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

March 18, 2023

Shaylee Gonzales

Rori Harmon

Taylor Jones

Vic Schaefer

Moody Center

Texas Longhorns

Media Conference

Texas 79, East Carolina 40

VIC SCHAEFER: First of all, I just want to congratulate East Carolina on a great season. I thought their coach did a tremendous job with them. I was very concerned. I watched probably more film on them than any team that I've played against in a long time. Just a lot of respect and admiration for how they play the game. She does a great job, her and her staff, with those kids. We just played really well tonight. As I told her when we shook hands, they are a champion and they need to go get their championship rings because they had a heck of a year.

But they ran into a Texas team tonight; that I was proud of them. I thought they played hard. They looked interested defensively, which is always big for me.

You know, I think that shows, we had ten steals, we had 12 blocked shots. Taylor had six of those, and I just thought Rori ran our team like a point guard is supposed to. She found the right people at the right time. We had a good transition tonight.

We had 40 points in the paint which is always big, and we had three quarters of single-digit scoring defensively. Field goal percentage defense was 17 percent but again I thought that's because we did a good job and our guards did a good job guarding their guards. And then their Freshman of the Year, and I think our length and our size bothered her a little bit. She's had a heck of a year y'all. That is a heck of a player. She's going to be a great one for them for the next three years.

Hey, I think all these kids up here, the kids in our locker room, can tell you just about everything that you need to know about that team. We've spent four days on them. I thought our kids did a great job of taking that to the floor and really executing.

Other than 66 percent from the free throw line and 17 turnovers, thought our kids were pretty right on tonight. So happy for these kids. They have worked extremely hard, given God the glory for number 26, and we'll get ready for obviously a great Louisville team that just played for their Conference Championship and played a great team tonight, and beat a great team.

So we'll have our hands full on Monday.

Q. What was it like to have Sonya back on the court?

RORI HARMON: It was great. I'm so very happy for her. I mean, being out for so long is such -- it's really sad. She plays a really big part on our team on and off the court. I'm so happy for her and I'm glad that she got her little round of applause and standing ovation for when she got subbed in today. I'm just very happy for her.

Q. It was physical in there. You were banging around with their big girls. Why was it important for you guys to establish your physical size on them and give them problems on the interior?

TAYLOR JONES: We knew going into this game that we had a lot of size on them, and so I think a focal point that we wanted to focus on was to get the ball into the paint. So I think us fours and fives sort of knew that it was going to be a physical battle down there.

And like Coach said, their five player, No. 22 -- No. 22, right or 23?

SHAYLEE GONZALES: 23.

TAYLOR JONES: 23. She had a great freshman year and I knew it was going to be physical down there. We just came in and knew what we had to do down there.

VIC SCHAEFER: Let me just remind everybody here: Shaylee scored her 2,000th career point in college tonight and Taylor scored her 1,000th career point to be the. There's over 3,000 points sitting here next to me between the two of them.

It's a really special night for all of us and for our team. It is really cool to be there and be able to present Shaylee with this ball, just a commemorative of the night.

Q. Do you think that's the most complete game you guys as a team have played this season?

SHAYLEE GONZALES: I definitely I feel like we've had other games that are complete as well but I mean, I'm just super proud of my team. And we came in here and we knew it was going to be a dog fight and we knew that we needed to be focused mentally and physically, especially after that last game. We were very frustrated and we were just ready to play again.

Q. You may have been asked about this already, but the 2,000 career points, what did it mean for you to get that milestone and what does that number mean to you?

SHAYLEE GONZALES: Yeah, I mean, super special. I feel like I definitely have worked super hard in my whole basketball career, and it was just super exciting to see my family and my friends, or the fans, celebrating for me.

Q. Your first four field goals as a team were all in the paint. How important was that to establish inside dominance?

RORI HARMON: Like Taylor and Coach Schaefer said earlier, we know that we can go to the paint willingly whenever we want to, and we have post players like Taylor, DeYona, Hadi, Femme, all of them down there, Amina, Jak, whoever it is in the paint that can finish very well over shorter people, even if they are not, I mean, we work really hard inside.

I'm actually very proud of them to finish all the contact. They knew it was coming. The doubles and triples and quadruples, they were coming and they were able to finish fast enough and move through all of that contact, so it was good.

Q. So Taylor, you had eight rebounds, but it looked like they were trying to beat you up a little bit. What was it like on the board?

TAYLOR JONES: It was really physical. I am really tall and I have really long arms, so that helps. There were a few times where I was sort of thrown to the ground or things that I may have thought were fouls weren't called. But that's just how it is being a post. I mean, looking at tonight's game compared to all of our Big 12 games, I don't think that it was more physical than any of those. I think it was probably the same.

It's just the post life. We get beat up down there, yeah.

Q. I don't think it would be possible to have a bigger smile than Sonya when she checked in. How much of a boost does having her back out there give this team?

SHAYLEE GONZALES: I mean, it's just super exciting, and like Rori said, I'm super happy for her. To be able to see her shoot that three-pointer, go in, we are all super excited, happy for her. I mean, she got 13 minutes, and we need her more and hopefully the next game she'll be able to play more.

Q. I saw your face when you heard the crowd erupt when Sonya went on the court in the third quarter. What were you feeling in that moment for her?

VIC SCHAEFER: Yeah, that's a kid that obviously played a big part in our season, and she's been out.

I'll be honest with you, I'm not sure that we ever thought we'd get her back until when we got back from the Big 12, and got our eyes on her. Trainer got her eyes on her and was able to see, you know, how much she had improved that week that we were gone. Because we left her here to spend two times a day with other trainers to work on her.

Let me tell you, her daddy's been here quite a bit, and he's in there sitting with her and encouraging her and prodding her to work and push, you know, because it's uncomfortable, y'all. What that knee to her thigh, and what it caused, is really for all of y'all, and including myself, I've done this a long time, you have to idea what happened to her ask really -- it's a pretty traumatic injury. It just caused her a lot of trouble. It's the only way to put it.

To see her make some big strides here the last three days with Rosy, my trainer, is really, again, I appreciate all she's done in getting her ready. Because I'm telling you, I'm not sure any of us really thought, when we left, I don't think we thought when we got back that she would be able to play this weekend. We were kind of hoping maybe the next one.

Q. Do you think she'll see more minutes then in do you like what you saw tonight? Did you talk to her and how she felt?

VIC SCHAEFER: Yes, so I think the evaluation now comes: How does she feel tomorrow. She's practiced three days, y'all, but she's never gotten through a whole practice. Rosemary told me this morning, said, "Coach, she's free to do what she feels like she can do. Doctors turned her loose as far as do what you can do. And if she's doing enough for you, then she can go."

My concern always is the rust. She's got to make shots. That's what she's done for us. And if she can't make shots, I thought she was playing hard defensively, too, tonight. She was trying to get out in passing lanes. So I'm happy for her. At the same time it's great to have another guard that we can play, and.

Shea got in foul trouble tonight. Man, I was frustrated with that because I didn't -- I thought Shay was really good early and we certainly didn't need that.

In any case, I thought we navigated that quite well. Ndjakalenga played really well tonight, y'all. Her and Amina, my two freshman played 30 minutes in an NCAA Tournament game. That's great.

Q. This was one of the more physical games of the weekend. The big girls were getting after it, and it's a guards game.

VIC SCHAEFER: Yeah.

Q. But how important is it to establish the physicality with what guys got coming up with Louisville and perhaps some other big teams that are in your bracket?

VIC SCHAEFER: Yeah, our bigs have got to -- I've been on them. I've been telling them, hey, you guys have got to be better. We've got to be better down there.

I think Taylor was five out of ten in the championship game. Nobody else was close. We've got to be better. Like just so y'all know, for me, guard have to shoot 45 percent from the field, 35 from three. But your bigs are supposed to shoot 60 from the field, okay. I do the one right now shooting 60 and that's Hadi. My other bigs are in the 50s.

So I just -- you know, I challenged them. I thought they really -- I thought Taylor was really good tonight. Six blocked shots, y'all, that's pretty good, and had eight rebounds. And of course D had her 10 and 11.

But we've got the biggest team in the Big 12, right, and so even in the NCAA Tournament, we've got to take advantage of that. We cannot be bullied. Like it seems like -- it just seems like every night, we got people shorter than us, and they are just jacking us up. And that ain't how it supposed to be, y'all.

So I've challenged our kids to not let that happen. You've got to fight back. You just do.

Q. You have a motto, "It's not what we do, it's how we do it." Even though the score would suggest you have a fantastic game, what are one or two areas you're going to be working on for the next game?

VIC SCHAEFER: Well, we had too many turnovers, 17. We shot 66 percent from the free throw line. I think that's two areas right there, we've got to be better at, and we got to stop -- seem like tonight, especially in the first half, we bailed them out on a lot of, you know, tough shots. Just contest. Don't foul. Just contest the shots. That's it.

So those are three areas that seems like I brought that up a lot in time-outs, and you know, we'll continue to work on it. They got after us on the offensive boards, too. They had 19 and six of them were a dead ball. So 13 live ball offensive boards. We've got to be better there. We work on that every day. I do two to three rebounding drills every day.

But this is this team, y'all. We continue to be a work-in-progress. We're a long way from perfect. But if I can get them to play that hard every night, we'll have a chance to win every night. But I thought we played really hard tonight. I'm really proud of them.

Q. So your defense held East Carolina to zero field goals in the fourth quarter. What does it say about your team's competitiveness that they kept up the intensity even though the game was already out of hand?

VIC SCHAEFER: Yeah, thanks for that. I didn't realize they didn't have a basket.

Again, as I tell them all the time, I don't care what the score is. I care about what we're doing and how we're playing, how we honor and respect the game. It was 19 I think at half and I told them, it's 0-0, let's go. Let's see what we're made of.

And so I thought we did a good job coming out of the gates in the third quarter, outscored them 21-9, and in the end of the fourth quarter, we had some substitutions and still were able to do a decent job defensively.

So I think it says that our kids were locked in and playing hard and it didn't matter who we had on the floor. If they were getting time, they knew that I wanted them to play really hard on that end so I'm proud of them for doing that.

Q. What did you think of the fourth quarter with the offense?

VIC SCHAEFER: It was good. I thought we did some really good things there. Again, I'm just trying to give her and De and Shaylee some rest. Shaylee, she really was playing well and didn't really want to come out. You know, if I'm going to rest Rori I have to usually play Shaylee.

So in any case, I was pleased with it. And again it was good to be able to get some kids some rest tonight. I knew Shaylee was pretty jacked up. She was excited had a great game, family was here. It's a special night, y'all. Let me tell you, hard to score 2,000 points in college basketball. So the kid really hit a milestone tonight.

Q. You talked about how you're playing against other coaches at Texas. So Rodney Terry took the team to the Sweet 16. What's your thoughts on that, and do you have any comments about how they are doing?

VIC SCHAEFER: Yeah, I don't feel like I'm coaching against other coaches here at Texas. I just know what the standard is for all those other sports.

It's just a way of life here. It's what we talked about with our student athletes, we embrace it. It's what we signed up for. I'm really happy for Rodney and his team and his staff. They are playing at a high level. Those guys, they are really -- and they are nice kids, too. I'm going to tell you, all those guys, y'all, when you pass them in the hallway they always say "Hi, Coach, how you doing?" They are approachable. They are just good kids.

I'm so happy for him and his staff. I know how hard they are working. And you know, let me tell y'all, what he's been able to do and holding that group together and seeing those guys playing as hard as they are playing for that group, for that staff and him, I'm not sure I've of seen anything like that. I've been around a long time, seen a lot of things happen. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like that.

They are to be commended, can they are coached. Those kids aren't just out there playing, y'all. They are being coached. They are doing stuff that you do within a system and a way of life. I'm really, really happy for those guys.

So yeah, you know, it's just kind of what you sign up for here at Texas.

Q. The clock just struck midnight. When we talked on Monday, you mentioned the idea of taking naps. After the result, a near-40-point win, were naps taken and did they impact the game tonight?

VIC SCHAEFER: I don't know what they did. We had shootaround and you know it was late. We had a late shoot around. We had breakfast this morning. Y'all I had shown them so much film. Typically today we would eat and we would watch, 30, 45 minutes of film; I think I watched like eight minutes. I had shown them so much. I finally stopped watching film this afternoon and just went and had a good run, it was nice outside, and just to clear my head, because I mean, sometimes you can just start manufacturing stuff when you keep looking at it.

But I am worried about them getting out of here late. We're not going to get them up in the morning. We'll have breakfast in the morning late, a brunch.

And I hate it we've have got to be over here for media at 1:20, and I think our practice time is at 2:15. I had my druthers, I would probably not practice till tomorrow afternoon at 5:00 or 6:00. I think our game time has been established for 6 o'clock on Monday night which is great.

But you know, we just -- we'll show up whatever time they tell us to show up. But I need my kids to go home and go to bed.