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

March 18, 2022

Lauren Jensen

Morgan Maly

Jim Flanery

Creighton Bluejays

Media Conference

Creighton - 84, Colorado - 74

THE MODERATOR: We will begin with opening comments from Coach Flanery.

JIM FLANERY: Congratulations to Colorado on a great season and a great opponent. We knew we were going to have to put a full game together, and we did. We couldn't ever get comfortable. Defensively, they do a lot of things that really make you uncomfortable.

So even when we pushed it out to six or eight or whatever, it just felt like they were one turnover. So from getting right back into a much better position.

But we just stayed the course. To get down 11-2 to start the game, the game's not going to be decided in the first five to eight minutes. I had to tell myself that when we got down 11-2. Just credit to our kids and how they fought. Just kind of stayed steady.

It's about the whole team too. These two played really well, but to think about what Molly Mogensen did down the stretch of that game, it's huge. I pulled her out for one defensive mistake right after I put her in, and she shook it off and was incredible down the stretch.

Just really proud of our team. We've come a long way in the last 13, 14 months. To get to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, we're thrilled to have an opportunity again on Sunday.

Q. Morgan and Lauren, the scoring was difficult to come by against their pressure early in the game. What allowed you guys to get downhill and to create opportunities as the half wore on?

LAUREN JENSEN: I feel like we just kind of settled in. Naturally, it's the NCAA Tournament, so we might have had some jitters there to start the game. Once we settled in, started making more reads, and handling their pressure, that was good for us.

MORGAN MALY: I think we just let our emotion work itself out and took advantage of mismatches that were available to us and stuck the course and got the ball to fall eventually.

Q. Morgan, you clapped your hands pretty hard in frustration after you missed a three, I think, in the third quarter and the next one goes in for you. How important was that shot in that particular moment? I think it put you guys up seven or nine.

MORGAN MALY: Yeah, we took advantage of the end of quarter situations. I had a few of those looks, but those plays don't happen unless our point guards go off those ball screens looking to make plays. But having that momentum at the end of the quarter is definitely huge to finish the game.

Q. You guys got within -- or they got within four points a couple of times there in the last couple of minutes. How were you able to sort of withstand their sort of rush toward you? I know you made a ton of free throws, but other than that.

MORGAN MALY: I think we just stuck together. We've been in a lot of tough situations, close games all year. We handled their pressure at the end and took advantage at the free-throw line. That helped us put the game away.

LAUREN JENSEN: Yeah, just kind of going off what Morgan said, we've been in a lot of those situations. I think the majority of our losses have been within less than ten. So we've been in that position before.

We're all a close team. We have good chemistry. Our leaders are great too. They did a good job of calming us down and just getting us set and handling that pressure.

Q. Lauren, what's this one mean to you personally? I know the story lines are kind of cheesy sometimes, but you did play here last year, and it is kind of weird how it comes kind of full circle sometimes.

LAUREN JENSEN: I know, it is crazy. It does come full circle. It was fun being back here and fun playing in Carver-Hawkeye Arena again. Grateful for the opportunity and to do it with this team. It's just a fun environment.

Q. Lauren, I guess you know the team you're likely to play better than anybody. What do you know just off the jump, and what can you impart to your teammates?

LAUREN JENSEN: Obviously, I was on the team last year, and I'm very familiar with them. They're obviously a very good team, Caitlin Clark, Monica Czinano, and honestly all their other starters and their bench. They're a really good team.

We'll have a good game plan, and I think, if we do that and just play our game, you know we'll be good.

Q. I know these stats aren't public, but you were really good in the closed scrimmage in this arena too. Do you like playing in Carver?

MORGAN MALY: I do. That's what Lauren said on the bench at the end of the game. It's like the ball falls here (Laughter). Hopefully that's the case on Sunday.

THE MODERATOR: If you have a question for Coach Flanery, please raise your hand. Start up front left.

Q. Molly, 11 points in the fourth quarter. I imagine like more so than that, just the ability to relieve pressure off of Tatum. How important was she to allowing you guys to be as efficient as you were offensively today against a tough team?

JIM FLANERY: Yeah, she was huge. The fourth quarter was her quarter, particularly down the stretch. Tatum's yelling at me to put Molly in. I told her to play and let me coach, but she was right.

I wanted Molly to watch a little defensively. It more about we didn't get stops at the beginning of that fourth quarter. We were having two issues. We weren't stopping them, and then we were having trouble with their pressure because we just had Tatum on the floor. We didn't have really another ball handler like Molly.

Yeah, she was huge. To hit that three that she hit, they cross-matched. They put a guard on Morgan for quite a bit of the game, particularly in the second half, and then they put a post on either Rachael or Molly. We kept saying, Rachael and Molly, you have to be toed up on the three-point line and aggressive, trying to make a play against their post, which is easier said than done.

We don't ask Rachael to make a lot of plays, and Molly is still in that sophomore mode where she sometimes defers, but I thought to her credit, she really was fantastic at the end. Then they went back and put a guard on her, but she had the kind of confidence to be able to continue to make plays.

When you play against a team that pressures, you've got to use their pressure against them. You've got to back cut them, get a layup. You've got to make strong dribble plays against the pressure, and it felt like that's what we did at times, and particularly that's what we did late.

Q. So obviously you guys were able to keep your composure when you guys were down 11-2. Then also in the second half, when you guys had an eight-point lead and Colorado seemed to be kind of making a comeback and got it down to two, can you just kind of talk about kind of how the team was and how they kept their composure to be able to hang on despite Colorado kind of having a little bit of momentum?

JIM FLANERY: Yeah, I think -- I mean, you're right. We did not get off to a good start in the third quarter or really the fourth quarter. But Morgan's point about the end of quarters was huge. I don't know, that second quarter was huge, the end of third quarter was huge. So we put ourselves in good position to end those quarters, and we came out the next quarter and we didn't.

So I think it went from 8-2. It helps having a fifth year senior point guard. Tatum wasn't perfect today. I'm sure she'll look at two assists and five turnovers and not be all that satisfied with her own play, but just from a consistency standpoint and how much they put on her.

Emma's a really good ball handler. As a big, we used her. She makes good decisions in the full court. I think that's a factor too.

We just had -- we had enough people make plays, and I think that's the beauty of our team is that we're -- two of our three leading scorers today were bench players, but they're not bench -- I don't consider them bench players because Morgan's our third leading scorer on the year, and Molly's on the floor a lot in crunch time, which I'd like to think if you're a player, more important than if you're in the starting lineup, are you in the game in the fourth quarter of a tight game?

I think it's not having to shoulder everything by yourself and just that belief that you don't have to -- that it's not just on me.

Q. You mentioned Tatum not being satisfied with her own individual play, but there was a moment when Colorado was up 9-2, 11-2, where she just turned around on the court and told the other four players to calm down and came to the bench and did the same to everybody sitting down there. How does your team respond to her doing that? Because she does it in practice too. Does everybody kind of trust her to calm things down when it's getting dicey?

JIM FLANERY: I can tell you that they respond to that better than I do because, when she was telling me to put Molly in the game, I kind of snapped back at her, which I love about Tatum. I love that I can coach her hard a little bit, and she's just that competitive.

She's been around long enough to express her opinion and be that voice, not just for the team, but for the staff. Hey, what do you think about this? Yeah, I think there's a tremendous value.

As good as our younger kids are, I mean, having that fifth year voice has been super critical to our success this year.

Q. How important was that little nine-second sequence at the end of the first half? When Emma made the layup, then she got the steal. Did you even see the steal? Were you focused on that, or were your eyes up court or what?

JIM FLANERY: I did see it, yeah. I think it was super important. As I'm walking off the half and thinking that we're up five, and my recollection is we were down 31-27 and went to 36-31. So I think it was 9-0 to end the half. Right? My memory's not always bad.

That was huge. I think you just feel better, and if you look back and think that we were down 11-2, you feel pretty good. You want to feel good, but not too good, right, when you go into halftime. That's kind of my philosophy. If you start feeling too good, that's not good, but if you're a little bit down about the way you end a half or about the way you end a first half, that's not good either.

I think we kind of had the best of both worlds because we weren't perfect but we ended really well.

Q. Did you think they were trying to pull you early? Just trying to say we're tougher and more athletic, and we're going to push you all the way out to half-court with our defense?

JIM FLANERY: They're a really hard working, physical, defensive team. We played Arizona State in mid-December, and we referenced Arizona State a lot to our team coming into this game. I just asked Morgan before we came on, I said, were they as physical or more physical than Arizona State? And she said she thought at the guard spot they were but not necessarily across the board.

But I thought, yeah, they were super physical early, and I thought the officials let both teams play. It wasn't -- there weren't -- for the amount of physicality, I don't think there were all that many whistles. So what we weren't getting, we were able to give at the other end. I think that's what you want. You want consistency, and I think they just allowed both teams to play.

Q. This is your fourth at-large bid in the last ten years, and you've gone to the round of 32 all four times. Do you schedule with the idea in mind that you want to show your team as many different styles as possible so that way, when they get this random draw of a tournament, they're kind of -- they have some kind of familiarity with whatever they might see and the week of prep is an easy refresh?

JIM FLANERY: I don't know if that's why we schedule the way we do, but I do think we schedule hard because we want to be -- we want to put ourselves in positions like the players were talking about. Hey, we've been here before. We've been in tight games. We've been -- and you're right. I think it's more coincidental that you do see different styles in the non-con.

I was saying -- I told our team or maybe our staff that Arkansas scheduled our game, and one of their coaches told me that they scheduled the game because they always play Mizzou twice in the SEC, and he's like we need to beat Mizzou twice. So that's why we're scheduling -- instead of scheduling someone else, they know we're pretty comparable or similar to Mizzou in terms of our style, and I thought that was really interesting.

I know J.R. in her comments talked about we're different than pretty much anybody that they see in the Pac-12. Utah's a little bit of a similarity, but I think that's an advantage that we are different. (Audio interruption.)

That can be a good thing because you get in your league and you have so much similarity for 16, 18, 20 games. You're telling your kids this and this and this, and the older ones already know. Hey, Seton Hall plays -- you know.

Then you get to this, and it's like it's the first time in over 20 games for us that we're playing somebody that it's kind of like, wow, they're a lot different. We have not the kind of reference points, we don't have the kind of reference points that we traditionally have had over the last 2 1/2 months.