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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 6, 2007

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

THE MODERATOR: Now we're joined by Colorado State University head coach Jen Warden, student-athletes Sara Hunter and Marilyn Moulton. Coach, if you want to begin with some opening remarks.
COACH WARDEN: Congratulations to Air Force. I thought they played very tough. They're a very tough-minded team. I said at halftime that they're a tremendously well-coached team. I think Ardie McInelly does a great job with her team, with her recruiting. I think they're a very formidable opponent, so congratulations to them. Good luck against BYU.
I'm very proud of our players. I'm proud of our season. I'm proud of our players sitting to my left. Sara Hunter, again, I don't know if I've taken Sara out of a game since December. She's just been a terrific, terrific focal point for us. I think you could see down the stretch what she means to us because we trusted her with the ball every possession of the game, bar none.
Marilyn, again, seven offensive boards, tremendous consistency, tremendous temperament. You know, it's going to be difficult to see her go from the program. But I just look forward to her donations back to the program in the future as a radiologist.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes, please.

Q. Sara, it seemed like your shots were not falling there a lot of times, especially the threes. They changed who guarded you. You had a much taller player guarding you. Did that have an impact or the shot wasn't there early tonight? Finally came late, I guess.
SARA HUNTER: No, I mean, it didn't really -- some nights your shots don't fall. I just picked a bad night, I guess. That's when you got to make adjustments as an offensive player and find something that does work, go to the basket, create for your teammates.

Q. Marilyn, could you recount those last seconds and what was going on out there?
MARILYN MOULTON: Well, we just needed a stop at the end. I think we did pretty well. We held them off till the last second. It was a good defensive stand, but the last no-board was the game winner, so...

Q. Were you close to the ball?
MARILYN MOULTON: Yeah.

Q. Looked like you were fairly close.
MARILYN MOULTON: Yeah.

Q. Did you get your hands on it?
MARILYN MOULTON: No, I didn't.

Q. It seemed like when the shots weren't falling, you started getting a lot more aggressive, driving, got them on one possession alone I think they committed five fouls. Was that a very intentional, if we can't hit from the outside, let's get something somehow, get to the line, whatever?
SARA HUNTER: Yeah. You know, every timeout that was called or media timeout, coach came to the huddle. You know, she said, We can't play finesse. If we're not hitting from the outside, we've got to create something from the inside. Everything else will fall into place.
It just came too late. Ultimately, you know, it was really rebounds that killed us.

Q. Do you feel if you had started doing that a little earlier in the game, because that did get you right back in, it became a fairly tight game again, maybe it could have changed the outcome?
SARA HUNTER: Yeah, I think, you know, we could have gotten on a roll a little bit sooner and probably gained momentum, you know, potentially it couldn't even have been that close of a game.
But like coach said, Air Force is a tough-nosed team. You know, they outplayed us tonight when it mattered.
THE MODERATOR: Okay, guys, we'll let you two go. Questions for Coach Warden.

Q. What do you take from the season? Obviously some gnarly things happened. It was a struggle throughout. What are the positives you take from your second season here and where can you go forward from there?
COACH WARDEN: Well, I think the truest test of this profession, the truest test of any program, is the test of time. I've done this before. The Boise State players that I recruited just won the WAC championship. It's not going to happen overnight.
You've got to get talented freshmen in here. They've got to commit to what they're doing. They've got to believe in the future. They've got to see the players you're recruiting around them. You've got to love 'em.
That's what we got to do at Colorado State. Those things are going to happen. Those things are going to take time. Okay, we had a hiccup this year. It might take a little bit more time, but not that much more.

Q. How tough was it to be struggling as much as you were offensively? It looked like the things that looked like normally would go weren't going in the first half especially, yet you're still ahead by a point. What do you attribute that to? As bad as things might have been going offensively, you were still up.
COACH WARDEN: I think what you do is you reach a certain point in the game, and we were down nine, and you take notes on this so you know better than I do, I believe maybe with 9:50 left. It was getting close. It was getting point-per-minute.
The focus on the timeout, a lot of times teams start to gain energy and intensity when they hit a couple threes or their layups fall or they get a three-point play, and that gets them charged. So on the bench to that moment, you know, as you said, we're coaching them. Our threes aren't going, let's get physical on drives, let's force the fouls, let's get to the free-throw line.
Pretty soon you got to figure out, Guess what, this ain't going to be no offensive shoot out, this is going to be a defensive game. You almost flip your paradigm at that moment, and the next timeout we had we flipped our paradigm and said, Guess what, we're not going to do it with offense, we're going to do it with defense.
That's when you stick with Marilyn and you put your best, toughest, hard-nosed defenders around her. You don't let Air Force score, and you make it a 47-46 ballgame. And that's what we did.
I think you saw until the 1:21 mark, when we went with Nya, to get a bucket, we committed to defensive players and a defensive scheme. Every time we had to set something up, Sara Hunter was going to take the shot. Otherwise we wanted to score out of our defense and let our defense lead us and get encouragement out of stops, and not frustration out of not scoring.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks, coach.
COACH WARDEN: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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