BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 9, 2005

Jina Johansen

Connie Yori

COACH YORI: Well, I'm sorry that we didn't give K State a better game. You know, obviously it wasn't what we were anticipating. Credit to Kansas State for playing their basketball the way they wanted to play their basketball. They really took us out of what we wanted to do. We had a hard time finding the basket. I'm not saying that facetiously. Obviously it was a very difficult time. We had a very difficult time scoring, you know, couldn't seem to get anything to go, even when we did have good looks. But, again, credit to Kansas State I think for playing with some good intelligence. They got out and ran, some easy baskets there. We wanted to try to up-tempo it a little bit defensively, but it's pretty difficult to do that when you only score six field goals in the first half. We weren't able to really get after it defensively in a pressing situation because we weren't able to put the ball through the hole.

COACH YORI: I don't know about the record. You have to fill me in on that.

COACH YORI: Well, she's obviously -- I mean, I don't know if there's been any adjectives that have not been used in a positive way to describe Kendra Wecker. I mean, she's a great player. She's a great player in all phases of the game. She's a competitor and she's a great scorer, but she's also a great defender on the other end, great rebounder. Again, you know, I think Kendra Wecker, we've all as coaches said a lot about what she means to this league and what she's done for Kansas State, to elevate their program. It was a typical Kendra Wecker day. Actually, she wasn't the one that hurt us as much as their team did. But, again, she's a great player.

JINA JOHANSEN: Yeah. I guess now hopefully we'll make it in the NIT. I think NCAA is out of the question. But NIT, it's a good thing to go to. It keeps us playing against the younger players. Play some or games. Lets me play some more games. We're excited about making any post-season, just having the opportunity.

JINA JOHANSEN: We couldn't make any shots. It was probably both. K State had really good defense. Like the last time we played them at home, it was kind of the same thing. We just couldn't make any shots. We didn't turnover quite as much this time. But, you know, their defense is good and they know what we want to do, what the players like to do. They kind of just take it away from us. That's basically it.

JINA JOHANSEN: Not right now (laughter). Maybe if we have a couple days off and we can kind of get away from this. But kind of, I guess. Kind of makes me want to play and not end my career like this.

COACH YORI: Well, we think obviously we can still hold out hope for the NCAA tournament. But I think logically we're going to be an NIT team. And we think that we can be a good NIT team and maybe make a push in that tournament and get some home games, and hopefully win a few of them.

COACH YORI: We played games this year -- we played in a manner this year at times that I was surprised that we could play that well. We won some games that we in a lot of ways probably shouldn't have won. As a coach, you go into every game preparing the same way, and you go in it with the intention of winning, but you also know that there are times when you are out-manned or out-womaned, I should say. We had some great wins against teams this year where, you know, if you put our team player to player up against our opponent, they're better than us individually, but I think collectively we won some games this year because of the way we played together. So, therefore, what Coach Patterson said is true. We did maximize and some of the things we had hoped to do. I think people know how to play us now. I don't know if they knew how to play us before. I think our opponents have figured out that there's some things that they can do to take our strengths away. I think that's what they've done. To me it's really obvious that they've done it. I don't know if it's obvious to the common fan. But it's pretty obvious.

COACH YORI: Well, I thought our effort could have been better. I mean, I thought we were tired. I'm not making excuses. But, you know, we didn't play with the energy level that we have at times. We weren't aggressive I think more than anything. I just said, "We need to get aggressive. We need to take the ball to the basket. We need to try to make plays and we need to get aggressive." You know, that's what we tried to do in the second half. I mean, we had a little bit better offensive production in the second half, but I don't think 28 points is obviously great. At least we were able to put the ball in the hole a little bit more. But we just said, "Keep fighting, but also pick up your effort a little bit and play through a little bit of fatigue." I just didn't think we had the emotional edge that we have sometimes. I thought that was something that I was a little disappointed in.

COACH YORI: I think that's a legitimate question. But we're going to get back to practice and maybe put a few things in that we feel we can try to identify that will help our team and find a way to score in ways that maybe we haven't before and try to identify those things that we can use. I think we wanted to extend defense tonight, like I said. We need to maybe get better at that. We haven't worked at it as much and broken it down as much as we would have liked, and we've done it more here lately. But we just didn't think earlier in the year we were deep enough to do. Then when we can't score in the halfcourt, we felt like we needed to go to that. So that's something I think we can get back to and work at and get better at. Hopefully that will help us get some wins.

COACH YORI: Thank you.