NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: SECOND ROUND - NOTRE DAME VS OKLAHOMA

March 21, 2022

Niele Ivey

Olivia Miles

Dara Mabrey

Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Postgame Media Conference

Notre Dame 108, Oklahoma 64

NIELE IVEY: Well, I honestly don't have any words. This is something I prayed about, something I knew could come to life, and I'm so over the moon. I mean, I'm so proud of this team. I'm so proud of our journey. I'm so proud to see where we've come since last season. We worked so hard in the summertime, preseason to get to this point. We've had a lot of highs and a lot of lows this season, and it's just incredible for me to see them blossom, to blossom in front of my eyes.

This is extremely hard. We knew coming in how tough this was going to be, and for us to be a really great team on their home court is amazing. I'm so proud of them and I'm just excited to continue dancing.

Q. Obviously your size inside, they really had to pay attention. How much do you feel like that opened up what you guys were able to do on the perimeter?

OLIVIA MILES: Well, I can go first on this one. I feel like in transition they kind of spread into the paint, so that's how I was finding Dara, finding Sonia and Maddy. I feel like when we pushed in transition and I was able to see the floor, we were able to spread them out. We were hitting shots -- I just kept hitting the hot hand.

DARA MABREY: Yeah, think Maya's presence is just so dominant even when she doesn't have the ball in her hands. You have to start shifting when she catches the ball because she's like unguardable sometimes, so that forces help and then of course we have Olivia as our point guard, so just made shots, makes it easier with the bigs down there.

Q. Dara, when you start a game shooting like that, when you're just on fire, what type of feelings does that bring to you? How are you feeling in that moment? Olivia, what does that do for your team as a whole and for you as a point guard facilitating those kinds of shots?

DARA MABREY: To be honest, when you shoot like that -- I felt like I was unconscious there for -- at one point I wasn't thinking. I just knew when I caught it I was going to let it go and it was going in. As a shooter when you believe in yourself like that, you believe I'm going to make it and it's going in, chances are it's going to go in.

I think like me and Olivia talked about this; that type of confidence spreads really easily, like wildfire. It's positive energy, confidence, and just -- our team is maturing, therefore it's easiest to spread that confidence when you're confident as a leader.

I think that they did exactly that. I hit those shots and then everybody started scoring.

OLIVIA MILES: Yeah, I mean, I literally told Dara an hour or two before the game, I was like -- she came out and hit two threes against UMass and it gave us all confidence, but I told her, you coming out and hitting those two shots just relieved so much pressure for the rest of us and caused me to get in my game by getting a couple of assists or running the floor, and it just gives confidence to everyone. Starting off strong has been something we've been working on, and so, so good to see that it's coming out on the court.

Q. Olivia, what we saw out there is something that Oklahoma has done to teams all season, basically running them out and defeating them in transition and getting buckets. You guys were pretty confident that you could run with them. What did you see that made you confident that you could do it, and how do you feel about the way you guys executed that?

OLIVIA MILES: Well, I could use my last answer. Basically starting off as strong as we did. When we got out in transition one play, the first play of the game, and Dara hits a three, we're like, okay, we can do this every time. Our biggest focal point was getting back in transition, and we got the stops we needed so we were then able to run out and find gaps and space the floor like we were talking about before.

DARA MABREY: Yeah, exactly what she said. We know we want to run, we get our transition buckets every game, but the key thing was to stop them in transition and to find shooters, and which did that, and then we started capitalizing off those stops, which was great.

Q. Dara, you've tied Marina's record for three-pointers tonight in a game with seven in the tournament. Have you heard from her yet already, and is it kind of cool that you tied her?

DARA MABREY: No, she just is always reminding me be confident but you're not better than me, in a sister type of way. I don't know what time it is over there in Australia, but she always wakes up no matter what time it is over there and she watches all my games, her and Jackie. So I'm sure I'll have some messages from her after the game. But Marina, if you hear this, I'm going to break your record at some point.

Q. Dara, speaking of your sister, she tweeted and asked what you had for breakfast this morning because she wants some of that herself, so if you could give us your secret sauce that would be awesome. But on a more serious note, you said on the broadcast after the game that you guys came out dripping in confidence. I just wonder how you go about that as a team bringing that into the game because it really looked like from the start in the past two games that you guys were just playing on another level mentally.

DARA MABREY: Yeah, that comes from our coaches and then it comes from each other. Not only do we have that chemistry within the players, but it starts with the coaching staff. They instill the most confidence in us. It's hard playing at this level and it's a battle out there but when you have teammates that believe in you sometimes you're going to be unstoppable. At the end of the day it's bigger than the ball going in the hoop.

Q. I wanted to ask about your confidence level and how you followed that line between confidence and overconfidence and how respect plays into that. It seems like you're a very respectful group and you appreciate your opponents. Can you speak on that and how you kind of speak on that as a team?

OLIVIA MILES: First off, thank you. And second off, I feel like there were times we were taking too many shots because we were so overly confident, which isn't a bad thing, but like Dara said, our coaches do a really good job of just bringing us back together, reining us in, not telling us not to be confident but just telling us that we need to stick to the game plan and just work within what they give us because that gives us the most confidence to score easy buckets or just to get us back on track.

I wouldn't say we had overconfidence, I'd just say we were so confident in ourselves that we take shots we know we can make, but sometimes there are moments where we do rein it back in, and I think that's important with every team.

Q. Olivia, you guys were going against the third best scoring team in the country, and although you scored 108 yourself it seemed like early on you had a really good game plan to take some things away from them. Can you speak to that game plan and how it was executed?

OLIVIA MILES: Yeah, I think we executed perfectly except for what I just said. Sometimes we were a little bit too confident shooting a bunch of threes, but once we reined it back in and we got our looks, we were playing with so much confidence and so much pace, and that was another main focal point, just pushing, pushing, pushing the ball because we know that no one in the country can run with us, and once we do that we're unstoppable.

Q. Coach, similar to what I asked your players about, your length, I'm sure you looked at them, you looked (inaudible).

NIELE IVEY: We really attacked in the beginning. We locked in defensively. They stuck to the game plan. It was a really great game plan by Coquese Washington. She prepared us.

Yeah, I was just really impressed by the way we started. I knew going into the game that we had a size advantage. We played against DePaul this season that was very similar to Oklahoma, so we knew what worked then, so I think that really helped us prepared.

They played four guards, so I kind of adjusted my lineup to that, and yeah, we've been working on trying to set the tone, and we did that this past weekend. I'm really happy with the growth of that.

Q. I wanted to ask you, you've been through this, you've seen Jennie Baranczyk in her first year as a head coach and how she was able to build her culture, develop the team, turn things around. Your thoughts on the job she's done and how much did you see a little bit of what she did in what you did at Notre Dame?

NIELE IVEY: Yeah, she's a phenomenal coach. I think it was an incredible hire. She was all about culture at Drake, and I just think that she carried that over. She's got a great offense. Her team plays with fire and passion. You can see that. I saw that a lot, see it in person. Yeah, she's taking over after a storied legend here, and I just think she's done a phenomenal job, and she's going to continue. She's a star, so she's going to continue to help this program and continue to keep this program rising.

Q. Obviously Purdue won yesterday. You got your win tonight. What does it mean to you to be at this point as a coach and as a mom?

NIELE IVEY: It's so special. But I was so excited last night. First of all, my stress is as a mom. Today I was relaxed. Last night I was stressed. I was just so happy that he's living out his dreams, I'm living out my dreams, and to watch him help his team get to the Sweet 16 was just so special for me. It was hard not being there, but he knows that I have a job to do, as well. I had a FaceTime with him earlier just before the game, so we're there for each other in spirit.

But yeah, it's just a special bond. It's a special, unique situation. We're both living out our dreams. I'm super blessed. I feel blessed to be in this position, and I just feel that God has his favor on both Jaden and I.

Q. You guys pulled off two big wins in the first round and the second round, and you punch your ticket to the Sweet 16. How are you looking to prepare? The fight is far from over.

NIELE IVEY: Absolutely. We're going to embrace this and celebrate this at least the next 24, 48 hours, but we're going to rest up, get back tonight, and then -- I didn't see who won, I didn't get a chance to see any scores, but then I'm going to divide the scout amongst the coaches, get back to work on Wednesday with film, a lot of recovery, again, because we have some -- shorter roster, so got banged up a little bit this past weekend. But rest is huge for us. My performance team has done a great job of keeping us prepared and ready all season with a shorter roster.

Again, we're going to enjoy this. We're going to celebrate it and then focus on the next one, focus on the next 40 minutes one half at a time, 40 minutes at a time.

But really for us, this is my first time as head coach, it's this group's first time together, so I'm going to allow them to -- we have to really celebrate the victories, the small victories, embrace where we are and stay present but also get locked in to prepare.

Q. You talked yesterday about how difficult this Oklahoma offense is to defend because of the amount of movement, the amount of reads. Obviously you guys devised a good game plan, but executing it is a completely another thing. Can you talk about your team's ability to switch on the ball and things of that nature and how they went out there and executed that game plan that you guys devised?

NIELE IVEY: Yeah, for sure. I really focused on transition defense because they're No. 1 in pace, and then focused on really knowing where their shooters were and then really locking in, defending the three-point line. They averaged nine threes a game, so that was the game plan.

I kind of talked to them about playing Oklahoma on their home court, our defensive energy has to shift. We've got to take it to another level. We're normally a 2-3 zone team, but tonight we played all man-to-man. We had to adjust to our opponent, and I thought that they rose to that challenge, because I told them, it's going to be challenging. This is a high-octane offense type team. They play well, they move, they know each other really well. So the fact that they responded and came out with a really great defensive intensity that we kind of spoke on, I'm super proud. That's a lot of growth for this group.

We've gotten a lot better in the last couple weeks, but they understand, this desperation, you have to bring the defensive intensity to be able to advance in this tournament, and they did, so I'm proud of them for that.

Q. Of course one of your assistants, Coquese Washington, was at OU before she came to you and she got to coach a lot of those players that you got to go up against tonight like Madi and Taylor and everyone else. What does she tell you about those players like Madi and Taylor and what did she tell you about OU in general coming into this game?

NIELE IVEY: Yeah, I think she did a phenomenal job of preparing us. She just spoke so highly of both of them. That's all we talked about, high-character young women off the court and they're ballers on the court. She's like, they're ballers. Coquese always -- she really gave us the tendencies of who they are as people and who they are as players, and she just talked about how much they've improved and how they work really well off of each other.

It's a different system. So it's a different system than Coach Cole ran, but she still, she talked about what they're capable of doing as far as taking over games.

So yeah, it was really helpful to have her, and Coquese has a lot of wisdom. She's my position coach. She's been a head coach. So I'm blessed and fortunate that I had the opportunity to bring her back home to Notre Dame, but yeah, she spoke really highly of both of them.

Q. You mentioned at the last game's press conference kind of the difficulty you'd face playing Oklahoma in Oklahoma's environment, and you got the best start you could have asked for, coming out of the gates, shooting hot from three, establishing it down low. What did you tell the team before the game that they were able to come in, block out the crowd and get off and play their game from the start?

NIELE IVEY: Yeah, well, I just really -- I talked with a lot of passion and energy before the game as far as just keeping them locked in, focused, tried to build up confidence in the group with my -- just talking to them, preparing, film.

Yeah, we had a lot of energy coming in, the entire program. Everybody that's here, we were really excited and I felt like being on somebody's home court you have to bring the energy yourself because I didn't know how the crowd was going to be. I knew that it was super electric in here from watching the IUPUI-Oklahoma matchup on Saturday, so we just talked about we've got to bring the energy. It's just us, it's us against the world, and I thought that really helped, I guess, just with our group being locked in and really bringing the energy.

That's really how we started, and then again, Dara really got us going from the beginning as far as her three-point shooting. We got the stops and got out and ran, and then when we went up big numbers, I feel like we just continued to push.

Q. At the beginning here you said that you're kind of speechless and a loss of words for how well your team played, but I'm going to ask you for some words here. What is it like when your team -- you're talking about transition, you're talking about locking down defensively. What's it like when you see all of those things come to fruition as well as they did, and have you ever felt that, especially as a head coach have you felt it like you did tonight?

NIELE IVEY: No, I have not. This is something you wish for, you pray for. We haven't had a game yet where we were really good on both sides of the ball. Like the entire game as far as running and our offense was exactly how I envisioned it as far as our pace, and we shot the ball well. We did a great job of shot selection, going inside out. We established inside game, we ran, and then defensively our level raised -- we raised our level against a really great offensive team.

That was my first time also as head coach seeing so much balance on both sides of the ball. Anaya Peoples did an incredible job, so did Abby Prohaska. They didn't have double-digit scoring, but they did a lot of things defensively that really helped us. Just having an overall great team effort, I thought everybody played well, and I feel like that was our first time to have that in 40 minutes. We've had great halves, great quarters, but we dominated for four quarters, and that was the first time we've done that this season. That was awesome, awesome to be a part of, and I'm super proud of the maturation process of this team.