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BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 7, 2007Kathy McConnell-MillerJackie McFarlandHannah SkildumOKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA MODERATOR: We're now joined by Colorado. Coach, your comments about the game and your thoughts about this afternoon's performance. COACH McCONNELL-MILLER: Well, it wasn't pretty. But it wasn't for lack of effort or a true commitment to coming in here and trying to beat A&M. But you gotta give all the credit to A&M. They're a phenomenal team. They're the type of team that makes it impossible to run your stuff. They denied the wing entries. They denied the post entries. They put an amazing amount of pressure on the basketball. Their depth is exceptional. And there's really no weak spot in their top six players. So for us we felt like our strength was inside. But we really struggled to get the ball to the wings. We struggled to get the ball inside and really their pressure was too much for us. Q. Kathy, will you just expand on even getting the ball touches for Jackie was pretty hard. And they really, I think it was Reado, you know, kind of undersized but did a pretty good job on her. COACH McCONNELL-MILLER: I think it was a pretty physical game. And it's not one that Jackie particularly loves. But I thought they did a great job of fronting her, not allowing touches, and it was very difficult for us to get it, to lob it when she did have position because the ball pressure was great. Our guards kept picking it up. You know, we weren't just trying to get the ball to Jackie, there were a lot of things that I thought they took away from us. Jackie was part of our options. We needed Kara, Jasmina struggled a little bit on the offense to score, and with that type of pressure we just took bad shots. We took them bad and we took them early. Q. Kathy, could you expound on guard play not being able to get the extra passes. You mentioned it earlier. But also a little impatient on waiting for the wings to clear and making passes just to get the ball into the post? COACH McCONNELL-MILLER: You know, when we try to do a lot of dribble entries, we try to change up our sets a little bit. I think which leads to the lack of assists. We didn't do a good job of putting the ball in people's hands. Any time we scored, it was really off of penetration. It was off of an offensive board or it was just, you know, working somebody to get to the rim. They're good. They wait on top of your screens, whether you got a double stack high, double stack low. Inverted screen. It doesn't matter. They'll switch it. They'll get up on the wings and denying. Whitney is not the best at entering the ball into the wing to begin with, yet she's better full court than Susie Powers would have been. So it was really a Catch-22. If you have Susie at the point where you're struggling to get it up, you have Whitney at the point, we're going to get it up. But at the half court, we just weren't able to didn't execute. They're quick, they overplay, they deny. Q. Jackie, can you sort of expand on what Coach was saying, do you almost feel like sometimes playing Texas A&M you keep trying and trying almost like they force you to try to do more than you can even do? JACKIE McFARLUND: I don't necessarily think I'm forced to do more than I can. I think we struggle when we can't get the ball inside and use our inside/outside game, and that's not just me. That's Kara, too, and some of our other posts. And we never got set into our offense. So I think when you do get the ball inside, kind of need to make the most of it. Q. In the second half, when you were down by 6, 11 run, what keyed that run for them? COACH McCONNELL-MILLER: We were in the zone. We were doing a great job in the zone with the exception of a few slips in the back of the zone and then they start hitting their outside shots. We were trying to take away their penetration. We were trying to take away what they were going to do on the offensive end. In the zone they were one and done in the zone we were going to have them rely on their guards to hit shots. And I think Jackie was on the line to get us to 6. And then they just stepped up and hit shots. A'Quonesia Franklin hit one with the shot clock winding down. When they hit the 3s is when they broke it open. Q. Coach, why do you think you were never able to get ahold on the turnover issue this year? COACH McCONNELL-MILLER: Well, I think a couple of things. There's no doubt that our strength is in our front line, which is where our experience is as far as playing time and being in this situation. Our weakness all year has been our guard play for a few reasons. The youth of the guards; the inexperience at this level, coming in playing Big 12 schedule. A really tough non-conference schedule. I think one thing if I were to do differently was schedule a little bit better in the non-conference to give these players a little bit more confidence, because players like Whitney Houston and Candace Rucker and Aija and Bianca and have been battling tough teams all year. There has been no let up in our schedule. So they never really got the chance to get any momentum, great games back to back. It's been tough for them all year. So I think we work on it. It's something I think it's a mental thing. I think we've tried several things as far as watching film, different wing entries. Sometimes fatigue set in. And you know you also gotta, when we talk about the turnovers, I know most people think it is just our guards. But you know yesterday our 3, 4, 5 hit 15 of our 25 turnovers. Sometimes it's travel, three second calls, offensive fouls. It's really a combination of all of them. We do concentrate on taking care of the basketball. Sometimes -- most times it hasn't translated. It's something we'll have to work on in the off season. Q. Either Jackie or Hannah can answer this question. Just talk about the physical play inside the post. Coach mentioned about trying getting lobs on the inside, but you all were always getting fronted or backed up, two on one or weak side help. JACKIE McFARLUND: The physical nature of this game really didn't bother me. We played more physical teams. It was the pressure of the guards getting into the post. I don't think they even helped that much on the backside but whether they fronted or whether I was in front and they were playing behind me, I think we struggled getting the ball inside. HANNAH SKILDUM: I think on the guards it's hard to get open on the wings. I think we struggled with that. So that was definitely something that we needed to do better this game. Q. Kathy, what did winning yesterday do for the program and do for giving you a boost in terms of next year? COACH McCONNELL-MILLER: Well, I think it's progress, and that's just the way we have to look at it. We won nine games last year. 13 games this year. First win in the tournament. But, you know, that's all it is. It's just progress. And with this particular group, I've seen so much progress throughout the year. I've seen Jackie do incredible things with a great group of young women that she's been a great leader for them. She's brought them along. Put them underneath her wing and really tried to lead them. There's been some great games. There's been some not so great games. We've played well at home. We really struggled on the road. There's just a lot of things that we're going to look back at and learn from. But the biggest part for us is to bring our guards along a little bit quicker and to be able to have a more balanced attack. I'm excited we won yesterday. I don't think our players were satisfied with that. I don't think they rested on that. But it was definitely progress made. End of FastScripts |
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