NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: SECOND ROUND - GEORGIA VS IOWA

March 18, 2023

Lisa Bluder

Carver-Hawkeye Arena

Iowa Hawkeyes

Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: We'll take an opening statement from Lisa Bluder.

LISA BLUDER: Obviously glad to be in the field of 32, playing Georgia tomorrow. We know Georgia, tremendous team. Great depth. Zone defense they're known for. Battles and Warren are excellent players. They're posts. They have lots of depth at the post. So they're going to be a real difficult challenge.

Q. You guys got a chance to play UCF last year when Coach Abrahamson was there, and then they brought some of those same players to Georgia now. What kind of similarities do you see from them offensively and defensively, and how nice was it to kind of see them last year, I guess?

LISA BLUDER: Yeah. I think that was a really blessing to be able to see them last year because with a one-day prep, you don't have as much time to prepare for an opponent as you usually would during the year. So I think it was a real advantage for us to play against UCF. Now, they have the same advantage against but, though, right? So kind of cancels each other out. I do think they're a little bit more different to prepare for just because of their zone defense, and so I'm glad that we had that. They're very similar to last year.

Q. I asked the players the same kind of question. Just going into tomorrow, how important is it to defensively rebound against a team that can probably shoot better and score more second-chance points than they did yesterday?

LISA BLUDER: Yeah. Rebounding it's seven percent of their offense. So it's really, really important that we box out and don't let them have too many of those second shots.

Q. Offensively they don't shoot a whole lot from outside. I know they made a few yesterday, but what do you see from them offensively that they can do inside the three-point line that makes them so tough to guard?

LISA BLUDER: I think it's the double post option they have, having 4 and 5 down there low. We've seen a lot more 4-out-1-in-type teams throughout the year. So having just the depth of the post position and having two in there that are really strong, big posts at the same time. I think Battles is also extremely fast getting downhill. She does a great job of penetrating and getting downhill.

Q. Do you have to change up the way that you're going to rotate players tomorrow knowing that they have two post players, just to make sure that you're able to match up with them when they go bigger or if they decide to go smaller?

LISA BLUDER: You know, we're not going to be changing up at this point in the season. It's a bad time in my mind to experiment. So we're going to just stick with what we've been doing.

THE MODERATOR: All right. Any additional questions? Coach, thanks for joining us.

LISA BLUDER: Thanks, you guys.