NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 28, 2002

Geno Auriemma

Sue Bird

Swin Cash

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: I'm sure you'd rather talk to the players. We're happy, obviously, to have game time come around. We're all anxious to play. We're ready, that's all I can tell you.

SUE BIRD: Well, I think obviously our team is pretty experienced up to this point. And in past experiences there have been times, example being last year's Final Four where we had a team on the ropes and we could have gone up by a lot, but we let them back in the game. I think your killer instinct stems from that, we learned from that. This year we've been up by 20, and gone up by 30, gone up by 40, and the reason being, that we don't want to have any stones unturned, I guess. We just want to make sure when we have a team down, we want to keep putting them down.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Well, you know, it's not entirely true, slow, white pointguards like myself actually we don't have one of those -- well, we do, we have one of those, a big one. The other one is pretty quick. I think it stems from an attitude that you have growing up in Philadelphia, about the game of basketball. It's such an important part of everyone's lives. Anyone who is connected to the game I think grows up with a sense of history of some of the great coaches that have coached in that city. If you become a coach from Philadelphia, you take great pride in the fact that you have to be really good at what you do, and you play the game a certain way. And I've always tried to adhere to that.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Unselfish. I love to listen to people say so and so team plays really hard, as if that's a compliment. If your team doesn't play hard, you shouldn't be coaching. So playing hard and playing unselfishly, passing the ball in such a way that not only do you enjoy playing it, but people enjoy watching that kind of style and a certain toughness that you have to have. One of the great traits about Philadelphia sports is we're always the underdog. And I guess even though we're pretty good, I always think we're the underdog.

SWIN CASH: I think that loss last year made us go home over the summertime and really pretty much work really hard. A lot of people on the team came back, where we had a great preseason, we worked really hard. And then all year long I think we won so many games and people are wondering and questioning, where is your excitement. You won the Big East Championship, and we're not really jumping around. Because we still feel we have unfinished business. We're at the point we were last year, and I think this whole year was to build up to this game and the things we want to accomplish Friday night.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: I think they're playing more players. It's hard to keep track of all the combinations that they use anymore. They have a different starting lineup all the time, it seems like. There's more of the young players, I think, taking a bigger role. I think Brittany Jackson has a bigger role now than she did back then. I think Gwen Jackson has a bigger role than she did back then. So in some ways they're a little different than they were when we played them last time.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, that's a good point. I think sometimes there's a misconception that the game hasn't grown that much, because it's the same teams in the Final Four. And it's always being compared to men, which is kind of unfair, but it seems like every time we turnaround the Duke men are in the Final Four, Maryland is in the Final Four for the second time, Kansas has been there a couple of times. I think the same thing happens on the men's side, where certain teams are somewhat dominant at times, but I like the fact that other schools now have made it a priority in their programs to at least aspire to get to this point. And, you know, a lot of it has to do with a school's commitment to winning. One of the best things that I think about this Final Four is that you've got Pat Summit who's won six past championships, and Sherri Coale who was a high school coach six years ago. And everybody always talks about the new generation of coaches, and I think Gail Goestenkors and Sherri Coale are the new generations of coaches where they go into schools and have the resources, and their work ethic demands the school to win it. It all stems from having the right people in place, and I think this Final Four is a perfect example of two schools -- one school that's been doing it forever; we've been doing it for a short period of time compared to Tennessee; and two schools that I think are an example to any other school that wants to build a championship program.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: It's fine. It's what you would think it would be when two schools are very, very competitive and two coaches are very, very competitive. Sometimes you can stay and be friends and act like everything is hunky-dory, but the competitiveness, I think sometimes gets in the way. But I don't think the level of respect ever changes.

SUE BIRD: I think we play very well off each other. I think some of it started last year, but it's definitely prospered this year, we've gotten a lot of time together on the court, in practice and stuff like that. And I don't know, Diana is the type of player where I know as a point guard she's a dream to play next to, because if you feed her the ball, she's definitely going to do something productive with it. That makes it easier. We really depend on each other and rely on each other a lot, whereas if one of us is having an an off day, the other one will pick it up and vice-versa. And then you have the days we're both playing great, and that makes our team run even better. I definitely think we play off each other very well.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Well, that's a difficult question to answer, because we haven't done what they've done. They won a National Championship, so that's a question that probably has to be answered by somebody else after the fact. And if we were to win the next two games and people want to make comparisons, I have no problems whatsoever with being compared to anybody that's really, really good. If you go on to win the National Championship, you are a great team. If they want to compare you to other great teams that also did the same thing, I think that's a compliment, and I would feel very good about that.

SWIN CASH: Well, our team right now, we don't really worry about what the media writes about, and what everybody is talking about, because there's no guarantee that we're going to win the National Championship. I think right now we're taking it one game at a time and focusing on the things we need to get done in practice, to win ballgames. Our next task is Tennessee, we're not looking ahead to Sunday, because you have to get through Friday to get there.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: I think they might be better able to answer that question. I think one of the things that's kept us somewhat level headed and somewhat consistent -- one of the things I'm most proud of, we don't get upset very often. I don't mean like angry. People that aren't supposed to beat us generally don't beat us. And I'm really proud of that because one of the things I've tried to instill in my players is that the most important game in your life is the game you're going to play tonight. And I don't care what the opponent is, who they are, who's on their team, what their record is, how good they are, that makes absolutely no -- has no significance to me or my team whatsoever. It's just different uniforms every night. And I've tried to instill in them the sense that we're not playing against any particular team. It's like I equate it to golf. When you play golf, you don't play -- I know a lot of people do, you don't play against your opponent, because if he's lousy, and you jump up and down because you won, you're a dope, too. We play against the golf course, and par is 72. And we're playing against the game of basketball every night, and we judge whether we win or lose by how well we play that game, not who we're playing against.

SUE BIRD: We haven't practiced yet. I think we do that in a few hours. We haven't really talked about it either. I know it's huge. That's pretty much all I know about it.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: I have the same friends I had when I started coaching. I'm not sure that over the past seven years I've acquired any new ones, but I have the same ones that I had when I started coaching. And again, I think that's human nature, like you said. I think that the perception is that if you fall off the boat and land in the stores, and 7,000 people said great, we love women's basketball. My friends know what we had to do to build it. And those people that don't know me, really think I'm an ass. They think I'm arrogant. They think we're full of ourselves. And they think I make more money than everybody else, and I have more good players than everybody else, and we have more of everything than everybody else. And there are a few coaches that I know that really, really, really get upset about that. Some that have no business getting upset about it, because they've got pretty much as much as I do. But, you know what? You talk to my players and people that know me, we don't act like that. We don't treat people like that. We don't -- I treat my team like it's a high school team. The same way I treated kids when I coached in high school, that's the way we operate. When I have a party, there are just more assistant coaches there than there are head coaches. That's still a lot of people that I hang around with. But human nature being what it is, you know, nothing you can do to change that. The only thing I care about is what my players think of me and what my friends and my family think of me.

SWIN CASH: I don't think so, really. I think that there have been a lot of different players that have come into the program, but once you get into the program and you find out what it's about and the history that it has, and there's a certain way of doing things, you just fall right into that realm. And it's nothing bad. I think it's really great, because I think it helps you mature as a young woman and helps you mature as a basketball player. So I think there are certain things that the coach and assistant coaches have done for the program that the outside world wouldn't know about, but it helps you mature, not only in the classroom but also in on the court.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: I'll help Swin answer that, because she's probably too close to the situation. But, for instance, when kids watch us play Friday night, when the TV goes on, and there's a high school kid watching TV, that kid is going to make a decision whether they think they're a Connecticut player or not by the way we play and the way we conduct ourselves, and that kid is going to allow us to recruit them and want to come to Connecticut. By the same token another kid would look at us and say that's not for me. And once we identify who those kids are, and get them on campus, then these guys do the rest. After they spend time around them they'll just say, coach, this kid is exactly what we need or they won't say that, and that's a message. And then when the kid decides to go someplace else, they'll come in the office and say, coach, there's no way that kid was ever going to make it here. So they're the best at being able to identify who should be there and who shouldn't, and that's not to say that all good players should be there and some shouldn't. It's not for everybody.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Well, I do think that's one of the reasons why our game has a real chance to capture a lot of new fans. I know when I was a kid if somebody asked you the name of the starting lineup on every National League team in baseball, you knew every position of every player, because they were the same every year. College basketball used to be you see somebody as a freshman and you see them as a senior and you kind of feel like you've grown up with them. And that doesn't exist a whole lot in sports anymore, pro or college. I really think that's one of the beauties of our game, to be able to see Sue Bird and Swin as freshmen, and how they were, and now to be able to see them as seniors. And again it goes back to if you get the right kids and you know what you're doing with them, a lot of schools have the potential to be in the same position Oklahoma is in.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Generally not, generally not. But, you know, in a National Championship when three All-Americans get fouls, and we only played with seven players to begin with that year, we had to change our philosophy a little bit for that game. That's always one of the big concerns, especially when you play a team that's as physical and as much of a rebounding team as Tennessee was that a lot of fouls are called. In that particular game there were a lot of stupid fouls called in the first half. The unfortunate thing, someone went in and told the refs that. The second half was great.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, I think there's some benefits to that. I think there is. Yeah, I think there's some benefits to being the underdog. And I'm sure they're using it to their full advantage. Sometimes a perceived slight is almost as important as an actual slight. And you feel a slight, whether it's real or perceived, if they can use it to their advantage, that's great, great for them.

SWIN CASH: I think a lot of emphasis is put on the Tennessee game because of history, the two matchups between our school, and I think it started maybe before we got here. And it's just evolved over the course of the years because we've played them maybe -- the last two years I think we played them twice. So it's always a competitive game and it's fun to watch, but I think along our four years here we've made other rivalries with other schools that have come in and played as tough. I think anybody that you play is going to be a competitive game. But the Tennessee game, it's good for the sport, it's good for the fans, and everybody loves to watch that game.

SUE BIRD: I agree with everything Swin said. It's definitely much bigger than us. It started way before we got here, even though we've had our share in it, it's definitely much bigger than we are. But at the same time it's great for the sport. It's great we were one of the first women's games on that rivalry, where we get to play in a prime time slot. I think it does wonders for the sport.

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: It's taken on a bigger than life, I think, significance, probably, more so than it probably should. And it's probably because there's not enough games like this during the course of the year. But they always seem to be where we want to go, and we always seem to be where they want to go. That's why I think if we win tomorrow and we win Sunday, it will be pretty meaningful. Because in some ways, unless you beat them, you really didn't feel like you won the whole thing, you know? Just touching on the last couple of questions, this is the next chapter of your rivalry with Tennessee, but this time you're considered very strong favorites. Does it seem strange to be in that situation, maybe one of the first times in this rivalry?

COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Well, I don't know how to answer that. Over the years nobody's ever had more good players than they've had, since day one. They've had the best players, they've had the best high school players in the country go to their school since the beginning of their program. So they've had a huge advantage over everybody since the beginning. So, of course, no matter what game they played, they were going to be the favorite. And we've got a couple of good players now, so everybody thinks we're the favorite. But I like to think we play them the same way, whether we're the favorite or whether we're not.