BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 8, 2005

Sherri Coale

Erin Higgins

Leah Rush

COACH COALE: Defensive toughness in the second half, actually shooting the ball well for two complete halves. It's been a long time since we scored 86 points. Kind of proud of that. I thought our intensity early on, our mental toughness, being able to fight them off when they're so hot from the 3-point line, which we did not expect, was outstanding. We were able to hang around because of that. In the second half relaxed a little bit, started getting some things going to the basket, opened the game up from there.

LEAH RUSH: Britney really came in and did a great job as a backup point. She knew what she needed to do and she really did her job. We've had to play without D times before this year. We know what we have to do when she's out. I think we played well when she was out.

ERIN HIGGINS: Yeah, definitely there's a sense of urgency. With Texas A&M, you don't want a team like that hanging around. They're very competitive, they play hard. Like Coach Coale said, we really focused on our defensive toughness. We also had 41 points at halftime, so we weren't shooting the ball too badly either. It's all about buckling down and keeping them from scoring. I really felt second half we did a better job of doing that.

ERIN HIGGINS: I mean, I don't know. They're a very good penetrating team, which is kind of how we played them in the first half. Once they start hitting the threes, like they were, they were really hot the first half. So you have to make adjustments. We did a little switching man on them, we ran some traps, which I think kind of took them out of their rhythm in the second half.

LEAH RUSH: She sparked it. She got a couple steals there. Those were big. Everybody just got a little more intense after that. You can't say how important D is to our team. She just brings these little things. I don't even know how many minutes she played, 25. But in those minutes, every bit of it was really important to this team.

LEAH RUSH: The difference between the first and the second half, I think the he our intensity. First half we got a little stagnant sometimes. We were just moving around, not really playing the way we can. Second half we came out and really tried to flip that around. D started making some plays, and the team followed.

ERIN HIGGINS: I mean, I think it's just you have point guards who can make things happen. You have Britney Brown, you have Dionnah, who can drive in there. You have to have somebody come over and help, because otherwise they're just going to go wide up and layup. That's how Oklahoma plays. We play together, and we find the extra person, we make the extra pass, whether it's a layup or a three. So I think that it's just we've been doing it all season, but I really think it's coming together right now, which is good timing.

COACH COALE: Yeah. We've been playing well for quite a while, with the exception of a second half that everybody in the room knows what I'm talking about. The difference was we made shots. You know, that sounds so trite and, you know, logical. It isn't really rocket science sometimes. You've got to make shots. You asked what happened, somebody asked what happened with D in the second half, what about her 12 minutes before she got that fourth foul and had to come out of the game. Her missing that first shot of the second half might have been the biggest play of the game because she got mad. She did. I challenged her a little bit at halftime, "You need to make a difference; you've got to finish plays." Because when D is good, we're good. It's one of those things, if your best player goes, you go. She missed some easy ones. When she missed that first one in the second half, there was a difference about her countenance, and I thought that was the difference in the game.

COACH COALE: Well, one of the things she gives us obviously is we get D off the ball a little bit and get to use her going to the rim, get to use her in fast-break situation, maybe even post her up some, and we keep from wearing her down so much primarily. But Britney is a tremendous defender. That alleviates some heat on D at the other end of the floor where D can maybe guard that point guard that wears on you after a while. You've got to guard the ball the entire game. Britney can do that. She has made a difference and taken some of that pressure off of D. But also in doing things that she can do. She's an excellent penetrator, as you saw tonight. She got to the rim a number of times. She's improving in other areas, screening and blocking out and a lot of little things that she's got to do better. I think her presence there more than anything, it affects everybody, but more than anything it helps Dionnah.

COACH COALE: Right. Our game plan coming in was to play the drive. I think I said to them before the game, They can't make enough shots outside the paint to beat us. So now my team is looking at me at halftime like, "You're a genius." I talked a little bit about adjusting the game plan. We were closing out short, playing the drive. So we went to long closeouts, forced them to drive and maybe make them go to their weak hand, give good post help, give nice backside rotation, which is a shell drill we work on every single day. We did a really good job of that, a really good job. Then we also ran some switching away from the ball which frustrated them a little bit, and covered some of our weaknesses perhaps in doing that. You know, our kids concentrated. We changed defenses a number of times in the second half. Our kids just have concentrated and adhered to the game plan.

COACH COALE: I think Britney is part of that. We had had some success in transition against A&M the first two times we played them, not necessarily in getting to the rim in transition, but in their taking away dribble penetration, giving us open threes. We got Higgins going that way. I thought that's how we hurt them worse in transition than with layup.

COACH COALE: Yeah, I stayed with her when she had three fouls and it was a 10-point game because it was a 10-point game and we needed to win. That's the bottom line. She's a smart kid. She's a senior. She's played with three fouls before. We felt like her presence was absolutely necessary at that point in the game.

COACH COALE: You're knocking my genius status twice in one night. No more questions from people from Oklahoma (laughter).

COACH COALE: It wasn't much. It doesn't take much. She is a great, great kid, and an intense competitor. And when you have a kid in your program for four years, you get to the point where sometimes you don't have to say anything, you just can look. You know how it is with your children, you can kind of look and they know. I just grabbed her right before she went out on the floor in the second half and said, "We have to have you. You're our go-to. You make us great." And that was it.