NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: REGIONAL SEMIFINAL - CREIGHTON VS IOWA STATE

March 24, 2022

Bill Fennelly

Greensboro Coliseum

Iowa State Cyclones

Sweet 16 Media Conference

BILL FENNELLY: Thank you. It is a tremendous honor for Iowa State to be here. We want to thank everyone in Greensboro. It's been phenomenal, and our kids have looked forward to this for a long time after last year's disappointment coming up two points short to get to this level.

So for us and our men to both be playing in the Sweet 16 is a tremendous thing, and we just can't be more excited about the opportunity, and I just really thank our team for getting me here. That's the best part of it.

Q. How did you guys get to be as successful as a tree-point shooting team as you are? Some of it is obviously natural skill, the players, and they work hard, but obviously, you have to also do a good job getting the right shots to have the percentages you do.

BILL FENNELLY: No, it is a big part of the way we've always played. We work very hard on game shots, game speed kind of thing. We work on it every single day, every single player.

A lot of it is the spacing that we work on, our ability to rotate when the ball rotates. Obviously, when you have a player of Ashley Joens' caliber you see a lot of double teams, which opens up the court. It's something we recruit to and we build daily.

My staff spends a lot of time in our individual work with our kids, and they like doing it.

Q. Obviously, throughout the season the key has kind of been having Ashley, Lex, and Emily, but it seems like at times kind of the difference-maker has been maybe a fourth person emerging. How important is that going to be Friday night?

BILL FENNELLY: I think any time you get to this level or any kind of one-game scenario, where it's win or go home kind of thing, there's always going to be someone that does something that maybe they don't do or are not capable of doing every single game, but they do it -- hit one shot, hit a free-throw, make a big play.

Those are the stories that make this tournament so special. Obviously, you have certain people that are the core of what you do and how you do it, and they're the ones that are going to sit up here in a minute and get the attention.

But there's always got to be someone that makes a play or two, and it's happened for us -- it's certainly happened for us in the Arlington game, it happened in the Georgia game, and hopefully it will happen against Creighton.

Q. I have two questions if that's okay. She wanted to know how you addressed the NIL situation coming into this year and how you've helped your players navigate it, if that's been at all a focus for you?

BILL FENNELLY: The NIL thing, we had a lot of meetings early. Jamie Pollard, our athletic director, made a great presentation to each individual team. We've talked to our kids about it. It's not something that we're overwhelmed with. We're in a smaller market probably.

But we have a couple kids that have gotten some benefits from it, some T-shirts, things like that. We probably have not spent as much time as maybe others, but we've talked to our team about it. We've given them an outline. We've tried to be smart about don't just get all excited and think you're going to get rich and say yes to everything.

Evaluate what are the strengths of each individual opportunity, and then I think because it's still new, we're still working through it, but our kids -- some of our kids have benefited from it, yes.

Q. Then my second question is about the court. Creighton plays this kind of not necessarily five-out, but they do play like five guards. You've seen that a little bit with Oklahoma. Just wondering what was the scouting process for this game? Did you go back to any Oklahoma tape at all?

BILL FENNELLY: It's similar to Oklahoma. You're right. I think we went more back to when we played UNI, Drake, South Dakota State. It's not a style we see a lot in the Big 12 because our league has some really good post players, so you really have to try and find the right match-up.

The other thing you have to do is you can't really overthink it. Everyone is going to talk about Creighton is going to make all these threes. I'm more worried about how many layups they're going to make, how many foul shots they're going to make. They're going to make some threes. Hopefully we make some too, but it is a difficult thing.

And the one thing I would say, too, is it's a very hard thing to simulate with a scout team. They don't run set plays that you can practice, so we have a phenomenal group of scout team guys, and they did a great job for two days. I don't think they did as great a job as Creighton, but at least they gave us a pretty good look.

Q. You talked about the game after -- on Sunday that this is something you wanted more maybe in your entire professional career. Now that it's here, it's kind of set in, what's the mood been like? How is the team, and kind of coming into this, is there nerves or is it more excitement?

BILL FENNELLY: It's so exciting. I think I've thanked them 50 times for getting me here. This is like the coolest thing ever. I mean, I just -- I'm going to point my career where -- you're not going to do this many more times, if ever, and I just told them they have to enjoy this. This is -- everything about it.

You get a police escort. How cool is that? Everything. The hotel, and you walk into this facility, it's just everything about it is great. And what I have told our kids is when we met, we had a little walk-through, we had study table this morning and had a little walk-through. We're going to practice, and then we're going to relax and enjoy it and watch the men's games and have a nice dinner and celebrate the work that goes into it.

Because if you don't do that, then why are we doing this? Sometimes you get so crazy about every little detail. You've got to enjoy it, and Friday night we'll let it rip and see what happens.

Q. When you have Ny banged up and Beatriz as well, how much does it help you in some spot talking about the next 40 minutes to not face off with a big physical post player?

BILL FENNELLY: I don't know if it makes that much difference. I think Friday night we'll be okay. I mean, Ny will be fine. She's playing with a mask. She does have a broken nose, but she's playing with a mask, and she's handled it pretty well.

Bea has not done anything yet. We're going to see how she does today. I'm assuming she'll be available. As soon as I know for sure, I'll tell you right after practice, but we're good to go. Everyone is in the same boat. They have eight months to rest, so we're all going to show up and play on Friday night.

Q. When it kind of comes to that X factor, that fourth person kind of emerging, who have you kind of seen maybe in the days leading up to this that are possible candidates for that?

BILL FENNELLY: I think right off the bat, Ny would be your first thought, but I think this is a game where Aubrey and Maggie could impact it a little bit to space the floor.

We'll probably have to play small from time to time, but the way Ny has been playing -- and to her credit, she broke her nose late in the third quarter. We didn't put her back in obviously, but she's handled it really well in practice.

So I think she's excited to play, and she played against Creighton when she was at Butler, so I think she's a little -- she probably has a little more personal knowledge of them. If I had to pick someone, I would say Ny would be someone to look for.

Q. You guys as a three seed were seeded as far as expected to be here in the Sweet 16, but this is not a bracket that went one, two, three, four. There were a few things that didn't go according to plan. How much has that helped you, do you think, from a perception of the tournament that it's not the same predictable teams? And for you guys as a three seed, is there any pressure in that regard of you're playing one of the upstarts in this tournament?

BILL FENNELLY: I would say it's great for the tournament. Obviously, it's easy to say when you are one of the seeded teams that advance, but I do think it's great for the tournament. I think that's what makes March Madness what it is.

All of us who love this tournament who -- this is the greatest sporting event in the world to me is the NCAA Basketball Tournament. What you see -- like our men are playing in the 10-11 game. Those are the stories that make it great for the casual person, and I think for women's basketball it's a good thing to see what South Dakota did.

We scrimmaged South Dakota in a close scrimmage, and I'm not surprised that they're where they are. And certainly North Carolina doing what they did. So I think it's a great -- Ohio State.

So those are things that help at least draw some interest from maybe a little more casual fan base and gets other people excited, so I think it's a great thing.

Q. Is there pressure, though, when you are playing one of the upstarts in the tournament like that?

BILL FENNELLY: No, I don't think so. I think when you get to this level it's not a surprise. Everyone who advances in this tournament is playing at a certain level and playing well. We know how good Creighton is and the games that they've won. I've always been one of those people that the number next to your name is all about the color jersey that you wear. It has nothing to do with who is good and who is not good.

It's about match-ups to me, and the three means we wear white and the ten means they wear blue. After that it doesn't really matter to me.

Q. You mentioned not overthinking it on defense. I just wonder how hard it is to not do that on offense. I feel like coaches are tinkerers and like to make adjustments. How do you stay with what you've been doing all season, but then also adjust as the tournament goes on?

BILL FENNELLY: To be quite blunt about it, I am one of those people that likes to tinker a lot, and luckily, I have a staff that is like, that's enough. (Laughing). We're at -- we met this morning and I'm, like, what about -- and they just -- all of them -- we've been together -- my staff has been together a long time.

Well, obviously, one of them has been with me his whole life. (Laughing). One of them played for me, and I walked her down the aisle when she got married, and the other one I hired right out of college. We've been together a lot, and I had like eight sets of eyeballs just looking at me like, please, stop. Kind of like what I get at home from my wife sometimes. That's enough. We're good.

Hopefully not too much. Just throw the ball to Ashley Joens. That will be our secret. Sorry.

Q. 28-win season for you guys. How do you translate that in-season success to the postseason especially when fatigue can sometimes come in March?

BILL FENNELLY: For us it's always been -- and I know this is going to be the ultimate cliche and bore people, and these guys who follow us a lot know -- we have been a next-40-minute mentality all year long, and what we've told our kids is we're writing a book, and every game is a chapter in the book.

Some chapters aren't as good, and some are really good, but it's all about the next 40 minutes. You work your ever-loving you-know-what off to get to this point, and we are not -- it's embrace who you are and don't apologize for what you're not.

At 9:39 or whatever time we play Friday night, Iowa State is going to show up and play hard, and hopefully good enough to win a game, but we are going to play hard, and we're going to play the right way.

Q. Coach Fennelly, I was just wondering, you know, this Creighton-Iowa State series used to be pretty regular in the '90s and the early 2000s. I just wonder when you look at the teams now, how different do they look in terms of style of play and just where their programs are at compared to when they used to go at it every year?

BILL FENNELLY: Yeah, that's a good question. I don't think they're that different. We used to play Creighton every year and then conference affiliations changed. We were playing -- we play UNI, Drake, and Iowa every year. The Big 12 went to 18 conference games, so we ended up not playing Creighton.

But I think their style of play is eerily the same. We had some really good games with them I think it's probably been 10, 12 years since we've played, but I don't see their style being that different.

Q. You talked a lot about the importance of defense, especially in this game. Lexi has been a valuable part of that. How will you try to utilize her? What's kind of your defensive game plan with her?

BILL FENNELLY: No, we're going to use Lex on a lot of different people. I think Lex can defend three or four different people on their team. They don't have an overwhelming size that she can't match up with, so we're going to move her around.

I think, obviously, she is someone that we build our defensive game plan around. If someone gets hot, we can move her to another person. I think Emily can do that as well, so Lex will be on a lot of different people throughout the game. I would say at least three.

Again, who knows how the game goes? There's always foul situations and who handles things differently, but she'll be out there guarding a lot of different people.

Thank you. Appreciate you all being here.