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NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOURApril 1, 2007Sylvia FowlesBob StarkeyErica WhiteCLEVELAND, OHIO THE MODERATOR: We'll start with a opening statement from Coach Starkey and then take questions for the student-athletes. COACH STARKEY: Well first thing I would like to do is congratulate Rutgers. I thought they obviously had a game plan that was very well executed, let the kids play hard. Obviously I hurt for our team and our fans and our administration. But I couldn't be more happy for somebody like Coach Stringer, who I have a great respect for a long time and realize tomorrow or Tuesday will be the first time that she will have a opportunity to play in a championship game and that's a good thing. I'm extremely proud of our kids. We talked about a couple things in the locker room. The most important was they didn't need to judge themselves based on this one outing. That they need to look at the entire body of work. I told them that you don't have to win championships to be champions. And in my eyes they're champions. We talked a little bit about the Apollo 13 movie that we used for motivation, and even with that, their goal was to go to the moon and I guess ours was too but what sometimes things happen and change and the crew was supposed to bring the ship back safely. And I thought that's what our team did. I thought we brought our program back to LSU, we have accomplished a lot of things and we have done it in a positive way and I'm extremely, extremely proud of them. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Sylvia, Coach Stringer did pay you nice compliments and said that she feels that you're the best center in the country. I imagine you don't feel quite like that tonight. What did they do to you to take you out of your game and have you had a game that you can recall that was like that? SYLVIA FOWLES: Not taking anything from Rutgers defense, but I don't feel that they, I don't feel that they had to do much. I just think I had a sluggish game from the get-go and couldn't get in rhythm and I couldn't do anything to help my team out from the jump ball. Q. Erica, they made a lot of shots early. They made a lot of shots with hands in their face. They made a lot of 3s. Were you guys you were out there, it wasn't like you didn't get out there. What does that do to a team? I don't want to say does it deflate you or does it have at least a momentarily depressing effect or did you guys just play through that? ERICA WHITE: A we just tried to play through it. And our saying tonight was we want to keep an even keel and don't know any negative emotions. If they hit a shot with a hand in their face you just say good shot. And you just come out and try to run the offense. And I commend them, they hit tough shots tonight. Q. Sylvia, you said you couldn't do anything from the get-go from the jump ball, it looked like you were still kind of tying your shoes when the jump ball went up and it was like that almost set a whole mood for the team maybe she basically took that jump ball without any opposition, were you kind of not ready, not into the game the way you thought you would be? SYLVIA FOWLES: I was into the game. Just couldn't get into a rhythm. Q. Sylvia, how physical was Kia Vaughn against you and how much did they surround you with extra players? SYLVIA FOWLES: Kia Vaughn is a tremendous defensive player. She gave her all and she did all she had to do to keep me off the box and keep me off the boards. And about doubling and triple teaming, what are, but it really don't matter. I saw that all year and it didn't play a big effect. Q. Erica, after all you've been through since March 8 or March 9, do you think it finally caught up to you, all the emotions that have been going through your head that all of a sudden after playing so well to this point that it all caught up to you you just came out and played plat flat? ERICA WHITE: I don't think so. We didn't play our best tonight and they shot the ball extremely well and I think that's what happened here tonight and nothing else. We just had a bad game. And it happened at the worst possible time. But I don't think we have anything to be ashamed of and I told my teammates, you know, people will say LSU has gone to the Final Four four years in a row and have lost, but we're getting to the hump, so the fact that we can't get over the hump, I think we should be proud of getting here and we definitely have nothing to be ashamed of. Q. Erica, a couple of the stats that are obvious not in your favor in this game, obviously the shooting, and then Rutgers out rebounded you guys. Could you just talk about those two things and what was going on during the game. ERICA WHITE: Rutgers hit tough shots. They hit shots with a hand in their face and I commend them for that. They shot the ball extremely well tonight. We definitely had our nights like that, not tonight. But when a team's shooting the ball that well, there's pretty much nothing you can do. We tried to contest it and I think we did that. They just hit the tough shots. They out rebounded us and we wanted to own the paint but we obviously didn't do that. And yeah, I just commend them, they played well tonight. THE MODERATOR: Thank you to both our student-athletes. We'll take questions for the coach. Q. All the screens they were able to set with their big people outside it made it really tough for your defenders to get around. What did you try to do to combat that or to adjust to that. But even when you got a hand in their face they were still hitting them. COACH STARKEY: I want to go over a couple things first, because I think it's really important along those lines. I think that one of the things that got us off to the bad start was our game plan. And I'm responsible for that. One of the things we wanted to do is we wanted to play inside out on screens and take the dribble penetration, the paint away. So in playing that way we allowed them to get some open looks early that I didn't think were contested and they weren't contested because we weren't trying to contest them. They came out and hit those shots early and it gave them some confidence. After that they were hitting some tough shots. One of the things that they did bother us with was the ball screen plays up top. Early on we were sliding through and I thought we made a adjustment to trap and I thought we hurt them a little bit, but obviously the damage had been done. Q. What do you think happened to Sylvia? COACH STARKEY: That's a good question. Every now and then Sylvia gets frustrated. She doesn't hit her first shot or she doesn't get a call or and sometimes for whatever reason it's difficult for her to play through. She's done that in the past. She doesn't do it nearly as much as she used to. And I think that's a positive thing. But obviously the goal next year I would think would be for her to work through that on a consistent basis where it never affects her. Q. Did Rutgers do anything different defensively against her that you hadn't seen or anything or just did it better? COACH STARKEY: Nothing new at all. They played man-to-man. They blocked off our four player which was either Ashley Thomas or Porsha Phillips and doubled her up and we probably have seen that nine out of ten times when we play. And I thought they did a good job of it. I don't think we were necessarily mentally sharp in terms of what we needed to do offensively. When teams play us like that we need to reverse the basketball a little bit more and get a few more people some touches, make them guard us. The best possession for us was the first possession of the second half when we told our kids that we wanted five passes and two ball reversals. And we did that and we got the dump into Sylvia and she got the lay-up. It was just a little frustrating that we didn't try and go about that a lot more often. Q. What's next for you? Did you say good-bye to the players or how does that work with the head coach not being here and you not being interested in the job? COACH STARKEY: I haven't given much thought obviously to that. My next thing is to go back to the hotel and pack and get on the plane with the team tomorrow. I did tell the team that if I never coached again that I was thrilled that this was the last team that I coached. And if I coached for 20 more years, I would never forget what they had accomplished. So I think that's important for them to know. And I don't know what's ahead for me. But I was tickled to death to be a part of them. I told -- my high school coach was here tonight and I made the comment to him that I didn't take them to the Final Four, they took me. And there really is a lot of truth to that. I'm awful proud of them. Q. The fact that you have everybody or LSU has everybody coming back next year, how do you think this team will remember tonight and use it as motivation? COACH STARKEY: Let me tell you something. This was a great thing I thought. It was a very emotional locker room. Every kid was crying. And this is the fourth Final Four we have been to. We have lost three previous Final Fours and I never seen a tear in there. This team really cared about each other. I think they were not just crying for themselves, but crying for each other. And I think it will be a great motivational factor for them. I think you'll see that they will have a great off season, Sylvia leaves on Friday for Italy to go work with USA Basketball. We, there's a lot of great things in place at LSU from our strength program to our trainer and these kids, they're wonderful. They're going to work hard. I think that obviously this team's best days are ahead of it. Q. The question was asked of one of the players, do you think that at times like this it can be a relief to finally be done or do you think any of that factored in the way you guys played tonight? COACH STARKEY: No. I don't think that factored into it at all. I really think that we came out and played poorly on a night against a good opponent who played extremely well. I think if there was relief that it was over, the locker room wouldn't have been emotional, there wouldn't have been all those tears. I think it hurt and I think that's a good hurt. I'm glad they hurt. I think that's important in terms of them being competitive and being able to take that next step. I think this team is more prepared to take the next step than any team that we have had prior. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much. COACH STARKEY: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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