NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - BELMONT VS OREGON

March 19, 2022

Bart Brooks

Conley Chinn

Tuti Jones

Belmont Bruins

Postgame Media Conference

Belmont 73, Oregon 70 (2OT)

BART BROOKS: First, unbelievable respect and admiration for the Oregon program. Coach Graves is a class act. He gave my two boys Oregon hats before the game because he saw them in the hallway and he's just a really good guy in the profession, a heck of a coach and they've got a heck of a team. That was a really good team we just beat.

Really a lot of respect for those Oregon kids. The two ladies sitting next to me and everyone in our locker room, I don't think I could be more proud of a group than I am. They had every opportunity to fold, and when it got really hot, a lot, and they just always had an answer. They always fought. They found a way. They made a play.

That's our team. That's what we've been. That's who we are. It was really cool to be in that atmosphere. Great performance. I'm not sure really what happened for a lot of it. It's a blur right now. But really proud of this group.

Q. Conley, you've been here before; when you guys were getting down, what do you think past experience, what part about that play in you guys coming back?

CONLEY CHINN: Well, I remember in our first quarter against Gonzaga last year, we were down by quite a bit, and it looked like it could go in a pretty bad direction, but we turned it around, and we came together. We turned it around.

Honestly, I couldn't even tell that we were down by whatever we were down by because just the fight in this team, like they're never going to give up, and I'm just so proud of them.

The girls that came in off the bench and played those minutes in the second quarter to get us back where we needed to be, I'm so proud of them, and just their hard work. This team loves each other, and we want to do better than we did last year. The tougher team won today, like Coach Bart says, and we really take that to heart being the toughest team that we can be.

Q. Conley, as a senior you have another game playing on a prestigious court like the Summitt against Tennessee. What are your emotions like right now?

CONLEY CHINN: I'm really emotional. Like I just said, I'm so proud of this team. My senior year, I couldn't ask for a better one. It's been a privilege and an honor to be a Belmont Bruin with some really special girls.

But just like Coach Bart said in the locker room right there when we were all cheering, he was like, we didn't come here just to win a game, we came here to win more.

I have all the confidence in the world in our team and that second-round game, we remember what it felt like last year, and just being excited to be in the tournament, and we're not anymore. We want to win. I'm really excited for what we can do in the next game.

Q. Conley, walk me through in overtime, I'm assuming you didn't call a bank. What did you see on that shot, and frankly did you shoot it too hard and it happened to go in or were you actually trying for a bank shot there?

CONLEY CHINN: I was trying for a bank shot. (Laughter.) No. I was just -- first of all, really excited to be out there. The emotions were high and just adrenaline was pumping. We knew we just needed a shot.

I don't know, I just let it fly, I guess, and the Lord is so good, he let it bank in.

I'm sure my teammates would have gotten the rebound and a kick-out for a three from Tuti Jones or Jamilyn Kinney. I'm more than confident it was going to happen if I had made it or not.

Q. Tuti, you hit a last-second jumper at the buzzer in the first overtime period, I believe, and you looked like you were feeling yourself, but what was it like to have your shots and everyone's shots hitting right when you needed them to down the stretch?

TUTI JONES: It felt pretty good. I think we try to tell each other that even though sometimes our shots aren't falling that the next one is going in. Just to see the ball going through the net, it was just so exciting. It had our adrenaline rushing a lot, so it was nice to see the ball go in, any way, bank or not, we'll take it.

Q. It looked like going into the fourth that maybe they were going to pull away and it looked like that again in the overtime. The extra push that you guys got, fourth quarter, first overtime, second overtime, where did that push come from? Where was that?

TUTI JONES: I think we were just feeding off each other's energy. Like Conley said, it's just fight, and we know that if we can't do anything, one thing we can control is our fight. We just kept doing that, we kept playing together, feeding off each other.

Q. Just take me into the huddle at the end of regulation but also between regulation and overtime because that three in the corner when you guys could have fouled when I understand it was a back screen on the play in order to get Paopao open and you're trying to get to Sabally, that can be a momentum killer. That is supposed to in their mind deflate you. That is supposed to knock you out and they are supposed to take care of you in overtime. What were you thinking? What were you saying to each other at the end of regulation and between regulation and the first overtime?

CONLEY CHINN: This is what we came here for. This is the game we want. Yes, that shot, I remember being underneath the basket and just seeing it go through the net and being like, oh, darnit.

Like Tuti just said, we feed off each other's energy, and we're never going to let a teammate get down or not expect the best out of every single person on this team and what's going to be the end result of the game. I mean, we were just kind of head forward, let's beat them this overtime.

TUTI JONES: Yeah, I can definitely say it hurt a little bit seeing that go through the net, but more basketball to play, and I think we did that.

Q. Bart said yesterday when you guys won last year it was surreal to look up to empty stands and not have you guys be able to celebrate with your family and friends. This year you're just three hours down the road. There's a lot of Belmont fans here and you looked like you were really enjoying that. What was it like to have them here?

CONLEY CHINN: Incredible. I think we go to the best university in the nation with the best students in the nation and faculty and just everyone around us. That feeling of being able to go over to our parents and our loved ones and point to them, like after we just won, and just the love we can feel in the atmosphere at Belmont is just incredible, and I am unbelievably blessed and so proud to be a Belmont Bruin and call it my home.

TUTI JONES: Yeah, last year was pretty crazy winning the game, being so happy and so excited and looking at my parents from like 100 feet away and just having to wave.

I can't wait to go out there and hug them because they made a nice little drive to come to see me, so I can't wait. It's going to be so nice.

Q. You can't rank NCAA Tournament wins. They're kind of like children I'm guessing, but that comparison, no fans, and being able to immediately share this moment with your loved ones, does being in a place where Tennessee basketball history is pretty well known around here, does that make this one a little more special, or it's just the next one?

CONLEY CHINN: Ooh, it's so hard to rank them because last year we made history. It was the first time it had been done in our program. But I mean, just today, you kind of can't get it better than that. That was pretty sweet.

I can't rank them. I think they both have amazing things about them, of course.

TUTI JONES: Yeah, I'm going to have to agree. Like I said, it is nicer to have fans and everybody here, but both of them were huge moments, so I'm not going to rank them either.

Q. Just curious, you all are the sixth double-digit seed to advance to the second round. In the men's tournament when Butler and Gonzaga were doing this about 10, 15 years ago, the fact that they did it on a year-to-year basis really helped in terms of parity and making the tournament special. I'm wondering what you think about the fact that this is the second year in a row for you, that there are so many double-digit seeds advancing. How big is that for the growth of the tournament and the growth of the game?

CONLEY CHINN: Incredible. Like we say in our half-court shots at shootaround is when someone makes it, it's contagious. I think whenever a 12 seed sees that other 12 seeds are doing it, it lights some hope up.

I think definitely just knowing that it can be done, and it's just pure heart and just guts to get out there and play against some of the best teams in the nation, and I mean, I know a lot of women, young women that are willing to do that.

I'm really excited to see what the future of women's basketball is, men's basketball, and just seeing how young women can compete together. It's really great to see, honestly.

TUTI JONES: Yeah, I have to say that I think it's all about just competing until the end no matter what your seed or what's supposed to happen. Like we said earlier, the tougher team is going to win, so I think everybody no matter what seed you are should go out there and fight and see what happens in the end.

Q. Obviously giving up 31 points to the other team's player Sabally is not ideal, but how did you navigate through that as a coach? They had a clear size advantage but it didn't seem like they had the heart advantage.

BART BROOKS: Well, I'm not sure I navigated it very well. 31 is a big number, and that kid is -- Sabally is really, really good. She's a load. We tried to throw different people at her. We tried to double her, and she split doubles. She's smart. She's crafty. She's so physical. She's a great finisher. We got her to shoot a jump shot at one point and I was thrilled that she shot a jump shot.

But she's really good, and I thought our players did a good job of just competing with her and working to stay clean. Looking at this thing they shot 14 free throws in 50 minutes of basketball. I thought we did a pretty good job of staying clean and making her make some tough ones, and she did, to her credit.

But yeah, they were big, and we knew that going in, and they were big when we saw them in person. But yeah, I think just the toughness of this group, we're not going to back down from anyone. We're not scared of size. It's not a height contest, it's a basketball game, and we feel pretty good about playing basketball against anyone.

Q. As I was asking your players, can you speak to just your team's resilience is thrown around a lot, it becomes cliche, mettle is thrown around a lot, but when your best player goes down there with 15 seconds to go in regulation and they hit a three the way they do, and they save themselves in overtime with season-saving blocks in the first, these are all things that a top seed is supposed to do and then pull away from you and put you to bed. How did your team keep responding to each one of these things?

BART BROOKS: Yeah, I mean, you're right, that three, we had two fouls to give and we intended to use them, but I think the ball maybe just got inside quicker than we wanted, and once it got in there we didn't want to foul a shooter at that point and give them -- I didn't feel good about us getting a free throw rebound with their size.

I thought our kids did an incredible job of the draining emotion of that moment, that three going in, of snapping out -- we didn't snap out of it exactly, we gave up a lay-up on the jump ball so we were probably still a little bit of a hangover from that moment, but I think we were down six at some point in that overtime and Tuti Jones makes some big plays and we get some stops and see a shot go in. I think this group has been in those moments. We've been in those situations in our non-conference season a lot that we were in those moments, and we didn't execute. We didn't have maybe the toughness that we needed to finish the game.

I think that's the growth of this group throughout the season, why I was so excited to play in this tournament is because I felt like our team, we're so much better now than we were then. For a mid-major program, I think everyone says you have to schedule really good if you want to get a good seed, you have to schedule really good. Well, it's really hard to be really good in November and December. It's really hard to have your team playing really well at that time.

As teams go through the ebbs and flows of a year, we get to the end of the year and we're playing our best basketball, and this is where I think we can have a chance to play and compete with some of the best teams in the country, and I think we proved that tonight.

Q. Back-to-back NCAA tournaments with wins in the tournament. Conley said they don't just want to make the tournament, they want to win. What separates your team from maybe years past?

BART BROOKS: You know, I'm not sure. I think we've got a really good mix of inside-outside balance. You didn't see a lot of inside today. They smothered our inside pretty well today. We were going to have to get our easy baskets in other ways today, and there weren't a lot of easy baskets to be had tonight.

But I think this group, there is a chip on everyone's shoulder that I think probably everyone in that locker room feels like they were underrecruited or that they could have played at a higher level, and we believe that, too, and I think in our recruiting when I got here, one of the things that we really tried hard to do was recruit players who we believed wanted to compete at that level and had that competitiveness and that drive but believed in us enough that we could take them to that level.

I think we've proven that we can do that, and these players are thriving with how we play. I think the synergy and connectedness of this group is special and I think you see that when things go well a lot, but I think we got to the next play very quickly, and I think that's the sign of a mature team.

We're young, but we've played a lot of basketball together.

I just can't give these kids enough credit for just the continued effort they put in. I mean, it is really hard to get one stop against that team. They're really, really good offensively, and I just thought the efforts, the multiple efforts that our kids made over and over today, that was the difference in the game.

Q. Bart, not only did you guys get an upset, someone asked earlier about the amount of upsets we've seen in this tournament, even some 14 seeds have chipped off almost a couple of 3 seeds. You mentioned the chip on your players' shoulders from being underrecruited. Do you think we're kind of entering the era now of more parity within the sport and just a more deep pool of talented players that a program like yours can get players that probably could be at a Power Five level?

BART BROOKS: I hope so. I sure hope so. I think the exposure, I think the fact that this game was on national television and everyone could watch it, not just a regional market, I think that was huge, that little girls who have never heard of Belmont maybe say, hey, that's pretty cool little basketball team they have, maybe I'll look into that school. I think that's just good for the game, to have that exposure.

I'm hoping that -- I think the parity -- there's a lot of mid-major teams that are good enough to compete with the big guys. There are. And doing it on a neutral floor I think was a really big deal for us, that we weren't -- if we were in Oregon's gym today, I'm not sure it would have turned out the way it did. But being on a neutral floor, that's a big deal.

Q. I wanted to follow up on that. What do you attribute the rise in parity or the gap closing because we've really seen that the last couple years kind of accelerating. Second, do you want to see the first and second round go away from homesites and go to neutral courts?

BART BROOKS: Yeah, I mean, first question, I think there's good youth basketball around the country, and I think basketball is a lot more visible now than it was 10, 15 years ago on the women's side, and I think there's a lot of little girls that grow up seeing WNBA on TV, they see the NCAA Tournament, that you can watch a lot of games now, and I think that exposure has helped grow our game holistically, and the more good players you have the more chance you have to get a good player if you're recruiting at all levels.

I think there's a lot more good players in the game than maybe there's been 10, 15, 20 years ago, and I think that's helped with the parity.

The home court stuff, I think the most fair way to run a tournament is to have neutral sites, and I think that's -- obviously being a team that's never been -- 12 seed has been the best we've ever gotten, being a coach who's played in a lot of these tournaments as an assistant coach at DePaul and then now at Belmont, I think this is my fourth NCAA Tournament, we've had two neutral floors and we won two of those games.

That's a big deal. That's a big deal.

I don't know, I think there's a lot of growth that still has to happen with the women's game. I think it's moving in a really good direction. But I'll tell you what, I'm excited to play Tennessee at Tennessee. It's going to be great.

I hope this place is packed. It's going to be a great atmosphere, and it's going to be great for our players to have that opportunity, as well.