MOUNTAIN WEST WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 12, 2024

Gordy Presnell

Mya Hansen

Trista Hull

Thomas & Mack Center

Boise State Broncos

Postgame Press Conference

San Diego State 72, Boise State 69

THE MODERATOR: For Boise State we have student-athletes Mya Hansen, Trista Hull, with Coach Gordy Presnell. Coach, we'll start with you.

GORDY PRESNELL: Congratulations to San Diego State. They ended up with more points on the board at the end. They played very hard. We really struggled defensively one-on-one with them and got them to the free-throw line.

I'm very proud of our team. I'm proud of our season, and hopefully we're not done.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Trista, just take me through what Mya has meant to this team this season and in this tournament. She was big again for you tonight.

TRISTA HULL: Mya is by far the hardest worker on the team. She is in the gym nonstop and brings the energy every single day, and I think it just feeds to all of us. She's a big key component to this team.

Yeah, the hard work is just everything to us.

Q. Mya, what was working for you tonight? You scored 19 points.

MYA HANSEN: It's all because of my teammates. They set great screens. Trista is always here setting great screens, and also, Trista is one of the hardest too. She's always setting those screens for me. She's getting the passes to me.

When it comes down to it, it's my team working hard. I can't get shots off if they don't work their butt off. So they were able to get me open looks, and I took advantage of them.

Q. Take me through the last stretch of the third quarter and the start of the fourth quarter when you guys erased a 13-point deficit.

MYA HANSEN: I mean, those are the type of ball games you want to be in. Just those tight ones, that's what makes basketball fun and interesting and where I find the love for the game.

That's where you kind of -- you don't blank out in the moment, but you are just playing full motion. You just let your body take over. Just go out there and play because we've been in those situations before at that point. You just trust your skills.

TRISTA HULL: I think you just play for the girls that you have worked so hard with and that you just come together every single play, and you don't break, and you just hype each other up, and you have each other's back. I think that's what led us to cut that lead.

Q. Obviously a huge hit to lose Elodie tonight, but what did you like about the way that you guys were able to play without her?

TRISTA HULL: I think we just sustained that energy. Elodie is a great post player, and I think for me especially coming off the bench just watching her and seeing the things that she was doing well tonight, I tried to echo that.

We just had to rally without her. Even if you're out, she's still the loudest person on the bench, and she's still contributing no matter what.

THE MODERATOR: We'll let the student-athletes go at this time. Thank you, ladies. Questions for Coach.

Q. The 6th seed and the 7th seed playing for a spot in the championship game, both teams kind of having nothing to lose. How proud were you of the way your team played like it tonight?

GORDY PRESNELL: We would have liked to have played better tonight. There's three or four people tied, and they all have 20 wins, so the 7 seed really isn't a 7 seed this year in this league.

I was proud of our team and proud of how far we've come in the last three years. We have everyone back next year, and so hopefully good things are ahead.

The game tonight, you know, we beat them in the third and fourth quarter. We didn't lose it at the end. We missed a screen on the last play that would have really been nice if we would have set that, but we lost the game in the first and second quarter turning it over.

We had four wide-open threes that we needed to hit a couple of them. We turned it over I think ten times in the first quarter, nine times. That's where we lost the game.

I was really proud of our physicality. I thought we matched their physicality in the second half, and I was proud of our execution until the very, very last play.

Q. I was going to ask, too, how much of a killer are those kind of things, the turnovers and the offensive fouls as well kind of disrupting your rhythm offensively?

GORDY PRESNELL: The intensity at the tournament level is just everyone just tries their hardest. You have to adjust, and we got hit, smacked tonight, and we got smacked last night too. We made a good comeback last night and won, and we made a good comeback tonight and just came up a little bit short.

Hopefully we can learn from those things. It's hard to get to this point and you're so close and then you think next year. Well, we have everybody back, but Wyoming is going to have a wonderful team. San Diego State will be okay. UNLV -- you start all over, and it's hard.

I really like our team. I like the makeup of our team. I enjoy being around them, enjoy coming to work. So I think there are still good things ahead for us.

Q. How much do you look forward to this offseason given that everyone is coming back and you have a chance to get better and mature?

GORDY PRESNELL: We had some people really step up in the locker room, and they want me and themselves to say the season is not over. They want to hang around until Monday night to see if we get invited to the NIT, and if we do that, we get to keep playing and get to stay together, but they were adamant about that in the locker room.