into what we were trying to sell to an extent, I guess, and they kept believing in themselves. They bought into what the coaching staff was trying to incorporate, implement, so that's rewarding, obviously.

The second question, I think the women's game is definitely ready to have the expanded field. I'm not going to lie to you. If you had to give me a choice, Coach, do you want to open up against South Carolina or do you want to open against Howard, we'll take Howard, okay. Trust me, Howard would answer the question the same way, if she's being truthful.

I think the women's game, there's enough parity, there's enough depth in the field that I think it can certainly justify it, expanding it to 68, and like I said, I'm a fan of the play-in format for sure.