NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - FAIRFIELD VS TEXAS

March 18, 2022

Joe Frager

Rachel Hakes

Lou Lopez-Senechal

Fairfield Stags

Media Conference

Texas 70, Fairfield 52

JOE FRAGER: Thank you very much. Obviously, congratulations to Texas, Coach Schaefer and his staff. They've got a heck of a team. We knew that they would get after things defensively, and that's exactly what they did tonight.

I just think they just kind of wore us down a little bit there in the fourth quarter. I hope they have a great tournament. Everyone here at Texas has treated us just so well at the university and everyone associated with this. It's been a great experience for us.

I'm just so proud of these two that are sitting here to my right and our entire program. Zero quit in these women, and I think that they really represented the university as they have all season long and just did a fabulous job.

We knew at halftime we weren't going to go away. That's not in the DNA of this team. We knew we were going to fight back. I think we got it down to 10 there late in the third. We thought we could make a dent early there in the fourth quarter, but I believe their size just sort of started to wear on us inside.

Just so proud of these women and the season that they put together.

Q. Rachel and Lou, can you describe what your emotions are right now and what they were in the locker room immediately following?

RACHEL HAKES: Yeah, it was definitely a little bit of a raw moment. You never want something so good to come to an end. We shared a lot of words as a team, just how proud we are of the season that we've had.

I got a little emotional when I fouled out. That was a tough moment just coming off the court knowing that this was the last time with the staff that we have here. Who knows what the future holds.

Yeah, it was an emotional moment.

LOU LOPEZ-SENECHAL: Definitely emotional. I'm always an emotional person no matter what, but definitely more emotional after this game. It's obviously sad to lose, but I think it was reflecting of the whole season. We were able to be very proud of ourselves, and that's what I told the team after we went to the locker.

It's also just a mix of being sad that it's over, but also being happy that it happened and that we were able to come here in the March Madness tournament.

Q. Lou, what exactly happened to you in the first quarter? And have you decided or thought about whether you're going to come back for another season?

LOU LOPEZ-SENECHAL: So I think I got elbowed when I tried to help at the end of the first quarter. I forgot who it was. I'm not very sure. But I think it was an elbow on my lip. But just got a few stitches and was able to come back.

I was all good.

About next year, I think it's very soon to have an answer. I'm not 100 percent sure. I think I have a lot of options and pros and cons to think about. But I will for sure make a decision in the next few weeks.

Q. Rachel, you had to sit the whole second quarter. What effect did that have on the game? And did you feel like you shook them when you got them to 10 late in the third quarter?

RACHEL HAKES: Yeah, for sure. Obviously, I'm always looking for Lou when she's on the floor. We played with a little bit of a different lineup. When she's off the floor, then I move to an off guard.

I had gone up to Coach and just said, I want the ball in my hands, so he was putting us in some positions where I was getting to pass the ball as an off guard still.

Obviously, we miss her presence whenever she's off the floor. We definitely fought. They were just killing us on the boards in the second quarter.

And then when we cut the lead in the third quarter, I mean, we're fighters. We knew we were going to come out in the second half. And we were just talking about it in the hallway. We ran a play for Lou and we were trying to get her into her mid-range jumper, but she was open for the three, and she just nailed it coming out of halftime.

I think that gave us a lot of momentum. We were executing really well coming out in the third quarter. We just weren't getting all the stops that we needed to.

But we were really happy to cut it to 10, and if a few other things could have gone our way, maybe we could have cut it even further.

Q. Do you think Texas got nervous?

RACHEL HAKES: I mean, if I were them I would have been a little nervous. But I mean, they're a seasoned team. I think they respected us. They knew that we would come on a run at some point.

I mean, Coach Schaefer had a lot of kind words to say to both Lou and I in the hallway. And after the game he was talking to us.

But I think they're a very confident team in what they're doing, and we have a lot of respect for what they did on the floor. We just knew that we were going to come and compete until the final whistle.

Q. Your level of play was elite. Can you share how was it to be guarded by Rori Harmon and play against her? Was it hard? Fun? Competitive?

RACHEL HAKES: I think we had a pretty good battle going there for a little while. She's an outstanding player, just like great on the ball defender. She's been recognized in the Big 12 for doing just that, being All-Defensive Team and Freshman of the Year, if I'm not mistaken.

I was just excited for the opportunity to go out there and compete tonight, and we really went tail to tail all the way down the court. I was trying to be the best point guard I could for my team and she was doing the same.

I think we lost it a little bit there at the end. I lost it there a little bit at the end just trying to make some things happen. I turned it over a few more times than I would have liked.

But I think I did a really good job just really going toe to toe with one of the nation's best defenders.

Q. Coach, the last game. How do you feel about it, and did it feel unfair that you had to go through a whole quarter without your best player like that?

JOE FRAGER: That's actually the second time that's happened to us this year where she got injured in a game and went down. One of our Niagara games earlier this season she took a shot to the head.

Yeah, it's not fun. She's definitely a security blanket, if you will, for me during the game. I know if I call her number, we've got a really good chance of scoring or getting a really good look at the basket.

As far as this being the last game, I still haven't really processed that yet, to be totally honest. This was just a great experience coaching these women and a season to remember.

To get a chance to be here in Austin and play against Texas on their home floor with a great crowd, it's just something I think that we thought was fitting for us.

I told them before the game, you earned this. You belong here. Go out and show what you're about. Go out and compete as hard as you possibly can, and that's exactly what they did.

Q. We had talked to you about Lauren Ebo and Rori Harmon yesterday, but I'm wondering what you thought of Aaliyah Moore and what she gave them off the bench, obviously 18 and 10, but overall your thoughts on her performance.

JOE FRAGER: I thought she was outstanding. When I say I think we sort of wore down a little bit there towards the end, she was a big part of that. 10 for 10 at the foul line and just did a great job on the boards for them.

Yeah, she really, really stepped up.

They're a tough team. They're a tough team at a lot of different positions. I thought Rori was outstanding on the ball. I also thought that Aaliyah did a great job on the ball, too, as an on-ball defender for them, too.

Yeah, I thought Moore was outstanding and I really thought, like I said, when we cut it to 10, we thought we could make a dent, but I think our guys wore down a little bit, and I think their size was really telling toward the end of the game.

Q. Joe, when you say cut it to 10, I think there were like seven minutes left, and then Matharu was wide open for that three. Was that because you're so concerned about their size in the lane?

JOE FRAGER: Yeah, that definitely contributed to it. I know from our perspective it was a blown slide in our zone.

But I understand why we were a little bit late getting out there because they were doing a nice job getting the ball in the high post. They were trying to go high-low on us quite a bit.

And I think Lou Lopez dropped down to protect against that, and she was a little bit slow coming out, and she even acknowledged it right away. That was one of our keys in the zone, that we had to know where No. 2 was all the time, and that was a huge basket. That pushed that back up to 13 at that point.

Q. The zone, do you think it gave them many problems today, because they just never really seemed in that offensive rhythm? And I was curious how you played them, did it match the scouting report you had on them before you got here?

JOE FRAGER: Well, I think in stretches of the game we followed our scout really, really well. You can't guard everything, so we had to go in there with the mentality that we'd give up a few things, and one of the things we were willing to give up was the outside shot.

We were really worried about the ball screen and then getting that pull-up 12- to 15-foot shot, which several of them shoot extremely well. So that's something we worked really hard in trying to negate, and any time they tried to post-up on the block, we wanted to show three defenders all the time, all the time.

So you've got to give something up, and I think for long stretches of the game we did what we wanted to do. I know that Laura (Scinto) sent out the scout for this game, our associate head coach, and she did a great job breaking them down. David Jollon works with our zone defense, so all credit to both of them.

They're tough. It would have been difficult for us to go out and play our five, our man-to-man, for an extended period of time. I didn't think we had the depth to be able to do that against that basketball team.

Q. For the teams that are going to be facing Texas in this tournament, what would be your advice to those teams who are playing Texas or defending against them?

JOE FRAGER: Well, you'd better have two or three different plans to advance the basketball. A, to get the ball in, right? You can't do the same thing every single time when they pick you up full court.

So you have to have two or three different things in your bag of tricks to get the ball in.

And you probably are going to want to share the responsibility of advancing the basketball because with us -- if you've got two or three ball handlers, I think you need to share that responsibility because if you allow Rori Harmon to be on the ball for 30, 40 minutes a game, that's a problem.

I think you've also got to really make sure you do a great job blocking out. You really have to.

I think teams with size can kind of hang with those guys inside. But when they're clicking on all cylinders, I think they're a heck of a team, and you can see why they've won so many games in a row.

Really curious to see the Utah game. I think that's going to be a really competitive game. If Utah comes out and shoots the ball as well as they did -- Utah has got to shoot the ball as well as they did today and they've got to take care of it.

That's the thing. We turned it over 22 times tonight and that's a lot more than we normally do. We're a very low turnover team.

I would attribute maybe four or five of those to just fatigue down the stretch a little bit, but a lot of that is just Texas playing really solid defense.