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NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOURMarch 31, 2007Matee AjavonEssence CarsonC. Vivian StringerKia VaughnCLEVELAND, OHIO THE MODERATOR: We'll start with a opening statement from Coach Stringer. COACH STRINGER: First of all, I'm excited to be here. When we started our journey at the beginning the of the year, certainly when we started our games, no one would have thought, including myself, because it was a difficult thing to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But I think the players here and the team you will see is a testimony to what it means to persevere and continue to believe when all others doubt you. And when you work together, as a team, realizing that one person by themselves cannot do it, but that we address the team things first, which is defense, passing, helping to see each other, helping each other and to remember that we're all trying to do the same thing for the same purpose. And that when all 10 members persevere throughout, that dreams can come true. So it doesn't matter where you come from, but it is where you're going and what price you're willing to pay. This team paid the ultimate price. And while I've coached many teams and I've had the good fortunate to come to some Final Fours, there has been no team that I've ever coached that has accomplished so much in such a short period of time that has been so young and yet, as they learned each and every day, continue to get stronger. And I don't know that I recognize how strong -- I tend to say maybe halfway through the season, closer to January. But as a rule, teams that I coach generally peak like in February. But this team began -- we were so far back that we just made a gradual improvement and what we finally got to -- the point we finally got to is the fact that we were not making the same mistakes, we finally embraced defense. And we understand and learned how to win games. We played some of the toughest teams in the country, if not the toughest teams in the country in the toughest arenas, and I couldn't be happier of five freshmen, three players who had played before, two young ladies while they're sophomores and juniors, really probably logged about an hour and a half all total. So in effect you have before you about seven freshmen. But you have fearless players that are happy to be here, but truly have earned it. Thank you. THE MODERATOR: Again, we'll take questions for the student-athletes. Q. Coach mentioned -- and this is for Matee. Coach mentioned there was a point at which you guys picked up on defense. Can you identify what that point was in the schedule? MATEE AJAVON: I don't think it was a particular point, but I think it was brought to us every day in practice. Coach, she stresses defense a lot. And you guys might have heard about it in the paper, but we were feeling it every day in practice. So it started from the beginning. We gradually worked our way into becoming a defensive team. Q. Essence, we heard from you know one of the ESPN commentators today about how hard Coach Stringer worked you guys to get in shape. That she had, shall we say, exactingly high standards. With full benefit of hindsight, how difficult was it? And were you surprised pleasantly or unpleasant by what she wanted in terms of your physical conditioning? ESSENCE CARSON: Well, I'm a junior, so I'm a veteran. So I wasn't surprised by what she was asking for. She asked the same thing of each and every team she has coached to her career. I'm -- I may say that maybe the freshmen were surprised, but we try to prepare them as much as possible. But they were still young so they still didn't understand the entirety of it. I believe once they got here, it really did hit them and as veterans, we knew that what she was, what she wanted from us was going to make us better. I believe that physical conditioning that she put us through in the beginning of the season really helped us, not only physically but mentally, to withstand anything, especially when you're tired, that's when you make poor decisions. So in the long run it really helped us out with decision-making as well as our physical conditioning. Q. Rutgers hasn't won a team national championship in about six decades as a school. What would it mean to for you to win the first one for in that long, for Rutgers? ESSENCE CARSON: It would mean a lot for us to win a national championship. Not only because Rutgers hasn't won it in, like you said, about six decades, but just because it is a national championship. Each and every year that's each and every team's goal. That's what every one wants to achieve at the end of the season. So not only would it be special for school history, it would be special for ourselves and special for Coach Stringer, it would be her first. KIA VAUGHN: Basically exactly what Essence said. It would be the same thing. I'll be excited and not only for the school but for ourselves, for our teammates and coaches. Q. Kia, you had a lot of success against Alyssa Hahn, Allison Bales and Audrey Johnson. Tell us what's different about Sylvia Fowles and what's the biggest part of the challenge that she is. KIA VAUGHN: You named all post players. Basically I go out and play each and every post the same. I make them work for what they want to get done. Sylvia Fowles is a great player. And with that you just work with great players and you can't really stop her, you just try to control her and maintain her. Q. Kia, you've redefined your body since coming to Rutgers. You got in shape. How hard was it and how has it affected your game in going up against these girls, these post players? KIA VAUGHN: Hard. It wasn't hard at all. Basically because it's just the process that I went through. Running and practicing with Coach Stringer each and every day. The weight just dropped dramatically. And it seemed like as I ran it just fell off. And I was running. But I was happy with all the weight that I lost. It defined my body, it made me move faster, feel more better about myself and confident. Q. Can you tell on the court? Is it different? Do you feel different on the court? KIA VAUGHN: Yeah, I feel much faster. Healthy, yeah, I'm always healthy, I eat everything, but it's just that the running is just what maintains the weight. Q. Had you not done that in high school, the running? KIA VAUGHN: College and high school are two different things. Can't really compare. Q. You guys really don't have one super star on the team. Do you consider that to be a strength for you guys? MATEE AJAVON: Actually, yes, I think that's what makes us dangerous. Any time you have five people on the floor that could possibly score, rebound, assist, it makes the team dangerous. So I think it's a plus for us. KIA VAUGHN: I think it's a plus for us too. Q. What do you think when you think about young girls who look at you as role models? How do you want girls to look at you? KIA VAUGHN: I would say that if you put your mind and your heart to it you can do anything. Nothing is impossible. Everything is possible. You just have to work well with others and basically have the will to keep on going. Even though you fail sometimes. And when you fall down, just have the strength to get up and wash it off and keep going. Q. I read something about the coach stopped wearing the school colors early on in the year when you guys were struggling. What was that about and how did that make you feel? ESSENCE CARSON: Well, in the beginning of the year after we were struggling, Coach not only didn't stop wearing the school colors, she threw us out of the locker room and took our practice gear and everything else that said Rutgers on it. That was just her saying that we weren't living up to the Scarlet Knights' tradition. We weren't the warriors that she was used to coaching. And she said she wouldn't give us our stuff back and she wouldn't wear school colors until we proved that we played as a team and let go of all individuality and come together. And not only buy into the defensive concept she was trying to push on to every one, and after awhile we started playing together. Started playing the defense that you're used to seeing by Scarlet Knights. And she started wearing red and black again and we have our sweat suits back. KIA VAUGHN: And our locker room, which I'm happy for. (Laughter.) Q. Can any of you talk about the legacy that Cappy Poindexter left because you all played with her last year and years before? ESSENCE CARSON: Cappy, she left a great legacy. She was a great leader. We learned greatly from her. We learned how to manage a team, how to keep everyone together when it feels like everything is falling apart. She was part of the 9-20 season that Rutgers had. So she knew what it felt like to be down and out and have no support from anyone. But all in all she still kept a belief in herself and in her teammates and the coaching staff. And that's one thing that really helped us out this year. Especially starting off struggling. And we just kept believing in ourselves, even if no one else out there might have thought that we would make it this far. As long as we kept the belief in ourself, we just kept pushing and pushing ourselves and we have arrived here at the Final Four. Q. Essence, have you noticed a -- has there been a noticeable change on campus with the success of the football team and then what you guys have been able to do? Is there more Rutgers pride? ESSENCE CARSON: Yes. Definitely is. Especially with the football program doing so well. I believe the school was used to a woman's basketball program doing well over the years, but we were never blessed with a great football team. Not only this year but last year they did pretty well. So there's a lot of pride going around, especially in sports areas. There's a lot of fans, student fans coming out. You always have the alumni coming, but just to see the student support is great because those are your peers and you get to see them every day. THE MODERATOR: Great. Thank you all. The student-athletes may return to the locker room and we'll start with questions for Coach Stringer. Q. On the same theme, I have friends that went to Rutgers that actually admit they went to Rutgers now. Can you just talk about what the boost has been like because of the football team and then obviously what you guys have done. COACH STRINGER: Our football team has just instilled a level of pride unlike anything I've ever seen within the state. When I left Cheney University I went to the University of Iowa where everything, the telephones and everything else, were gold and black. And that was just their pride. And it was like a cultlike spirit here, an obsession. That's what I thought initially going in there. But I come to understand that my children, all they wanted was a Hawkeye jacket. That's all they wanted. And I wondered, you know, as I left there, to come here to Rutgers, why there wasn't that level of pride. There's no question that the kind of respect that Rutgers gets across the country as an Ivy League school and as a great academic institution is without question there. But no one knows and unfortunately I guess in this educational -- in these educational situations or institutions everybody knows about Michigan, but do know what they're most famous for, academically, physics or astronomy or whatever, everybody knows they've got a great football program and blah, blah, blah. The same thing with Rutgers. What Greg Schaino has done is nothing short of a miracle, to see the Empire State Building -- can you imagine that? What do you think that causes that, the buildings in New York to be red or to walk downtown and -- with Madison Square Garden where people come from all over the world, millions of people each and every day and you see Rutgers Scarlet Knights. They did a sidewalk interview, with people from New York. They didn't even know Rutgers was there. And we're less than 30 minutes from New York City. How is that? Before. Now I understand that they even had "Congratulations Scarlet Knights Women's Basketball Team. Go Rutgers." And so people are identifying, and it's almost as though the two states, New York and New Jersey, are combined as one. And it doesn't hurt when you have people from the Sopranos out there supporting you as well. We have got a lot of famous people that have gone to Rutgers, but now people will hear about it and will know about it and we are benefiting from that. Nothing can be greater than the football program and I don't think it's going to be long before you hear about our great men's basketball program as well. Your friend will be talking to you a lot. Q. Having been around the game as long as you have, could you compare Sylvia Fowles to other great, big women in the game that you've seen. COACH STRINGER: I probably saw one of the greatest Lucia Harris. That was at Delta State. And they started the Wade trophy and all that behind her. I don't know if there's anybody that can compare to her. She is phenomenal. And all credit to Coach Starkey and certainly to Pokey, because they have done a phenomenal job. You always want to look at players -- a lot of people can inherit great talent and you move them and put them into a position, and but let's be real about that. And no coach is great when you just have -- you got to have players. Anyway you shake it. But there are also tremendous potential in the ability to mold that and bring out that talent and create the kind of great player that Sylvia Fowles is. I think that every coach that has touched her, i.e., Starkey and Pokey and Carla Berry and whoever the other coaches are, should be really proud, because, yeah, she did work hard, it's a testimony to her, but with all this great talent -- but now she's got a shot that she looks extremely confident with. Hook shots left and right. No one that is quicker. Bigger. She's like a guard. And you've seen her grow. She was just raw before. But to see the kind of talent that is there now is just really special. I have not seen a player grow so quickly as I have with her. Q. Without giving away any secrets, do you have to double her, what's the general plan? COACH STRINGER: We have to try to figure out how she -- she can't come out of the locker room. (Laughter.) To tell you the truth. They should watch her food and make sure she doesn't get sick. (Laughter.) I don't know what we're going to do yet. But as you know, it's going to take a lot more than -- there's a lot more than just one person, that's why you see teams change. She's one of the few players that she will change your scheme. She will make you change. You can't be business as usual with her. Because she's not a usual player. She is very -- if you even look at the offensive rebounds you realize she's got something like 130 some offensive rebounds, the next closest person has 40. You know what I mean? It's just this is a one-woman wrecking crew. I think she could play on the vast majority of Division I men's basketball teams. She's very good. And I just want to give her nothing but compliments. She's worked hard and the staff has worked hard. Q. Do you see NCAA title as something that would complete your resume as a coach? COACH STRINGER: Yeah, how could I not? It's something that we all pursue. I would not start the season if I didn't think -- but as I'm saying this year, you know, it was very obvious to me that when we couldn't pass the test and how we broke down this team, it seems to be extrinsically motivated. It seems that most of the time we're able to get players that are driven from within. Essence, who has so much pride within herself, she would dare not come up short in her work ethic. This group very clearly is stimulated when they know that there are consequences. And having said that, I didn't think that we would be here now. I would be lying if I told you that. But who wouldn't -- I just want to know what it feels like. And I worked hard, and everybody else does. But I should tell you that for the coaches who have had a opportunity to experience it, even if it's been once and you never heard from them again, and we have some of those, you know, and they just sort of fade into the sunset, I think that the measure of a coach's success has to be the people that they have worked with, what they have been able to accomplish, and basically where you come from and what you did with what you had. So within that, I can feel really good, really good. Because each year I'll say you need about eight players, you need eight players, you need eight players. You know. And you consider what the talents need to be and all things need to be right. But along with that, you have to be very fortunate that someone doesn't get sick, or you don't have something, there are always -- you have to be lucky on the other side of it too. And I would just like to be lucky and good and all those other good things. I'll always pursue excellence. And excellence is a national championship. So I'll pursue it. The first coach we played for the national championship with Louisiana Tech, and I just remember I had to take -- it seems like we were matched up with everything until we started making substitutions. I was substituting a 5-11 and Louisiana Tech was substituting a 6-3. You heard of Dennis Rodman? He had a sister and you know how great a rebounder Dennis Rodman was, right? Well, he had a sister named Debra Rodman, who was as good as he was and mad as heck because she was coming off the bench at -- with Louisiana Tech and she came in and rebounded everything. So, you know, I would love to do that. But I'll just do the best I can and the team will as well. Q. Would you talk about how Epiphanny Prince's legal troubles may have affected your recruiting of her and talk about the struggle or if it was a struggle for her to overcome that as a freshman and how she's played. COACH STRINGER: No, it wasn't a struggle at all for me. Because I think that everybody got a half a piece of information. Because I got the whole thing. Only thing I was concerned about Epiphanny Prince was two things: One is whether or not she could handle the way that we practiced and I had her specifically come to a practice where Matee and Cappy virtually knocked each other done down. They were going at it really hard. I wanted her to see that it was not soft and I questioned whether or not she was tough enough. Two, she's darn near genius in math. And so I didn't think that it would be a problem. She had many talents but she tests off the charts. She probably is -- probably, you know, the Waltons you hear about on a mountain top? I don't know how you come from New York City and you come with that kind of innocence. But that is who she is. Very shy. Pitifully shy. And just a wonderful, wonderful young lady. A great human being. I really know what happened and she was more of a observer and it was a teacher who stepped in to explain that Epiphanny Prince whose name was big as New York City itself across the country, was a young lady whose name was drawn into this. This incident with this other little kid and this other kid that got into the fight. So I was clear. I was very comfortable knowing how she was and who she was. I was very comfortable. I should tell you that 119 points was not the issue. Now, it might seem like it to most people. But honestly, I told Epiphanny the night before that she should not sign with Rutgers, should not sign with Rutgers, and the reason that I said that is because she had come to the practice and I -- she just -- I just didn't know that she was going to be tough enough. How is that? And so she didn't sign the papers yet, so I said what happened and she said, well, I don't think you really want me there and I said, no, that's not it, that's not it. I just don't want -- I want tough people. I just want hard-nosed basketball players. We are blue-collar workers. We're not silk-suit people. And she said no, I always wanted to come. She thinks the world of Kia. It's not that far. And aside from that, her mother probably keeps her in church about six or seven hours a day on Sunday. And so her mom wanted to be sure that she was close enough. So, you know, it worked out well. And it hasn't been a problem. At all. What I will say is that Epiphanny along with another freshman probably are two of the brightest basketball minds on the floor. There's nothing -- anything that she does, all things that she does, how is this, all things that she does, she will walk past you and say, well, the reason why I did this is, was that okay. She was a young lady when we took everything away she said, Coach, can I please run to the locker room for a second so I can shower because the other showers are really cold and I already changed my clothes and I got to go a class. And I said okay. She's a great basketball player a innocent person, great student, and we're fortunate to have her. And I'm really happy because I didn't believe what I saw. I came to understand another young lady. Q. Coach, you talked about Sylvia Fowles a little bit, and USC played her tough and was going to let the other players beat them. And they did. The supporting role players, like Allison Hightower, Ashley Thomas, how do you try to balance stopping Sylvia and stopping their shots from the perimeter? COACH STRINGER: You might look at the percentages, how often does Hightower or Chaney or these other people shoot, where they shooting from, who the person that is feeding the ball to Fowles is. What are their contributions. You play the odds. If you got to put another player on her then that's the way it is. Now I'm not sure exactly how we're going to handle this. We're a little different team than Connecticut. I think that we do apply a little more pressure than what Connecticut does. So it will be interesting. We can either just go set it up one-on-one and then apply a lot more pressure on the ball handler and make her make a difficult decision. But we do need to protect Kia Vaughn. And so it poses a problem, there's no question about that. And what's great about the LSU team is that a lot of players will -- a lot of teams will have great players, but they don't have guards that can get it to her, nor do they have people that are smart enough to know that you have something that no one else has. If you look at the second half of the UConn game, I would say 95 percent of all passes, it went into her. Against West Virginia, they were down, West Virginia, we beat them. They played them as well. So who are the common people? Well, in the first half, Fowles didn't touch it much. Second half, just chart the number of times that she touched that ball. To finish it up. She shot 8-9. And I can tell you that she touched that ball 95 percent of the time. Sylvia Fowles is the board for LSU. But don't make a mistake, because Hightower, Erica, you know, Chaney, all of these players can get it done. They're powerful and they complement each other well. And Bob Starkey was right about this. What also is exciting about the LSU team is they're very bright. It's very difficult for us to know the patterns, which we generally do. 99 percent of the times we can probably run a pattern as well as the team that we're playing. That also is what helps us to be there a little bit quicker because we have run -- we run so many patterns ourselves that we can anticipate, we know, but this team, it makes it very difficult because they read. You cannot guess anything. They read, they understand spacing extremely well. They're not turning that ball over. They do and can apply pressure and they will play you according to what you do. For example, if Matee is a 3-point shooter, they will play her close. If Epiphanny Prince doesn't take drives or takes drives, then they're going to back off. This team plays personnel and they should be given a lot of credit. Smart team, excellent offenses, execution and playing together as a team and they're playing for a purpose. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you very much, Coach, and we'll see you tomorrow. End of FastScripts |
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