MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 9, 2005

Lindsey Casey

Michelle Strawberry

Jim Tomey

COACH TOMEY: Well, we drew who we thought was the best team in the conference throughout the year, and probably the toughest match-up for us. They're big people, have a lot of size, obviously have size, but they're also very active and very athletic, and over the course of a long game, we're just not big enough to really hang with them for 40 minutes around that basket, and that's where they really hurt us, off put-backs and direct post-feeds and lobs, a valiant effort by Lindsey and the other kids. We have to hang in there and battle them, but it's a tough match-up for us. I commend our kids, we came out at halftime, talked about cutting the game to 10 by the ten-minute mark, and to their credit, they came out and that's exactly what they did. We had the game to I think it was 55-44, and we missed some opportunities off the press. We got a team that plays hard. We've competed extremely hard over the last six, seven games. We hate to end our season with a loss like this, but we commended them and told them how much we appreciated our players for the effort they've given us over the second half of the season. Hats off to New Mexico, they're a class team, they've got a lot of parts, a lot of working parts. You can see a great fan base. They will go far in this tournament and maybe in the NCAA.

LINDSEY CASEY: Any of their posts are all big, so when you see one go out with fouls, it's really no better for another one to come in because it's just that much harder. We play really well inside, even their bench players, so it's not really one of those things where they got fouls, she's out, we've got a chance to relax. You almost have to play even harder when the bench posts come in, so I guess no.

MICHELLE STRAWBERRY: I think it's very important for us to add size because our tallest player is around 6'2''. What really hurt us so when they lobbed it into the post; that our guards were so small that they can shoot over us. I think for this program to be successful we're going to need some size. Our guards did a pretty good job of trying to avoid them passing into the post, but size is really a key factor when they're 6'4" shooting over a 5'10" guard. I think size will be a factor because it's tough to handle.

COACH TOMEY: Well, the players with length that are really good tend to drift towards the top 30 programs in the country. There are other players with length who aren't necessarily as talented and are kids that you're going to have to work with. We've got a 6'4" kid coming in this up and coming recruiting class, and we've got another 6'4" player on campus tomorrow with her parents. We know we need to address that need, but to just go out and say there's one that's going to make an impact immediately, over the last two years, we just haven't had it. We haven't seen it, or we've lost out on a couple to programs that had a little higher profile than we had when we took over. We feel like we've put a core of kids in there -- for most of this game you looked at sophomores and freshmen playing out on the floor. We think we got a core that we can work with. We're going to add six players to this squad, and I think we've addressed the needs that we have. We need more quickness and we've got two extremely quick guards coming in, and we need size. We've signed a 6'2" and a 6'4'' kid, and I think we're going to sign another one. It's about building. I mean, New Mexico has been here for many years now. I feel like we're just getting started. We need to continue to grow and work with our players and keep adding to the roster. We need to add good people who can play.

COACH TOMEY: Well, it's very competitive basketball. It was competitive when we got here. There were two or three teams making the NCAA tournament the first year. You've got Utah and New Mexico who have been at the top the three years that I've been here, and that hasn't changed. They're still the best two teams in the conference. And I think everyone else is catching up. Air Force and us, despite our record, we're an improved team. The last six games of our league, you know, if you look at the results and if you went to the games, you saw a team that was in most of those games from start to finish. This team in particular has handled us and hammered us three times, and I think I've addressed why that happens. It's a solid league. It's a solid women's basketball league, and we're going to need to improve our roster in order to compete and get to the upper tier of the league. But it's certainly doable and it's a realistic goal, but it's going to take some time and it's going to take players. So that's where we're headed.

COACH TOMEY: Yeah, we've seen this game before, but a lot of it has to do, I think, with our lack of size. They scored early in this game by pushing it inside, and we had a game plan to try and prevent that from happening. Sometimes it's just not enough. You can get there and put the double on and they're still going over you. We have had difficulty shooting this year. If we shoot another three, four percentage points higher on the season, we probably add four or five victories to our total. We've also been a team that's been depleted and hurt throughout the year. I know that happens to a lot of teams, but it happened seriously to us, in particular early, when we're trying to build a team and put a team together and gain confidence with a team. When you lose your two best players, one for the season and another for eight games in the non-league, you've been working with a team for six weeks and then all of a sudden you're working with kids that you didn't really see as impact players. So I think there's a combination of a lot of things, but shooting has been an issue for us. We don't turn the ball over a lot. We play extremely hard. We defend. I think we do as good a job as we can rebounding. We get out of rebounding a lot because we miss a lot of shots. There's just more rebounds for the opponent to get, and then when you add the size to that, it makes for problems. These are things that we've got to address, we've got to get better at and continue to build on.