NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 30, 1997

Aubrey Eblin

Wendy Larry

Clarisse Machanguana

Ticha Penicheiro

WENDY LARRY: First let me just say that I think Tennessee, with pressure, certainly took us totally out of it, and as physical as our basketball team is, we were definitely outmuscled, and sincere congratulations to Pat and the phenomenal job that she did with the basketball team. They effectively finished tonight, and we were unable to really defensively do much to keep them from scoring.

TICHA PENICHEIRO: In the first half we were intimidated with the pressure Tennessee was putting on us. We turned the ball over way too much and it had a lot to do with the defense. In the second half we were more relaxed and played our game and, unfortunately, it wasn't good enough to win the game.

TICHA PENICHEIRO: Last game she was guarding me, and Elzy is much bigger, has longer arms and I wasn't able to penetrate as well as I did in the first game. She didn't guard me the first game. If she did, it was for a couple of minutes. Really, it was more now.

TICHA PENICHEIRO: I think it was a new strategy. Everybody there was playing and they were all good defenders and they were coming fresh and I was getting tired as the game was going on. I turned the ball over too much and that had a lot to do with it.

CLARISSE MACHANGUANA: Well, Mery is a great defensive player. Of course, great at defense. In situations such as that, you can't put your head down. I thought we got together and kept on fighting. Mery is important but we had to keep on fighting.

CLARISSE MACHANGUANA: It was a physical game but I think that happens to all tournaments. It has to be physical, and I don't exactly think it was the physical game that made a difference. It was because we didn't finish as much as we should.

TICHA PENICHEIRO: This team never gave up, but for as many points as we were down, we tried to fight on the floor. In the half time we were talking about coming back. When we played Stanford we were down 15 and came back and won the game. We knew it was possible. In the first time against Tennessee we were down by ten and we won by 11. We just played hard. We had to live for a couple of seconds and Tennessee is a hard, tough team, and Coach Summitt and the players, what can I say, they play a great game.

AUBREY EBLIN: I think that to tie up the game and have the first lead and it gave us better momentum. It just wasn't enough.

AUBREY EBLIN: I sure did. I just wanted to get the shot before time ran out.

WENDY LARRY: Under the circumstances, with the battle that we fought on Friday, I think that Pat's plan to wear Ticha down was great. She was fatigued, doesn't turn the ball over 11 times in three home games, let alone one home again. Initially it took her totally out of the first half.

WENDY LARRY: We had a discussion with Mery about trying to stay on the floor. We were going to try to rotate her a little bit. It helped defensively. But what she did out there was kind of a physical push and shove match.

WENDY LARRY: No question. We had to go to the offense to try to get back into the game. Unless we had the ball, we couldn't get our defense set back on.

WENDY LARRY: We talked about emotionally and our basketball team can mature a lot in that regard. But I would say that some of the games that we have played, even the game Friday night, was just as exhausting. Tennessee was able to rotate a lot of players against Notre Dame. We, unfortunately, were not able to do quite as much of a rotation. I think fatigue was also a factor down the stretch. I don't think we had anything left.

WENDY LARRY: I don't think we were recognizing our personnel very well. There were times that we made very crucial mental errors defensively. I will give a prime example. Kyra Elzy is a great penetrating perimeter player. We were aware of that. On two occasions, defensively in the perimeter, we pressured her to go to the rim instead of containing her. We don't usually make those defensive mental errors.

WENDY LARRY: First of all, she got a great deal of experience. She has kids that have been here before. In her senior class, in her junior class. That's a great deal of pluses for Tennessee. But there is nobody on the Old Dominion roster except Wendy who was assistant at a National Championship game. So what has she done? She has taken a group of experienced players and she has brought the talented younger players along, and they believed. She said it best. They were pretenders initially and now they were contenders down the stretch.

WENDY LARRY: Aubrey worked very, very hard this summer and changed her body from a high school athlete to a collegiate athlete. She is a much stronger athlete now than she was a year ago and worked very hard. She has to work on different dimensions of her game, and she knows that. I'm sure she will be doing that in the summer.

WENDY LARRY: In our zone, we got caught so hot by Pashen that there wasn't anybody within five feet of Chamique. It was just critical errors on our part. Not to say she didn't receive the finish. She did that well all night.

WENDY LARRY: We talked about being proud of what they accomplished. We challenged the junior class. We have a tremendous class of seniors who have led this team a very long way. And now we challenged our junior class to take this and decide what they wanted to do with it.

WENDY LARRY: I really don't have any comment.