BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 10, 2005

LaToya Davis

Darrice Griffin

Marsha Sharp

COACH SHARP: Well, I'm disappointed we didn't win. Lead it that long, as much respect as we have for their basketball team, you don't come out with a win, it's really disappointing. We should have made some plays at the end to win it. You know, we have to learn to do that real quickly, in the next few days, to stay in it. Next time you lose, you're done. From here on, you've got to make plays and you've got to understand the urgency that you have to play with. Baylor's a great basketball team, there's no question about that. I think they're one of the top two or three in the country. I said that last night. I've said it consistently I think since I was at media day up here in the fall. I really think they have so many weapons. They understand how important it is to make plays at the end to win. I think they've proven that in conference play because they've won a lot of close basketball games. You have to give them a lot of credit, maybe not on their best night, of coming out and making plays anyway and giving themselves a chance to win. I just am disappointed because we should have made those same plays and didn't. And that's frustrating whenever you see people fight as hard as we fought tonight and then not finish it well, I think it's tough. But, you know, I think the good news is we get to play another day. We get to go to Dallas and play the NCAA and host there. We're excited about the opportunity to do that. I think the Big-12 has gotten us ready to play. We've fought through about every situation you can think of. We've seen every defense, great players in every spot. I've coached against great coaches to try to get us ready to go do what we hope will happen the next few weeks. And I hope there are a lot of Big-12 teams that stay in post-season play for a long time.

DARRICE GRIFFIN: Yeah, well, we practiced that play a lot. We know that Whitaker likes to take it to her left-hand side and try to get the layup off. I think that -- I don't know, I should have been there, I should have blocked the shot and helped my teammate out. I was a step too slow, and she ended up making the layup.

LATOYA DAVIS: I think we took from that game is that we just need to come out and play aggressive like we did, and we just need to finish instead of, you know, being up in the last minute or two, fouling, letting them switch lines and then (inaudible) 10 points.

LATOYA DAVIS: We tried to play behind post players a lot and then double team on the post players off the weak side players. We kind of tried to do that. It gave us a chance to win, but we just didn't finish it.

LATOYA DAVIS: Well, it's going to be hard. Like Coach Sharp said, the good thing is we have another day to play basketball. We just have to realize right now, next time we lose, it's one and out. We have to be motivated for that, try to forget about this day and move on to the next game.

COACH SHARP: Well, we were attempting -- I think when we had Greenwalt in foul trouble, we got a little bit small on the blocks. We'd been able to enter it a little bit there. They did a better job I thought of taking away our inside game, forcing us to try to be on the perimeter a little bit more. I thought we missed a couple of good-lucking jumpers during the middle of that that would have given us a chance to win. Certainly, you know, didn't take as good of care of the basketball. I thought it got really physical when we were trying to turn a corner. They fouled us a couple of times, but we weren't one-on-one, had to take the ball out and try again. You know, we just didn't execute as well as we should have. We had a couple pretty good looks at the basket and didn't make it. I thought the play that Cisti made when she threw it back in out of bounds and we got the bucket out of it and it was a big one. I thought maybe it had given us just enough of a lead that we were going to be able to hold them off. But they made a couple of big plays and we weren't able to answer that.

COACH SHARP: Well, they have a lot of quickness. I think they can get in and out of help quickly. I think probably with that lineup, we defended Baylor better on the free-throw line than we did with Cisti in the game. They can get down and guard you a little bit more with people facing the basket, which is what Baylor likes to do when they're up high. That part of it probably helped us a little bit as far as the defensive end. We just don't have that big presence offensively to try to go into with that group on the floor. You know, we probably will have to learn how to do that in a year, but we'll have to change some offensive looks just a little bit in order to make that happen.

COACH SHARP: Well, she'll go attack you a little bit. You know, I think she's going to learn how to really use her quickness to be an explosive offensive player. We're going to spend the off-season trying to get her to handle the basketball and shoot it a little bit -- with a little bit more distance. I think when she does that, she has a chance to really be a special offensive player. She's a pretty good athlete. She can get up on the rim a little bit. Those things are going to be fun for us I think in the future. We probably didn't get her quite as many clean looks tonight as we needed to. They double-teamed her some, tried to make her be a passer. Sometimes for a freshman to try to make those decisions is tough. But give Baylor credit, they took away some of our strengths. We didn't answer that very well with some jumpers from our wing players. We didn't shoot it very well in those two positions, and it hurt us tonight.

COACH SHARP: Well, I thought -- we didn't think the ball went in at first. They had signaled a one-shot early, and then they came back I thought and signaled that it was a two-shot foul. We were just concerned. I wanted them to check the monitor to see if it went in or not because I thought there was a little confusion about how many free-throws they were going to shoot. The ball did go in the hole and they gave them one free-throw, then called a foul on the ensuing rebound I believe and shot some more. I think that's where the confusion was.

COACH SHARP: Great move. It was a great move on their part to do that. On my side of it, the only people I had on the bench were freshmen. We at least had one on the floor that had been playing some minutes. I knew that probably we were going to have to shoot a free-throw there. I didn't think I had a choice, though, but to leave her on the floor. It was a great coaching move on Kim's part to do that.

COACH SHARP: Well, there will be. I think we're mad tonight that we didn't finish it. I'm mad we didn't finish it tonight. But I'll get past that and we'll take some positives because we do have a lot of respect for them. I think any time you'll be able to play someone that has had as great a year as they have to this kind of situation, you have to realize, you know, that you've got a chance to play for a while if you can really make some plays when it counts. Hopefully, you know, there will be a situation develop in a week or two where we need to do the same thing again, and this time we'll make it because we were in that situation before. We had to make free-throws last night to win it, we did. We had to make free-throws tonight to win it, and we didn't. And that's what it really came down to.

COACH SHARP: Thank you.