MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 9, 2005

Ashley Elliott

Joe Legerski

Hanna Zavecz

COACH LEGERSKI: It was one of those ball games that we've had with UNLV all year and we ended up defeating them by three at our place, they defeated us by four and then they ended up getting us again today by five, but all three ball games were possession-by-possession type ball games, and we just need to make a few more plays than what we were able to finish up with today. To start the game, to be down by 13, I give credit to a young group of players that refused to give in and make a ballgame out of this, and for that I'm very happy for them and pleased for myself that this team is developing that kind of attitude.

ASHLEY ELLIOTT: I think definitely if we would have hit one of those threes it would have changed the momentum. We were fighting back the whole time, but we just weren't really able to get ahead. It's so much harder for you to shoot when you're down by 2 than when you're up by 2. It could have changed the game but the shots didn't fall but we shot them with confidence, and that's all you can really ask.

HANNA ZAVECZ: I agree with Ashley. It's a lot easier to make shots when you're up. We had a majority of the crowd on our side tonight, so that would have erupted the stadium, we just really needed one of those to drop.

ASHLEY ELLIOTT: You know, I don't think so. They put a little bit of pressure on the whole game, and we just weren't able to come up with some shots down at the end. They put a little bit more pressure on me at the outside, but we still had our open shots, and they just weren't falling, so you can't ask for anything else.

COACH LEGERSKI: Well, we're not a zone team, and probably for the people that follow us, you're probably as surprised as most people to see us do that. You know, we have a tough time matching up with people. We don't have a great deal of size inside, and so at times that's something that we knew that we had to go to, and then you just hope that they don't make shots. I thought Erin Hicks did an unbelievable job of making plays off the wing because they were trying to go high and low on us and she probably came up with two or three big steals in the end of the game, and we just tried to make sure that we never created a situation where they were able to go one-on-one and we were able to make the zone a little bigger and try to rebound out of it.

COACH LEGERSKI: When you play in what I call championship play, one game in and out, you win the ballgame, you go home. Players need to step up and make plays at big times, and when we were down one with about four minutes to go, Hanna had a good look at a three and Erin had a good look at a three and neither one would drop for us, and then they did make their play, so you have to give credit to Vegas for stepping up and making plays when they needed to make the plays, and I thought that was one of the differences in the outcome of the ballgame is who could make a play in the last three and a half minutes of the ballgame.

COACH LEGERSKI: We're in there thanking the seniors for all the effort they gave to kind of get this foundation built and to remind them that this was the first upper division finish for a Wyoming team in eight years, and so even though when you come to tournament you want to keep moving on, I have to put the whole year in perspective sometimes and I'll probably do that about a month from now, but it was a heck of an effort by a young group of players that's trying to change a mentality of Wyoming, and as I've mentioned to people, I think the Mountain West is as good as what it's been. This league is getting tougher. We talk about improving, but it's difficult to move up in the standings just because of the strength at the top, and what this is doing is we're just trying to close the gap in ballgames and trying to make sure that we're one of the competitive ones, night in and night out.