NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: SECOND ROUND - MIAMI (FL) VS INDIANA

March 20, 2023

Katie Meier

Lola Pedande

Destiny Harden

Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall

Miami Hurricanes

Media Conference

Miami 70, Indiana 68

KATIE MEIER: As always, I want to thank the university and Indiana for hosting us. Did a fantastic job. They're an awesome team. The crowd was phenomenal. Phenomenal. What a great basketball environment. They absolutely affected the game.

Teri has built an incredible program on the backs of I'm sure administrators and assistant coaches and everything else, and they had a phenomenal season. It was a great game. It was a good matchup for us.

Then I guess my other thought is I'm so proud of these two ladies here that are just so tough. They're warriors. They don't break. They're honorable in their loyalty. They are honorable in their loyalty to each other, to this program, and especially to me. They stand up. They take the burden. They take the weight on their shoulders, and they don't back down.

We needed every one of those characteristics I just said to even compete in this game, let alone win it.

The third thing is, I always tell my team, act like you've been there before, but we haven't, so we kind of acted foolish and we are really happy and we enjoyed it.

Tried to be respectful, but that was a really big moment for us, and it was fun, and it was time to just let the pure joy spill out and enjoy it and take the momentum into the Sweet 16.

Q. You're the second team to knock off a No. 1 seed in the tournament this season. What are you feeling? What does this win feel like for both of you?

DESTINY HARDEN: It feels good just to keep dancing, keep advancing, survive and advance right now. It feels really good. The game we played tonight was something that we was talking about last night. So like to get the win, I mean, it's big time, over a very, very efficient team.

I've just got to give my credit to Indiana because they came out and played well, too.

LOLA PENDANDE: It feels amazing. It doesn't feel real still. When we were done with the game I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe it. Like we're here. We're really here. I don't know, props to my team. The coaches did a really, really good job on the game preparation.

We were locked in. We were communicating very, very well today. I felt it. I felt -- I usually lose my mind and I had my teammates had my back. They were like, okay, relax. We're up. We're up. I'm like, okay, let's go. We got this. It's great. It's great to be here.

Q. Destiny, they hit that three-point shot. Do you know the ball is coming to you for that play, and what's going through your head running down the court?

DESTINY HARDEN: When they hit the shot to tie the game I actually didn't know what type of play the coaches were going to have drawn up for us. It's a lot of people on, my team that played good today, so everybody could have gotten that game-winning shot.

But it was the exact same play as last year, so I probably should have known it was going to come to me. But no, I just thank the coaches for trusting me, the players for trusting me, and it feels good to come through for them and send us to the Sweet 16.

Q. Lola, you really set the tone early for your team there dominating inside against an All-American in Mackenzie Holmes. What was your strategy there, and how were you able to do so well, especially early on there?

LOLA PENDANDE: There was no strategy. I was just -- I felt confident today. My teammates were feeding me the ball. They have a lot of belief in me, which helped me to stay confident, and it was just another player. I know she's an All-American, but I believe in myself and I knew I could do this.

My teammates believed in me, most importantly, so I was able to do it.

Q. Six quarters of basketball you were down 17 and now headed to the Sweet 16. What changed or what clicked as a team for you guys to kind of rally and make the turnaround that you did?

LOLA PENDANDE: Down 17 we knew we were a better team than we showed the first half against OSU. After halftime we just had to lock in, follow the game plan. Our defense is our identity, so we just came up and showed up.

For today's game we were just -- it was a lot of belief. We were just ready to come here, play -- we've been in situations like this before with a huge crowd against us, and we stayed confident, and we had each other's back.

Q. You led your team in scoring. Stylistically what was it that allowed you to have success scoring the basketball?

DESTINY HARDEN: I think our biggest strategy throughout the whole year was just match-ups and keep sharing the ball. Whoever has got the hot hand, just keep feeding them the ball.

Once you score, go back to them and keep going back to them. There was no selfish ball tonight. A lot of people scored in double figures and you could tell that we love playing with each other, love sharing the ball, and we knew defense was going to win this game, but also putting the ball in the basket.

Q. Destiny, I'm curious, with this game being played in such a tight window but you guys still lead wire to wire, Indiana never leads in this game, how do you stay composed in that moment? How do you maintain the confidence you were talking about earlier?

LOLA PENDANDE: Yeah, just believing in our defense. Indiana is a very efficient team on the offensive end. We've got to continue to disrupt for any chance at winning the game. We just stayed composed offensively and defensively and never gave up on the game plan and continued to play Miami basketball and play the way we know we can play, and that helped us win the game.

Q. Destiny, you're one of two Midwestern players on your ballclub. What was it like being back in this part of the United States? Looking at your roster, a lot of players from other countries, the southern part of the United States, but you're from Chicago.

DESTINY HARDEN: Right, right. It's close to home, so to do that in front of my family, it was amazing. I had a three-year-old niece in the stands that probably don't know what's going on, why everybody is screaming.

But it's just an amazing feeling to have, to know that she's able to watch that and my parents and my grandparents, they're able to come out and support.

I just feel the love in the stands, even though there was a thousand other people going against me. I felt like I had a thousand people with me because just because my family was there and also the team.

Q. Coach, when the buzzer goes, who's the first person you look to?

KATIE MEIER: I turned to my staff. They killed themselves. They really did. It was a tough turnaround and so much complication to try to slow Indiana -- I think we held them like 10 points below their average at home, which is crazy, crazy good defensive effort. We debate a lot. We're in the mud together. Like we're just there. It's just real.

They meet and then I come in and I say what about this, what about that, and they come back at me.

And we have just been in it. They've had my back all year and they're amazing, so I know that was my first thought. And I looked around for any player that wanted to hug me.

Q. In the last minute it was a bit helter skelter. They got a couple chances with dwindling numbers of seconds ad had good shots and missed them. Then they tied it. I wonder what was going through your head --

KATIE MEIER: Yeah, we were debating whether to foul up three with 12 seconds -- 12 seconds is a lot of time, and they were really a lot taller than us in the guard position.

So we kind of figured they hadn't been shooting the three all that well. It was a great shot. But yeah, they missed uncharacteristic shots. Grace Berger has her Dirk Nowitzki pull-up. She makes that all the time. We talked about it in the shootaround. Chloe had a left-handed lay-up, left-handed kid.

You know, that's heartbreaking because they did what they needed to do to win the game, but I felt like we were in command the whole game, and so I never thought -- even when they made it I looked up and I said six seconds. Six seconds is enough time for us with a time-out left, so that was the decision that we made.

And then we went to a very, very good basketball player who has ice in her veins, and she hit a heck of a shot.

Q. You mentioned Destiny just now actually has ice in her veins. What's it like coaching her, somebody with her confidence, her shot making ability?

KATIE MEIER: Well, the first thing she says, you're mad at me for missing those two free throws. Well, yeah, I'll be mad at you tomorrow.

Because I was really surprised she missed those free throws. I was really surprised. But this environment probably caused that.

Also there was some timing issues, and I felt like it was kind of -- that was really hectic, too, going to the table all the time when your free throw -- that was just tough for us.

But she also got that big rebound and kind of got the ball to Haley so we could get those free throws.

When we beat Louisville in the ACC Tournament on this dramatic comeback, it's the exact same play, the exact same play, same shot, and she hit it. I talked yesterday or the other day about competitive memory and having a competitive memory, and that was a really good memory. Fitz, my associate head coach came over to me and he was like, you know, I don't want to tell you the play call, but I was like, yeah, why not? That's a play that left time on the clock, that was my only doubt.

I wasn't sure if we wanted to give them a chance to do something if we had missed it.

But Destiny, Destiny Harden. She also scored her thousandth point today, which was amazing.

Q. Your team came in right away from the opening tip and controlled the game. You were playing so physically on both ends and making life really tough on them. What was your game plan for this IU team that led to the start you had in the first half?

KATIE MEIER: Well, yeah. The decision was to go and press, right, or do you just try to push them off the three-point line, just push four feet, and we kind of went with that decision a little bit more than our zone presses just because we figured -- and we hedged ball screens and that burned us later on.

But early on when we were pushing them off we were able to recover in time. So that was a lot of high pressure, but more of a half court deal. And that was a decision. That was one of those in-the-mud debates we had. I thought our guards did a really nice job on that, and we tried to get Grace to her back. A lot of times she was with her back to the basket trying to run an offense, and I thought that was really key for us.

Q. How fitting is it to win these two games by a combined three points? Everything you've been preaching for as long as you've been here about being tough and having a tough team. I know you won't say it, but a team that follows your lead on the toughness front. To win a game by one and two, what's that say about the collective toughness of that group?

KATIE MEIER: Right, thank you, they are tough. There was no panic. I saw a little bit of a shoulder drop when they hit the three to tie it. I was like, wait a minute. Like my personality came out. Like there is six seconds left. We have the ball at Indiana. Why are we pouting?

If I'd have told you this yesterday you'd be like, yay, let's go. So that kind of shook them up a little bit. A lot of faith. We talk about faith a lot. Not religiously, I'm talking about faith which is just confidence with a lot of patience, and we needed it.

There was a lot of reasons -- your confidence can kind of come and go, but faith has some patience to it, and I thought we were very faithful tonight.

Q. Coach, in that third quarter, Indiana outscored you guys 19-8 and they were able to get a little bit of momentum at the start of the fourth quarter. What did you tell your team? How confident did you feel going into those final 10 minutes?

KATIE MEIER: Same thing. I think we were still up three, right, going into the fourth? Is that close to right? Yeah. The same speech I said with six seconds left. I said, if I told you we're up three after playing a very frustrating third quarter and we're still up three going into the fourth and all we've got to do is close this game, would you take it? They said, yeah, we'd take it. I go, well, that's the reality. Let's go. So I thought that was really important.

We ran some really specific plays and so did Indiana. My gosh, they got us on a lot. Really good coaching by them. But when you run a specific play that you rehearse, that you talked about, that you had them visualize in film and really talk through and it works, you just really have a lot of belief, and that happened. We did a really nice job tonight of executing.

Q. You said that you tell your team to act like they've been here before. What does this mean to your program to do this, first time since '92? And yesterday when you had talked about Miami and Indiana playing in both the men's and women's tournaments, you said, just hope Miami can get two, and now you have. What do these two games mean for Miami, as well?

KATIE MEIER: Right, yeah. First of all, yeah. You always -- the Sweet 16, Miami has gone before. I think there weren't 64 teams, though. I think it was only one win, which I'm very proud of the history, but I think it was like that.

So to win two and to win it in such -- I'm from Illinois. This place, the basketball that's been played in this -- it's emotional. I mean, basketball runs deep in my family I told you, and to beat them here with that great crowd, and for it to mean so much to my team and to be able to do that is incredible.

It's a first for a lot of reasons, and then for our university, our men's program, we're close. We watched them last night -- not all together, some of us did, but what they're -- we compete. We put win/loss on the board. We talk about in the training room it's like who they got next. We talk like, oh, you going to win? You should've hit that shot.

So it's really cool. Are we the only university that has both teams in the Sweet 16? I don't know that. Are we? If that's true, think about that. Think about that. If that's true. Miami. You don't think basketball right away when you think about Miami.

If we are the only school -- I'm not sure it's true, but if we are the only school that has both teams in the Sweet 16, all right, everybody take notice. Take notice. That's a credit to the university, to the leadership, to the administration, to everybody.

I'm really proud of our men's team, and I'm really proud to represent this university.