NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - DAYTON VS GEORGIA

March 17, 2022

Shauna Green

Kyla Whitehead

Makira Cook

Dayton Flyers

Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: We'll start with questions for the players.

Q. I'm interested, Makira, about how Whalen, what she does, not just with the ball, but what she does without the ball, and being as someone who is kind of out there making, being traffic cop, like you are, I wonder if you could just talk about her court awareness.

MAKIRA COOK: Could you restate the question, please?

Q. You guys move really well without the ball. A lot of people are talking about how great you guys shot, especially in the first half, but you guys really move without the ball. Now you're going to play a team that likes to get out like you guys do. What's your view of your next opponent in that light?

MAKIRA COOK: My next view on our opponent would be that we just have to do what we do and stay true to ourselves. And to your last question too, about Erin, I feel like just all of our chemistry and stuff on the court makes things a lot easier. We know where each other's going to be most of the time and we just kind of do what Dayton does.

Q. Kyla, you're not one who takes a lot of shots, so how do you approach your role in a game knowing that you have to do other things?

KYLA WHITEHEAD: I guess my biggest focus would be to focus on the things I can control and being the best at it or if we have an emphasis on one game, just trying to do that. Just doing whatever it takes, doing whatever the team needs me to do.

We got players who can put up 20, 30 points a game, and I can too. Don't get me wrong. But when I'm needed in other areas I'll do whatever it take is.

Q. You got eight rebounds last night. I think that was a big factor to keep them off the boards.

KYLA WHITEHEAD: Yes. We knew that number 24 was a big rebounder and then we know that coming into this next game, they have a lot of big rebounders as well, so it's going be to the same importance with rebounding again. So I and the rest of my team will do the same thing that we did yesterday.

Q. You just said that we do what Dayton does. For people who haven't seen Dayton play, could you say, when you say, well, we do what we do, if someone said, well what is that, what is it that Dayton does, what's their brand on the floor?

MAKIRA COOK: For starters, defense. That's where we hang our hat at the most. Defense is our most important thing. And once we take care of that we already know the offense is going to come. Like, everybody on the team from top to bottom can score whenever they want. So we know that when we take care of our defense like we're going to get any shot we want versus whoever.

Q. Kyla, obviously if you shoot tomorrow like you did last night you're going to have a chance of winning. But if you don't shoot that well what else do you guys have to do to make up for that?

KYLA WHITEHEAD: One thing that we have to focus on is definitely taking care of the ball. We know that Georgia's a really handsy team. We know that they have a little bit of size, so we have to box them out. A lot of them like to crash.

Again, like what she said, just a lot of stuff on the defensive end. That's what will get it done at the end of the day.

Q. After such an exciting game last night, how hard is it to kind of come back down to earth and kind of get ready to focus on another opponent tomorrow?

MAKIRA COOK: Honestly, I feel like we've been like trained for it. Like, we're used to handling business one day and getting right back focused and doing what we have to do the next. So it's just a constant staying focused mode.

KYLA WHITEHEAD: I would have to agree. I think the schedule that coach put in place for us this year kind of set us up for where we're at right now. It's just another day for us and you just got to keep your best foot forward and keep going.

Q. After getting some chance to take a look at Georgia, what types of things have you guys seen out of them and how do you guys feel about the matchup?

KYLA WHITEHEAD: For the most part we believe that it's a fairly good matchup for us. They have true bigs, they have good guards and we have true bigs and we have good guards. I think at the end of the day it's just going to come down to who works harder for 40 minutes and who executes and who is more focused. But other than that the matchups are there, we just got to go out there and handle business.

MAKIRA COOK: I would say exactly what Kyla said, who wants it more, who is going to play harder, who is going to get the extra balls and who the ball's going to fall in the net for more.

THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you for joining us and good luck. We'll now take questions for coach. We'll start with an opening statement first.

SHAUNA GREEN: Obviously we're just really excited to be playing and to have the performance that we did last night. You know, just after really looking at it and having some time to reflect on it, just so proud of our kids and how they came, and that's what we've been capable of playing.

And to see it all come together in the first round or the first four of the NCAA tournament was special. Every single person did their job on both ends of the floor and it was just a great team win and it was special to get every single person on our bench into the game to play.

So they can say they played in an NCAA tournament game and we know obviously Georgia's going to be a tough task, but we'll be prepared and I know our kids will come out and compete and leave it all on the floor.

Q. Do you take stock that you once were this Clinton River Queen player, okay, a prep kid going to a high school on the Mississippi River, and now you are coaching a team that was up 25 in the NCAA championships' opening round. When you were 18, did you have any inkling that you wanted to coach at this level and what do you think looking back?

SHAUNA GREEN: Yeah, at 18 I don't think I was thinking much ahead of how to survive as an 18 year old, so, no, I didn't. To tell you the truth I didn't really have a vision to coach until the end of my college career when I saw the end of the light coming in my career, and then I knew I had to be involved in the game. I could not imagine my life without it.

And, yeah, it is. If I think about it and if you do sit and reflect on it, it's pretty cool to, I never would have imagined being able to come back here and be the head coach at a university like Dayton and being able to coach in the NCAA tournament at Iowa State.

Growing up, knowing the tradition with Iowa and as well as Iowa State women's basketball, you know, I watched it, you watch it, and you know the success that they have all had. It's pretty cool. It's cool too because different people in our program have ties to Iowa. Our strength coach is from Iowa. Our administrative assistant is an old Iowa State player. So there's a lot of ties. So when Ames, Iowa showed up, it was special.

Q. Watching last night, Whalen, when she's in there, it seems to be apparent that she not only knows where she's supposed to be, she knows where everybody else is supposed to be, and she does a lot of communicating on the court. Is that an accurate observation?

SHAUNA GREEN: Yeah, definitely. And I think that just comes with having a veteran team. Those guys have played together, the super seniors have played together now four years. You add Makira and T in there, they're only sophomores, and they grew a lot from last year into this year in terms of their chemistry and knowing and playing together.

So I think some of that is just the experience of playing together.

And then also they understand the game. They're high IQ kids, and they work. They work really, really hard. And that's where I was so happy for Erin because you will not find a harder worker out there. She is in the gym non-stop. There's times we have to tell her to get out of the gym because, especially when she was going through the rough patch that she had that you guys alluded to last night, she was in the gym making 300 threes a day, going to practice, non-stop.

Like, you just will not find a harder worker and if anyone deserved to go off last night, it was Erin Whalen. I knew, I kept saying, she's due. It's coming. It's coming. And that was probably the first time in a long time that Erin and Jenna have both went off on the same night.

We knew as a staff, and the people around our program, we said, if they can both be on in one night, it's going to be scary, and you saw that last night, and you saw the result. So now we're just praying to have them have it happen again tomorrow night.

Q. You played a terrific game last night. I think you even said in the press conference maybe your best 40 minutes of the year. You're on that high. You want to celebrate a little bit, but now all of a sudden you got to get ready for another game. To me, that seems like a really challenging thing to have to do. So how do you handle that?

SHAUNA GREEN: You know, yesterday, I always tell our kids, you know, we got to enjoy the wins, even throughout the whole season. I think in this business, and especially even coaches, and we're used to winning and we're expected to win, so it's not like you're going to see us going crazy after wins and acting like we won the national championship after one win.

But I also want our kids to appreciate and celebrate and be proud of what they have accomplished. So I always say, win or lose, you enjoy it or you are miserable about it for that night and then we're right back to it. And we have just had that approach, I know since I've been here. So, like Makira said, it's not something we got to get them down or, I think first off, you use the momentum. That's a big part of the NCAA tournament. You use the momentum from that game. So we're going to ride that.

But then we also, our kids are focused. They came into film today and it's now, it's the next day, and we're trying to just go 1-0 today and then we try to go 1-0 tomorrow, and we are just very process-driven. That's just how we go about our daily business. So really we don't have to do anything different because it's how we approach every single day.

Q. A lot of times the questions this time of year are what does this so-and-so team do to challenge you, what are the particular challenges. What do you feel like you are able to do that's going to challenge Georgia?

SHAUNA GREEN: I think what we always do, and I think that's our defense. It's our defense. And so rebounding, I said it last night, I know what we have done. I tell our team this all the time, like, you can't just be a 10th, the 10th best defensive team field goal percentage in the country just by having a couple good defensive games. It's what we do. It's what we're about. It's what we pride ourselves on.

So if we bring that, which we have done the majority of the games this year, if we can defend at that level and follow and execute the game plan and then be able to rebound at the level that we want to, then we're going to be usually in positions to win games.

And if we can make a few shots, like you saw last night, then we'll be okay. But it starts and ends with our defense and our rebounding and then it goes from there. So I think that's what we can bring. I think we're going to be ready. We're going to be prepared for what they do. We're going to make it hard for them to score. And then they got to deal -- we have a lot of players that can do different things. We have a lot of people, 1 through 5 on the floor at all times, four of those five usually can shoot the three, definitely three out of 'em, and they're able to score off the bounce and score off all three levels.

And then we have a big kid inside too. We have a couple big kids inside that I think can match them inside against Georgia. So I think we got to deal and handle a lot of them because they're really good, but they're also preparing and doing scouting report of what they need to do to handle us.

So it's going to come down, like it does all the time of this year, who is going to execute at a higher level, who is going to win 50/50 balls, and then does the ball go in or not. And it sounds so easy, but sometimes that ball doesn't go in, and the ball has to go in. But you got to create some of that luck and that's through hard work.

Q. So if the ball doesn't go in, like it did last night, what do you have to do, then? Obviously it comes back to defense and rebounding again?

SHAUNA GREEN: Yeah, it comes back to defense and rebounding, but we'll have to manufacture some points. And that's what we're used to. Last night, we ran our stuff and we executed and ran our sets at an elite level, but we also got a ton just out of transition and out of our Phoenix transition, which is how we ideally want to play. I.

Know we're not going to get all those open looks against Georgia as we did against DePaul. So we can grind it out. That's what we're used to doing. We're used to grinding games out. We're used to being low scoring. We're not used to scoring 88 points a night. We've only done that a couple times in the past couple years.

So that's not who we are. I will take it. I would love for it to be who we are more consistently. But we're used to the style. In our conference it's a defensive-minded conference. We got to grind games out. There's games in the high 40s, low 50s. So we can play any style, and so we'll just manufacture. We'll be more deliberate in our half court offense and pound the ball inside, run sets to get our shooters open shots, because some of it won't happen as organically as it happened last night.

Q. Emily Durr, what was she able to tell you about what it was like? Did she talk about at arena, where it would be good to go eat?

SHAUNA GREEN: She gave us all the scoop on Ames. No, she's been great, and she's, I can tell she's been super happy to be back and it was cool for her to, she hasn't been back here since and hasn't been in Hilton since she played.

So it's really, it's awesome to see her eyes kind of light up when she comes back in. And she told us it was a hard place to shoot. I told her not to tell our players that, and she said she didn't. So whatever it was, it worked for us. Like I said, a lot of my family and a couple of -- my aunt and uncle live in Ames and are big Cyclone fans and come to all the women's games, and I told them last night, we caught a little bit of the Hilton magic and it was nice to have.

So I'll take it another game and hopefully we can catch some of it tomorrow night.

Q. You were part of that Elite 8 run, I believe, in 2015. Now, you got hot at the right moment. Do you see any of that makeup of that team, the magic, the drive in this year's team?

SHAUNA GREEN: You know, I told them that story after we lost the championship game, and I said, you guys, it was kind of the same feeling as when we, that 2015. They were devastated that they didn't win that conference tournament championship. And I remember those practices and they like didn't even really, they were just so devastated, and I'm like, but they came into the NCAA tournament, and they got hot at the right time, and we caught that confidence.

So I've been telling them that story and getting them to believe that if you can just get in, and I tell our recruits this all the time, if you can just get into the NCAA tournament, you do not know what can happen. It's all about matchups. It's all about hitting shots at the right time. It just, it can all come together.

So I want them to have that belief, and I think that having a true story about it can kind of help them believe it.

Q. In terms of Georgia, after watching a little bit of tape, how do you feel about the matchup? It's two defensive-oriented teams, two teams with actual posts, so, yeah, just talk about the matchup?

SHAUNA GREEN: I like the matchup. I think that we have, like I said, we have athletic guards that can guard their guards, we got a couple big kids that can matchup with Staiti down low, they're athletic, they're long, they're going to get up and defend.

So the biggest thing for me, one of the biggest keys is taking care of the basketball. We have got to take care of the basketball. They force, they have nine steals a game, force 18 turnovers a game, and so we got to be able to handle their pressure.

We did an unbelievable job of that last night with I believe only eight or nine turnovers and we have to be able to do that tomorrow if we want a shot to win. It's our rebounding and it's our taking care of the basketball.

THE MODERATOR: Thanks coach.