NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - COLORADO VS CREIGHTON

March 17, 2022

Jim Flanery

Rachel Saunders

Tatum Rembao

Creighton Bluejays

Media Conference

JIM FLANERY: Well, I just said we started our season in Iowa City. We played our traditional closed scrimmage with Iowa that we normally play right around Halloween, so we were over here and played in front of an empty building, and here we are close to four months later starting our postseason, so we're thrilled to be here.

I think our team achieved a lot this year. Really proud of them. I said, when your name comes up on Selection Sunday, you're super excited, and you can either wish to go somewhere close to home or somewhere warm, and somehow it's warm in Iowa City, so we got the best of both.

Q. Can you maybe just tell us a little bit about how Rachel Saunders has developed? She's a local kid, and everyone fondly remembers her from West High School here.

JIM FLANERY: Rachel plays a lot like her dad, and her dad was a football player, so her freshman year I had to talk her out of fouling quite as much, and that was a thing, but I'm proud of Rachel because I think she's overcome a lot. She's had a lot of knee issues.

Last year was a really frustrating year for her. She hurt her knee mid-December, and her timetable for return was supposed to be three to four months, and she just had complication after complication, and she really wasn't cleared to play until the beginning of November even to start practice, and, yet, here she is, and she's a big part of our team. She's one of our captains. We can count on her to provide us tremendous defensive versatility, for one, and I think she's become a capable offensive player, somebody that our team respects because of who she is and how she carries herself and how much she's overcome. She's our student athlete advisory committee rep and is on a national committee, so she's kind of the total package, and we're happy that she's at Creighton.

Q. Kind of the same question on Lauren Jensen. She came over from Iowa. Just what has she added to the program?

JIM FLANERY: Lauren has been tremendous. She's a kid we recruited out of high school. We had a player on our team from Lakeville North, Tammy Carda, who was a leading scorer and probably our best scorer last year. Tammy was at Lakeville North as a senior when Lauren was a freshman, so we had tracked on Lauren. We felt like we were down to our final three or four out of high school, and so I felt like her recruitment once she entered the portal was pretty good because we already had a relationship with her. I think at Iowa it maybe was just a numbers game, and it was a COVID year where it was just hard it evaluate freshmen and know where they were and all that stuff. I know from our standpoint that was really difficult. We had a really talented freshman class, but you had so few opportunities maybe compared to a normal year to get them in practice and all that.

It took us a while once Lauren got on campus to figure out all the things she could do. I felt like she could really help us as a scorer, and we put her in the starting line-up, and in the third game of the year against Nebraska she was 0 for 3, and I made it a point the next time we got together after that game that in front of the team I said: "Lauren, you need to shoot more than three times in a game. You're too good of a shooter. You put too much time in to only shoot three times in a game." And I think that maybe gave her a little bit more of a license because I think when you come in as a transfer, you're, like, okay, I don't want to step on toes, I don't want to overplay my role. I want to kind of figure out what my role is. I think it became more clear as the fall went on and we got into games that we needed her to be a little bit more of a hunter of shots.

She's done a great job, and I think she's fit in really well, and she's got a quick release, and she's not just a shooter too. She can put it on the floor, and she can finish around the rim and good midrange, so we're really, really happy with -- and, you know, Iowa was great. They texted me and said, you're going to love her. It wasn't anything that she wasn't, for whatever reason. We've all had those kids that maybe it just didn't click.

Ironically, again, our first scrimmage for Lauren was in Iowa City against her old teammates. So hopefully she's playing in this building tomorrow, she's relaxed and understands how good a player she is.

Q. Another one of your players, Tatum is from north of Boulder. Fifth year senior, I believe, and wrapping up her career. What's she meant to this program and specifically this particular team?

JIM FLANERY: As a fifth-year, we put a lot on her. She's got a lot of younger players around her, and first of all, she's just been a really good leader, and from that standpoint, I mean, she's not afraid to call somebody out in practice, and that's hard for 21-, 22-year-olds to do even when they get to that fourth or fifth year, and I think she's done a tremendous job of that.

I said a year ago -- not this year -- that in our preseason media session, I said one of the keys to our success a year ago was going to be Tatum's health, and I think I jinxed her because it seemed like she was in COVID protocol or nicked up pretty much the whole year, and so this is really probably the year that she's been the healthiest.

She's been in practice every day. She's done a great job of being in the training room and taking care of her body, and I think just having her on the practice court every day has been huge for us. She doesn't score the ball that much, but her assisted turnover ratio, her decision-making, and her fight is really off and on. She's been a huge piece of what we've done. She understands how talented some of her teammates are, and she's really good at getting them the ball where they can do something with it.

Q. What issues does Colorado provide defensively? They give up 56, 58 points a game. What makes them so good?

JIM FLANERY: Well, I think they're both sound, and they're disruptive. When you first start to evaluate a team on the defensive end, you are, like, okay, are they out taking passes away and putting pressure on the ball; and if they're doing that, are they caught out of position a lot? I think they're pretty good at both of those things.

I mean, I think their ball pressure and their ability to get up into you and get out in passing lanes is going to be something that we're going to have to deal with. 10.8 steals a game on the season, and 10.2 in the PAC-12. That's a lot in a Power Five conference. That's a lot of steals. We're going to have to take care of the ball. We're a pretty good take care of the ball team.

This isn't maybe the best team that we've had in terms of turnovers, but it's a pretty good one, and we can put out -- we play a lot of times five kids that we're comfortable handling the ball at any of the five positions, so we're not -- as much as I just talked about what Tatum can do, we can initiate offense with people other than our point guard, and we're perfectly willing to do that, so that will be one way to kind of alleviate pressure.

Their length and size certainly Hollingshed is a rim protector, and I think I'm going try to say we've been calling her Peanut, but Tuitele. Did I get that right, Brian? Tuitele, just solid. And Miller. I think they're solid inside and then they're pretty disruptive on the perimeter.

Q. You've been in this tournament before, but a lot of your players besides Tatum have not. What do you feel like the keys are to combatting those jitters that everybody kind of experiences their first time, or do you just let them play through it?

JIM FLANERY: I think just letting them know that it's a collective thing, and I think that's where our balance is important. I mean, we're not going to come out and run four straight plays for Emma to start the game and say, you've got to get us going. We're not going to because that wouldn't be fair.

You have to figure out, like you said, who is kind of -- who maybe needs to settle in a little bit, but I think humor can be good in that huddle before they come out and right from the get-go just telling them to rely on each other, but also to put a smile on because I do think, hey, you know, the game is not going to be decided in the first six to eight minutes. I just don't feel like that's the case. It's easy to think that maybe if you get off to a good start or if you don't get off to a good start, but I don't feel like this game is going to be 190, or neither team is getting to 100 tomorrow unless we play a lot of overtimes. I do think just letting them know that that's natural, that's okay, and you got to rely on each other.

Q. At the same time the one player you do have returning on this from an NCAA Tournament team is Tatum. This might be a complicated question, but how different is she from that point -- how much has her game and just her self evolved in that time?

JIM FLANERY: Well, you're good at complicated questions, so it wasn't unexpected. Night and day, hopefully. I think Tatum as a freshman, the goal was to get her enough minutes and playing time to kind of get to the point where she could overcome some of those mistakes because as a freshman she was high risk-high reward. She might come in and four minutes later you were like, man, that was a good substitution, or she might come in, and four minutes later you were like what was I thinking? That's the case with a lot of freshmen in a decision-making position especially if it's a tight situation.

She's kind of the anti that now. We know what we're going to get from her, and I think she's super comfortable with being the distributor that she is, and she's improved a lot defensively too. I feel like that's a place where I think she's maybe gone a little bit unnoticed is I think she can set a tone both in terms of her intellect defensively and also her activity level.

Q. Rachel, you had kind of a difficult beginning to this season as I understand it from your injury from the year before. Take us through what it was like to sort of finally get into playing again as a senior.

RACHEL SAUNDERS: Yeah. Good to see you, Susan, by the way. You know, it was definitely a process. In January of last year I was actually here having my surgery from Dr. Wolf, who you guys might know is the team doc here, a great family friend, and he put me in a great position going forward, but I spent most of the spring and the summer at Creighton getting back to on the court and in the weight room trying to get back to the game, but being outside of actually playing on the court for any amount of time is very hard to get back into the swing of things, but it's kind of been a process with my teammates. They've been very patient with me as well as my coaches, you know, being comfortable again, getting up and down the court naturally again.

It's been tough, but at the end of the day I know I'm here with my team, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. It was a process that I know made me stronger. It helped give me some perspective as well, and ultimately, I'm very thankful to be here more than anything.

Q. Rachel, kind of piggybacking on that, when you saw your name pop up coming to Iowa City, what was that like for you?

RACHEL SAUNDERS: I was very excited at first just to see our name pop up in general. I didn't even notice which region we were in at first, and then I think one of my coaches tapped me on the back and said, "Look where we are," and I just had this feeling of, like, complete joy and also just excitement.

It's obviously great to be back here. I've been in Carver since I was a baby, so it's very natural for me in here. We've also played here as a team in the preseason with our closed scrimmage, so we're excited to be here. We're comfortable here, and we're excited to get a few wins this weekend.

Q. Tatum, if you can think back to your freshman year, I just wonder how different this week has been for you compared to the 18-year-old version?

TATUM REMBAO: Yeah, absolutely. 18-year-old Tatum was so excited and so eager to go to the NCAA tournament, and I would say fifth year senior Tatum is just as excited and just as eager to be here.

It's such a surreal feeling knowing just what our team has gone through in the last five years and then going through the 2020 season with everything getting shut down and us having a really good chance of making the tournament that year, and then finally being able to make it again this year. It's just amazing.

Q. Tatum, your team is very good at not turning the ball over, whereas Colorado has been very good at producing turnovers and steals. What kind of challenge do they present for you as guards, but also just as a team as far as protecting the ball?

TATUM REMBAO: Absolutely. Colorado defends really well, and I think ball security is one of the things that we focus on all week, and we're going to have to continue to focus on going forward. I think using certain people as releases is going to be really important.

Q. For both of you, what is Lauren Jensen, the addition of her, what has that meant to you, and what was her reaction when she saw that she was coming back here?

TATUM REMBAO: Lauren Jensen is a great player, but she's also an mazing person. She's so competitive in practice. She pushes us every single day, and I just think the competitiveness and the encouragement that she brings to practice every day has really pushed our team forward.

RACHEL SAUNDERS: Yeah, I would say having Lauren on the court is one thing, but having her in the locker room and team bus and team hotel is another thing. She brings so much just happiness and joy with her. She loves the game, and she's a great teammate to have on the court. She rarely gets upset or frustrated, so she's just kind of a calming presence for all of us, and her talent is a great addition to our team as well. I would say that she fit in quicker than I've seen anyone come in even as a freshman or a transfer, so she's been great.

Q. How are you guys going to deal with Colorado's height?

RACHEL SAUNDERS: I think that our coaches gave us a great opportunity in the non-conference season to deal with some teams similar to Colorado looking at Arkansas and Arizona State. We've played against that kind of height before, so we're hoping to be able to apply some of those things that we did early on in the season in this game and use our height and our quickness to an advantage on the offensive end to see if we can get some points in transition and make the game go up and down. They play a little bit of a slower game, so we're hoping to be able to control the pace.

TATUM REMBAO: Although they are bigger than us, we have good posts that can stretch out the floor, so I think it will be interesting to see how they decide to guard that and kind of using that to our advantage as well.

Q. It seems like when you are in tournament games, it's a different speed out there just because there's a lot of external nerves that go into it just being on the big stage. Has it felt any different this week in preparation, and have you guys thought about just how you're keeping your minds focused on it just being another game?

TATUM REMBAO: I think the Big East Tournament prepared us well from that. Obviously going from last year where no fans were allowed in the building to this year Mohegan Sun was a great environment to play in, and I think it prepared us for this week.

RACHEL SAUNDERS: I would also say in my opinion I think we've had an incredible week of practice in terms of just positivity. Everyone has seemed to be very calm and excited, but not in an anxious or sped-up way. We had some great help from our practice boys, so we're excited, and it doesn't seem like anyone is kind of antsy or anxious in that way.

Q. For Rachel. You've been there four or is it -- is this the fifth year or --

RACHEL SAUNDERS: Fourth.

Q. But you had a red shirt year, right?

RACHEL SAUNDERS: I played six games last season, so kind of.

Q. Anyway, how would you describe the difference between Rachel Saunders freshman and Rachel Saunders senior?

RACHEL SAUNDERS: I would say that the process that I went through at Creighton has definitely helped me mentally. I think that my mindset is a lot better than I was going in. I still have the same energy and the same kind of hype and yelling that I had even when I was a senior at Iowa City West, but I definitely think that my coaches have helped me kind of channel that into a more calm confidence on the court.

My teammates have helped me grow incredibly, and they've been along with me as I've kind of taken those steps both physically and mentally, so I think that I've gotten to the point where I've been able to kind of take the game more slowly and look at it in a big picture perspective rather than getting so high and so low in different moments.