NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: REGIONAL 2 SEMIFINAL - LSU VS UTAH

March 23, 2023

Lynne Roberts

Jenna Johnson

Kennady McQueen

Alissa Pili

Bon Secours Wellness Arena

Utah Utes

Sweet 16 Pregame Media Conference

LYNNE ROBERTS: Thank you all for being here. What a great city Greenville is, and we got in yesterday evening and have enjoyed the day here. Just a beautiful city, and we're grateful to be here.

We know that if you've made it this far that you're really good. We feel that way about our team, and we know we play LSU. We know how good they are. We're looking forward to the challenge, and we'll be up to it.

Q. What do you think of this regional format with the two sites and kind of AAU, I guess, feel to it with everyone here? Do you think it's good stuff for the game, or do you think it should change to closer how they do it on the men's side?

LYNNE ROBERTS: I mean, I'm about 18 hours into it so I have no idea how it's going to play out. But I think conceptually it's great. Our sport is growing, and there's some momentum there. I appreciate that in women's basketball and the leadership that they're always trying to find ways to be growing our game in terms of getting eyes on it, fan support.

The home school sites is the best attendance yet for those first and second rounds, so I think that conceptually that's what we're trying to go for. I think we're at a stage with our game where the more exposure we can get, the more people get involved and get behind it.

I think today I like it, so we'll see.

Q. Lynne, what makes Alissa such a good player, and have you taken a look at how you're going to slow down LSU and some of their weapons?

LYNNE ROBERTS: I don't know that I have enough time to go into either of those questions. But particularly the Alissa one, I think if you just watch her, you're going to see just the physicality and the physical stature that she has. All season long, I've been calling her a unicorn because she's just so unique. She's really athletic and fast and explosive, great hands but she's also powerful and strong. It's a tough matchup for anybody.

She can also -- she's shooting 40 percent from the three, so it's like, who do you put on her? If you go one-on-one in the post, she's incredibly efficient. We've got kids that can shoot around her so that helps her, too. You've kind of got to pick your poison.

But I've been so proud of her. She's had just a great season. She's been incredibly consistent, which is hard to do when the other team is game planning to stop you. To continue to be efficient and consistent speaks to just how good she really is.

In terms of LSU, they're good. I don't need to sit here and tell anybody that. Everybody already knows that. They're explosive. They're athletic. They've got some tremendous athletes. We definitely have a game plan, but we're going to have to be able to make adjustments as well as the game goes, and as both teams start to feel each other out. Yeah, see how it goes.

Q. This isn't a game-specific question technically, but there's a lot of transfers who are kind of starring for both teams. I'm curious for you as a coach, how does the transfer portal, big picture, kind of change the way you think about roster construction?

LYNNE ROBERTS: We don't have a ton of them. We've got a couple, yeah. But I think as my grandfather always said, there's 101 ways to skin a cat. Whatever works for you can work. It doesn't make one better than the other.

For me personally, I don't necessarily want a roster of transfers, but I think it's a great -- if you can fill a gap or if you see a need, it's a great opportunity, resource to do that.

I think the whole portal thing, it is what it is. It's not going away. Some coaches are against it, and it's just here and it's not leaving. So I think as a coach, you have to adapt.

So we'll use it when we need to. But I think philosophically I'd prefer to recruit freshmen that you can develop and that you have for a while, but sometimes you need to fill a gap, and I think the portal is great for that.

But for me, too, and our program, I'm fiercely protective of our culture and the type of kids that we have in our program. I'm incredibly proud of them. They're just awesome, awesome people. And with transfer recruiting, I've said this before, but it's kind of like a microwave because it happens so fast.

You recruit a high school kid and you know them since they were in ninth grade and you know their mom and their dad and their Uncle Jimmy and their trainer and all that stuff. In the transfer portal, it could be two weeks. There's some risk in that for me with culture.

But we've been selective even in that, and it's worked out.

Q. Obviously y'all are such an offensive productive team and LSU's defense has looked really good recently. How do you disrupt those defensive structures and schemes to kind of overcome what they've got there?

LYNNE ROBERTS: Well, our team is not built on one-on-one play, and it hasn't been. We're a sum-of-the-parts kind of offense. We're top 5 in the country in assists for a reason. If we get into a one-on-one game, we're going to lose badly. We've got to move the ball, move players, make them defend. But they're more athletic than we are.

That's not a race we want to get into. We've got to try to be a little smarter with it.

Q. If I could follow up on that, you guys and LSU are top 5 in the country in offense. I wonder if you could talk about, let's say, the enjoyable style of play, the three-pointers you guys hit. I know they're a little different, they don't hit as many three-pointers, but it could still be a fairly up tempo offensive game, and in terms of what fans enjoy watching, what are your thoughts on it?

LYNNE ROBERTS: Yeah, I have a feeling it'll be a track meet of sorts. We like to play with tempo. It makes us go. They play with tempo. You turn it over, they get a defensive rebound, they're gone. Yeah, it is fun. It's a fun style to watch.

I think scoring is fun to watch. I don't want to watch them do too much of it, but I have a feeling both teams are going to push the pedal on that and play to our strengths. They've got to beat us, we've got to try to beat them. It'll be a battle of attrition in that regard.

Q. On the Pac-12, we've been talking the last decade or so on the growth of the conference, and you guys, UCLA, Colorado are here. Stanford isn't in the Sweet 16. Just how that growth has come and how Utah has been a big part of that.

LYNNE ROBERTS: Yeah, I'll stand by the statement that I think it's the best conference in the country for women's basketball. Since 2013 we've had six different teams make the Final Four. No other conference comes close to that. That just speaks to the parity, the coaching, the talent.

I think administrations in our conference, too, in the last 10 years have put resources towards it. And even though Stanford is not here in the Sweet 16, they're still the standard. And Tara and her staff, they've done such a tremendous job, not only of being the standard and being the team that you measure yourself against, but also being -- Tara is such a tremendous advocate for all of us, the other 11 of us. She wants to kick your tail when she plays you, but she wants our conference to be elite.

I think all those combinations have led to that, and I think our rise in this is similar to Colorado, and Washington State won the conference tournament. Just everybody is good.

The last thing I'll say on the league is our winning percentage as a conference in the NCAA Tournament is like 73 percent in the last 10 years, and why is that? I think it's because our league prepares you for it. Every weekend you're playing a top-20 team, every weekend you're playing an NCAA Tournament type of game plan and scout and coach.

I think that's -- I stand by it; I think it's the best league in women's basketball.

Q. I wanted to ask about Angel Reese. When you're doing your research, what stands out the most to you? What catches your eye when you've got your coach's hat on?

LYNNE ROBERTS: I think -- you guys know the stats. Obviously her rebounding is elite. The amount of times she gets her own misses and keeps going back up, she just kind of pogo-sticks. She's a tough guard.

I think she's -- I've been impressed with her tenaciousness. She's tenacious, mentally and physically.

She's the type of player where you can't just say, all right, you've got her, get it done. It's got to be a collective team effort.

But they're not a one-trick pony, either. They've got other people. That's why they're here, and that's why they're good.

Q. Way back during the fall we were at Pac-12 media day in San Francisco, and as you said, there's so much talent there. Was this a sky's-the-limit vision or it came to be as you started making your way and beating some of your conference rivals and started to make yourselves known nationally?

LYNNE ROBERTS: Like did I see this coming? Yeah, I did see it coming. I did.

I think we were picked fifth in our league. Tara gave us the other first-place vote because she can't vote for herself. So maybe she saw it coming, too.

But I knew coming into the season with how our -- coming off of last year's NCAA Tournament run, conference tournament run, and we started two freshmen and two sophomores last year, we were young. But they got some really good experience, and there's no greater teacher than that.

So I knew. I'm not one to pound the table and beat my chest and hey, look at us. We're just going to keep grinding and chopping wood.

Yeah, I did think this was possible. 100 percent.

Q. You mentioned early in your remarks that when you get to this point, you're really good. Do you think your team has gotten enough credit for being really good this season?

LYNNE ROBERTS: I don't care. I don't. I mean, probably not, but no one in our locker room cares. We'll compete and play and keep doing what we do, and all that stuff doesn't really matter.

I respect my players for having that mentality, too. They really don't care. That makes it easy for me to not care, too.

Q. As much as LSU maybe has not seen glory as of super recently, Kim Mulkey is such a historic coach in women's basketball. What's it mean to be going up against her in the Sweet 16 and everything she's done for the game?

LYNNE ROBERTS: Yeah, I mean, her -- I don't need to sit here and read off her resume and all the things that she has accomplished. I think she's been a great personality for our sport. I mean that in the best way. I think people have been drawn to her, which draws people to our sport and gets exposure.

So yeah, I'm looking forward -- as a competitor, I'm looking forward to competing against her.

Q. You described the game on Sunday as a rock fight. Now you're turning around and going to have to play what you call a track meet. Do you have to do anything special or is your team ready, and especially with the track meet being more your style, is that a little easier?

LYNNE ROBERTS: I don't know if it'll be easier, but yeah. And I think when you're a -- you make it this far and with the other 15 teams in this tournament left, there's going to be games where you have to adapt.

In the Princeton game I was very impressed with Princeton. Man, they were tough. We didn't shoot it well. We turned it over too much. They got more shot attempts than we did, and we found a way to win. I think that's just a credit to us knowing how to win at this point.

I don't anticipate tomorrow to be a slugfest like that, slow and shot clock grind and all that kind of thing, but maybe it is. I don't know. But we'll be ready, whatever it is, and I think our players are most confident when we can get out and go, but we'll adjust to whatever it is they're doing.

Q. Just your thoughts on the job Kim has done in year two of being at LSU and how much maybe has the portal helped accelerate that?

LYNNE ROBERTS: I've got to be honest with you, being in the Pac-12, I'm not super tracking with all of the -- how they built it. I know she's a great recruiter, and I know they have a lot of transfers on the team and she's done a tremendous job, but saying more, I don't know the ins and outs of how she got it going.

But clearly she has, right. She's got it going. They've got tremendous talent and speed and athleticism and they're playing with a lot of swagger and confidence. Hats off to her for that.

Q. Obviously y'all are an offensive productive team and LSU has been playing really great defense recently. How do you disrupt some of those defensive schemes and kind of overcome that?

JENNA JOHNSON: I think just sticking to our identity. We know that when we move the ball, we get good shots. I think we're hard to guard inside and out, and we take what the defense gives. So just being confident and being us will pay off.

ALISSA PILI: I agree. Just kind of sticking to our principles and just being who we are, like Jenna said. And I think the shots will come if we just continue to do that.

Q. Alissa, you've had a remarkable season so far. How have you stayed kind of mentally fresh and not kind of let what you've already accomplished get in the way of what you have to do going forward?

ALISSA PILI: I think just the type of person I am, how I was brought up, I'm very humble, I would say. So I just kind of stay level-headed and just don't let all the accolades get to my head or put any extra pressure on me. I just go out there and do what I know how to do.

Q. I saw a story that our station in Anchorage had done on you and I think your father said that she's 6'2" but she's more like 5'11" or six feet with shoes on. How do you play the position of post and go up against people bigger than you and score the points you do and have the success that you do?

ALISSA PILI: I think it's a lot to do with just my agility and body control and just knowing how to use my body to my advantage and my strength.

Separation is big in my game, I think, so just using that and being physical with bigger players also helps me score and get around defenders.

Q. How have you managed the expectations as the year has gone on? Do you feel like more is expected of you guys at this level even though it might be a little bit new for the team?

JENNA JOHNSON: I'd say yes and no. I think we're a competitive bunch and we put expectations on ourselves. Going into the season, we wanted to win the Pac-12 and then go on and go as far as we could in the NCAA Tournament. So I think a lot of those expectations are maybe more so just put on ourselves.

I think we also definitely have an underdog mentality. We're a very hungry team, we want to be very successful, so I don't think the expectations of the outside world or whatever you want to say get to us as much. It's just us being competitive and wanting to succeed.

KENNADY MCQUEEN: Yeah, I think we just had a goal set out starting in the summer last year to make it to the Sweet 16. And now that we've made it, we're not at all satisfied with it. Like Jenna said, we're a really competitive bunch of girls, and we're not satisfied, and we want to make it as far as we can. And we believe we can make a deep run continuing with that underdog mindset and not be satisfied.

Q. Do you feel like this team has gotten the attention and respect it deserves nationally for what you've been able to accomplish so far?

ALISSA PILI: I think as the season has gone on and we've proven these things by winning games and just competing at such a high level, we've definitely gotten some of that attention.

But I still think how these guys said, we have that underdog mentality. I still think there's a lot of people out there who think we maybe don't belong at this level or that we can't compete at this level. So I think just staying hungry and continuing to prove what we can do is just going to get us far.

KENNADY MCQUEEN: Yeah, just to add to that, yeah, I think we are still flying under a lot of people's radars, which is fine with us. We love that underdog mentality. We love being the hunters. It's nothing new for us. And just continuing to prove people wrong and the ones that believe in us, we've got your backs. So just keep emphasizing on that and going as far as we can.

Q. Alissa, it's obviously a team game, but everyone is going to be talking about the matchup with Angel down low. What kind of challenge is she in terms of what she can do as a rebounder and a scorer?

ALISSA PILI: Yeah, that will definitely be a challenge for us. And I think we're a great rebounding team when we really focus on it. I think we've been super locked in in practice to just limit their second chances because yeah, she is a great rebounder, she's a great player. So yeah, just sticking to the game plan and staying locked in on i, and then translating it to the game. We'll just be successful if we do that.