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NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOURApril 2, 2006Monique CurrieGail GoestenkorsMistie WilliamsBOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS DEBBIE BYRNE: We will start with an opening statement from the coach and then please direct your questions to the student-athletes first. GAIL GOESTENKORS: Just excited to still be playing. I thought that LSU is an exceptional team and I thought that this was one of our best defensive efforts, really of the year. So I'm just extremely proud of our team and specifically of their defense. So I just, I give a lot of credit to Pokey, they have had a tremendous year. Excellent team, great players, and but I can't say enough about my team and the effort that they put forth, specifically on the defensive end. DEBBIE BYRNE: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. For Mistie and Monique, can you talk a little bit about the job that the front court did, specifically against Seimone Augustus. What was it that you did that made it so successful, held her scoreless at the half? MISTIE WILLIAMS: I mean, we worked so hard throughout the season on our defense because we were so offense-minded in the beginning of the year. And as the season went on we knew that defense was going to help us win games towards the end of the season. So I just give them tremendous credit. They got a job and they nailed it. And it showed. Q. Mistie, I would also like to ask about the job on the Sylvia Fowles that was done. She was not allowed to dominate the game either on the boards or on the scoring front. What did y'all do there? MISTIE WILLIAMS: She's a tremendous athlete. And she's got great size and she's just dominates every game. And we knew in order to be successful that we had to shut Seimone and Sylvia down. And it was just I think the post players did a great job in boxing her out; only three offensive boards and I'm just proud of our team, our whole defensive effort. We got a job, Coach G really trusted to us get the defensive job done and everybody, there wasn't one letdown on this team. Q. Monique, you were never shy of saying you wanted to come back for this chance, how happy are you and excited to be here? MONIQUE CURRIE: I'm extremely happy. I'm very proud of my teammates. I think our win was really a team effort. And it just feels good for me because there isn't any pressure at all for me to go out there and have to score 20 points or anything like that. We just have a well-rounded team and they really helped to get me where I want to be, and that's in the championship game on Tuesday. Q. Monique and Mistie, could you talk about the Maryland match-up in the final and specifically Maryland's balanced scoring, how that makes it maybe a little difficult to match up with them? MONIQUE CURRIE: Well, Maryland is a very good team. They're young, but they don't play like they're young; they play like they have been playing for years together. They have a great point guard who leads them very well in Langhorne. She's been unstoppable throughout the tournament, so we really have to focus on rebounding like we have been doing, and taking care of the ball. MISTIE WILLIAMS: That's pretty good. Q. Maryland obviously is your last loss before you went on this run, was defense kind of what you talked about during that, like that little period you took off where you came back or what? Monique or Mistie or whoever. MISTIE WILLIAMS: Definitely. Right when we lost in the ACC Tournament we knew that there was breakdowns in our defense. And it was rebounding and our defense. And we had two weeks, I'm grateful for having those two weeks where we were able to just break down segment by segment and just really work on our weaknesses. And I feel like that's really helped us with our confidence on the defensive end. It showed tonight and hopefully it will show in the Maryland game on Tuesday. DEBBIE BYRNE: Ladies thank you very much. Now we'll continue with questions for the coach. Q. Just elaborate a little bit on the defensive scheme in regard to Seimone. Did you want to have Lindsey drop off the point guard and double her if Seimone was able to receive the ball? GAIL GOESTENKORS: Right, we did a couple of different things. We changed it up. Initially we started in a little soft press, back into a zone. But within our zone we had Lindsey drop all the way down to cover any curl cuts because Seimone is so good at curling. So she, even though she was at the top of the zone we had her drop in. And then on misses we were man to man, but we were, she had all double responsibilities, Lindsey did, double responsibilities on Seimone. Wanisha had Seimone with the understanding that if she did get the ball, she needed to get her to put it on the floor so we could get a double from Lindsey. And I just, I thought she did a great job. Lindsey was really incredible. The defense on Seimone was very good, but the defense off of Seimone was probably better. Because they were the ones that really helped any time she put the ball on the deck. Q. Was there something you saw on the tape that said that they were just going to, that you wanted to give them pretty much any open outside look? GAIL GOESTENKORS: Several teams have played them in a similar fashion. You know who the go-to players are on LSU's team. And we're not the first team to sag off of white. She has seen that before. So we just tried to mix things up a little bit so they didn't. I think once they become comfortable with whatever you're doing, then they're very efficient, and so that's why we did that. But we also changed things up and ran some zones at them as well. Q. It's hard to shut down one player, you shut down two. How remarkable, you shut both down Fowles and Seimone, who have been dominating games. That has to be even more impressive. GAIL GOESTENKORS: I think that's really a testament to, one, our depth, but our strength of the inside-outside attack. When you talk about that, you talk about offense, but I think that truly it's our defense as well. Because when you double, Bales was in charge of double responsibility on Sylvia Fowles. Lindsey had Seimone and Ali was responsible for doubles on Fowles. So a double with a 6'5" and a 6'7" person probably they haven't seen that all year long because we do have that size, and we have got depth to continue to rotate fresh people on them. Q. Offensively did you try to take advantage of the height that you had in the paint? GAIL GOESTENKORS: We tried to. Didn't do a particularly good job in the first half. I thought that we could have done a better job with that. But then I thought in the second half we decided we were really going to Mistie early and try and take advantage of the size. And she responded for us. I thought she did that really well. Q. When Maryland pulled ahead for good then in the North Carolina game, all the Duke fans stood up and started cheering. Almost a sense of relief that if you were to go on to win tonight that you wouldn't have to go through North Carolina. Was that something, did the team realize what was going on at that point? GAIL GOESTENKORS: No, we were in the locker room and we turned the TV off. We were doing our own game preparation. So it didn't really matter to us who won, they're both excellent teams. We have lost to both of them the last time out. So we were looking forward to playing LSU and hopefully having the opportunity to play one of those teams again. DEBBIE BYRNE: Gail, thank you very much.
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