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NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOUR

April 2, 2006

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

DEBBIE BYRNE: LSU is entering the interview room. We'll start with an opening statement from the coach.
POKEY CHATMAN: Regardless of how disappointed I am in our inability to perform better, it's not lost upon me how much Duke had to do with that and I want to make sure that's clear because so often when you don't get things done, it's easy to make it about yourself.
So I definitely want to credit Gail and her girls for their ability to stick to a game plan win, which maybe in their case may have been ugly for them, but it was a win.
But the bottom line is, the further you advance, the tougher the competition becomes, the more locked in and focused you have to be every single possession. It's not a game of halves, fortunate, we got into this point but like I said, we could have helped ourselves a lot, had opportunities, I think that it was the opportunity to cut it to six through a couple possessions it's then double digits. I'm done.
DEBBIE BYRNE: Questions for the players, please.
Q. Seimone, it might be difficult to feel perspective right now of your career, but can you kind of put into words what your four years have been like at LSU and your ability to go to three Final Fours?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: It's been amazing. It's a great ride. It's unfortunate, we have been here three times and never got past the semis, but it's been a tremendous time here. We have had great opportunities in front of us, for the most part we came in, I did what I felt like I wanted to do for this program, made history, and hopefully made my mark.
Q. Can you talk a little bit about Duke's defensive scheme, how they were able to frustrate you. I saw you several times frustrated on the court and things like that. What did they do to shut you down?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: Never frustrated. Just through the game I'm always mad if we're not running the offense as effectively as we can. If you know anything about basketball you could see the difference actually when we set screens, made the right cut moves, doing the things we need to do and tonight that didn't happen. We just were just standing around and it was easy to guard us. We didn't make them guard us. But they did a great defensive job of sticking to the script and doing the things they needed to do to force us into difficult shots and turnovers.
Q. Seimone, did you ever feel that you were forcing or that you needed to make the offense come to you or do you feel that you stayed in your game as much as possible?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: For the most part I felt I stayed in my game. I let the game come to me. It's unfortunate that I didn't score like I normally score, but we try to stay in a routine of getting paint touches, forcing them to play low post defense and try to pitch it out. But like I said before, tonight it was just a different story because of the way we ran our offense, it looked -- it made it look a little bit more difficult because of the things that we didn't do on offense.
Q. Seimone, at half-time did you feel any frustration or was it growing at all when you hadn't scored a point or how the game was at that point?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: I wasn't frustrated that I didn't score a point. I was frustrated at the way we played. I felt that we could have came out and played a little bit better, had a little bit more energy. Could have fought back a little bit more than what we did to kind of cut the lead going into half-time.
I said this before, if I never score a point in the game and we win or we're in a position to win, I'm fine with that. But I was just more than anything angry at the fact that we didn't do the things that we needed to do to kind of cut the lead heading into half-time.
Q. Sylvia, how frustrating was it for you that they kept throwing big girl after big girl at you and banging you around at 6'7", 6'5", coming at you. How did that affect your game?
SYLVIA FOWLES: It affected me a lot. As you can see, very frustrating that I couldn't get a groove. But it happened. I was very frustrated and I couldn't get no shots or do anything to help my team.
Q. Seimone, I know that they don't have anything to do with each other but after last night's men's game and the way that started off and you guys got in into a big hole, did it ever enter your mind, oh no, here we go?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: No. I don't think the men's game had an effect on how we played. We just came out and didn't do what we needed to do, and I think it's been an ongoing thing for us, always starting out sluggish and having to come back and make up the slack for what we didn't do in the five to 10 minutes of the game. The men's game had nothing to do with the fact that we came out sluggish. We were still proud of them, we still cheered them on regardless, but we knew what we had to do and we just didn't come out and do it.
DEBBIE BYRNE: Ladies, thank you very much. We're going to let you go back to the locker room and now we'll continue with questions for the coach, please.
Q. Could you talk a little bit about the defensive scheme you saw and the one they threw at Seimone. Obviously it had to be one of the most effective jobs any team has done against you. Anyone come close to that this year?
POKEY CHATMAN: You know, I guess I would answer it saying, no, because of the end result and the number of points she had. But it's also easy for me to go back and see why she didn't do that, and please understand I'm crediting Duke's defense. I could do a better job answering that more clearly for you in the fact that we didn't do the normal things when we saw the same defense we had been seeing for three and a half years, four years of Seimone's career. That's the part that's difficult for me to answer.
Credit to Seimone because she garners that type of attention. It wasn't new, it wasn't a different scheme, maybe it was at a different time of year and they did it a little bit better, and we didn't equal that with the same effectiveness.
Q. She actually only touched the ball six times in the first half, that sort of happened for the first five minutes against DePaul too, then all of a sudden you started settings picks and screens and getting her open. Is that what happened tonight but no picks and screens weren't being set properly?
POKEY CHATMAN: A couple of things. We have three rules for a cutter when a screen is set, and that's to wait, wait, wait. And that's being patient. A lot of times when we were setting the screen for Seimone, it's not necessarily for her to get a touch, she just draws a lot of attention. But if you don't set the screen at the proper angle, if you don't wait for it and then when you come off of it, two or three players don't guard you unless other people get going. So it was a combination of things. Seimone leads in scoring, but it's also team offense, where there's about three or four things that go into that. The screen doesn't necessarily have to lead to a cut but it needs to lead to a good angle and timing. The timing was off, it was all off.
Q. Can you put into perspective what she has meant to the university and how much you'll miss her .
POKEY CHATMAN: Yeah, that's easy to do. I'm a realist. I'm good at perspective, but I'm also emotional. It will take about two seconds to give the proper answer to sum her up: Her legacy will not be this last game. And that's as good as I can do. But I think that sums it all up. Because I've always talked about Seimone and her ability to elevate a program and put us in position to be on this stage. It's just unfortunate that this last attempt for an advancement, we fell short and the manner in which we fell short. But I don't think it changes what she's done for the game, especially at LSU.
DEBBIE BYRNE: Coach, thank you very much.
POKEY CHATMAN: Thank you.

End of FastScripts...

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NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOUR

April 2, 2006

Seimone Augustus

Pokey Chatman

Sylvia Fowles