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BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 7, 2006Kiera HardyLaToya HowellDanielle PageConnie YoriDALLAS, TEXAS COACH YORI: Well, you know the old saying in March is survive in advance, and obviously that's what we did. And it wasn't the prettiest of games, but we found a way to get it done. At this time of the year, it doesn't really matter how you get it done. You just need to get it done. And Colorado played really well, they played really hard, they played with a lot of emotion, a lot of energy. They came here with the intention of winning. It's interesting, we played a lot better lately than we played tonight but I thought Colorado played us hard. I thought we got good bench contributions particularly out of Danielle Page and TK LaFleur. Even though we didn't win the battle of the boards, we competed in that area, which is always important for us, and we won the battle of turnovers, which is something that we would have expected in this game. Q. Talk about taking a while to get a handle on the game to finally getting the lead, how frustrating was that and what did you do to get over the hump in the second half? KIERA HARDY: I think any time you play a team three times, you come out not as fired up, and they came out ready, ready to play us today. They knew that they didn't want to go home. It took us awhile to get into the game, and once we got settled down and got used to the environment, I thought we played together and did what we had to do to win the game. DANIELLE PAGE: I thought coming into a new court, I thought we had to get used to it, get used to the rims. And it's postseason play and everyone steps it up a notch. It took us two or three minutes to step it up a notch like every other team does. I definitely thought we did it later in the game and I think it showed. LaTOYA HOWELL: Like Kiera said, I think they came out really ready to play. It's hard to beat a team three times. Ilic, they hit some tough shots and put them on our back a little bit, we had to pay more attention to her and so other people were able to open up and get some pretty good shots. I think we were able to find our rhythm and make a run and it wasn't pretty, but we were able to pull it out. Q. Kiera, when they took that lead with four or five minutes left what did you feel you needed to do to regain control of the game? KIERA HARDY: Just stay poised. All year long, we've been either down or up by one or in those type of situations so, basically just stay calm and I thought we did that. We executed better towards the end when it counted. Q. Can you talk about what you were trying to do to McFarlund and frustrate her with double teams? COACH YORI: Well, we didn't double her much the first two times we played them, but individually I thought we did a good job on her in both games. We felt like, you know, after looking at the film and identifying their strengths, we felt like it was -- and I think, you know, we just felt like Jackie is really a competitor, and I felt like she was going to try to have a big game and I think she is that kind of kid. So we made the decision to double-team her, and we did cause a little frustration there. But in doing so, that also means that we are in rotation a lot and you end up giving up shots. Case in point, to Jasmina Ilic, we gave up some shots out of rotation and lost her there. Q. Was there one thing in particular that you were not doing well when they got up by 11, was it getting out of rhythm or anything in particular? COACH YORI: Well, I didn't think we were in rhythm the entire game offensively. Just we didn't play well on offense overall. I didn't think our execution was very sharp. We didn't stay organized enough. We were impatient, I thought particularly in the first half. Just we did not execute very well, overall, throughout the game and I thought it caught up to us. I do think, though, you know, that Chelsea Aubry's three-point shot was a huge shot, and they take the lead and we do a nice job executing out of a staggered screen and got her a shot. Q. Your thoughts on tomorrow's matchup with A&M? COACH YORI: I wish they were the tired team. (Laughing). You know, they play with enough energy as it is. They will bring a lot of energy to the basketball court tomorrow night, and will pressure and will get up and guard and create a lot of things obviously for their offense from their defense. The first time we played them, we had 25 turnovers. We dug ourselves in a huge hole. We were down 19-4 the first time we played them. You know, that was part of a coaching decision on my part. They hit shots from the perimeter, first time we played them, and everybody in the game, and as the game got going, I thought we were more competitive. But, you know, bottom line is, they are a team that's playing with a lot of energy and their defense is -- if you thought tonight was ugly, you know, wait till tomorrow night. (Laughing).
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