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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 7, 2008Depree BowdenSha BrooksCorey ButlerNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE THE MODERATOR: Coach, if you could, an opening comment. COACH BUTLER: Obviously any time you lose a ballgame you're disappointed. We got beat by what I think is the best team in the country, and they're talented, they're deep, and obviously they're very, very well coached. There were certain aspects of our ballgame I was very, very proud of, and there were aspects of it that were disappointing. I think the thing that's most impressive about Tennessee is how deep they can go and how much talent they can bring off the bench. That's really hard to counter. Our transition defense was not our best tonight, and I felt that was where we really broke down. I was proud of our rebounding effort, that was a big turnaround from the last time we played them. But we were beat by an exceptional ballclub. Q. What did you think when you saw Marshae go down and how did that affect the game? DEPREE BOWDEN: When I saw Marshae go down I knew me and Sha would have to step it up and people off the bench would have to step it up, as well. It affected our low-post game because some people on the bench weren't used to playing minutes, so that was kind of different. SHA BROOKS: I didn't really see Marshae fall down so I didn't realize she wasn't in the game, but by then we realized that the post players had to step it up and the guards, as well. Q. Whose decision was it to wear the orange uniforms today? DEPREE BOWDEN: I think I had a lot to do with that. I like playing the orange. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, players. Anything for Coach? Q. Early on, I think Marshae was 1 for 8 out of the gate and you were getting some -- the ball at least under the basket. How discouraging was it you weren't able to finish there, and did you feel like maybe there could have been more calls and if things had gone that direction you might have gotten to the line a little bit more? COACH BUTLER: That was one of our objectives was to try to get to the free-throw line. We felt like we could do that if we were aggressive. Clearly I was wrong, but that happens sometimes. I felt like we were attacking and I thought we were being aggressive, and that's all I asked my team to do. If fouls aren't called or shots are blocked, those are things that are not within our control so not worth talking about. Q. How tough is it Marshae going down, having to watch her have to sit from the bench? How tough is it and how much does it change things? COACH BUTLER: Well, it certainly changes things, but if we were a team that we're looking for reasons why we lost, we're never going to point to an injury or an excuse. Marshae being on the floor or not on the floor doesn't have anything to do with the way we play transition defense, and I thought that was our biggest weakness tonight. Did we miss her? Absolutely. She's our leading scorer and our leading rebounder; that's obvious. But we're not playing tennis or golf. This is a team sport, and when things don't go your way in one area then you've got to fill in in another area. We were able to generate 61 points. We just gave up way too many in the full court. They scored 92, and I felt that had a lot to do with transition defense, or maybe I should say a lack thereof. Q. You mentioned the transition D. How hard is that momentum to get back against a team like Tennessee? COACH BUTLER: It's very hard. They're a momentum team. They generate their momentum. They've got such great fans, and you get all that orange in the stands yelling and chanting, it really creates a snowball effect sometimes. We just -- we missed assignments and I didn't feel like our communication and our defensive transition was what it should have been. But again, they're fantastic individual players. They're so threatening with the ball, you've got to match up with everyone. You can't miss one assignment or leave one person open or she'll be the one that hurts you. But they do a great job of making it feel like that everything is closing in on you, and there's only so many timeouts in a game that you can call and try to break up some of that momentum. In their instance that's players making plays, and I think that's one of the things that's admirable about the things that Tennessee tries to do to you is they just put their players in positions to succeed and then they let them go, and they do. They succeed and they fully expect to succeed every time. Q. What did Marshae do? COACH BUTLER: I really don't know yet. I don't know the details of the injury. The detail I got, she can't go back in the ballgame. That was the one that I was made aware of. Q. Inside ten minutes Hornbuckle was trying to lead a break and she missed two people in the paint that she was going for. She said one of your people got a hand on it, another player picks it up and throws in a three. Even when you had a chance to stop them, is that the kind of thing that when things are unraveling -- COACH BUTLER: A little bit. There's just no area that you can break down in. There's no -- hey, we won't guard her, we'll put two people on her or we'll stop the ball and not worry about their fliers, then their fliers will knock shots down. They're a very well-rounded team. It's a very well-balanced attack. You look at what they did numbers-wise, they had three kids in high double figures and two other kids with eight. So you don't have to play a perfect ballgame to beat Tennessee; I don't think that's true with anyone. But you do have to minimize your errors and mistakes, and that was the one area that I felt like for us was just not up to par today. Q. The final outcome was similar to the game in Knoxville, but it seemed like you guys hung around for most of the first half. Were you proud of your team for staying in it longer today? COACH BUTLER: I was proud of our effort and our fight. I felt like we had a lot of people that didn't fault until our tanks were just empty. That's always what we want to do. Our goal with this program, I don't think that we were operating under the illusion that we were going to go in undefeated this season. We wanted to go in and battle and fight and compete and feel like at the end of every day we had gotten better. That doesn't always mean that the scoreboard was going to be in our favor and the end result was going to be in our favor. Tonight was one of those games. If we had played better transition defense would we have beaten Tennessee? That's impossible to say. I know we were down 15 at the half and I think we had given up 17 transition points and then they outscored us by 15 in the second half and it was a similar result in transition. So there were a lot of things that we did make go our way. Again, the rebounding war was something we were really concerned with. We got our butts kicked on the boards in Knoxville and we responded to that challenge and got 20 offensive rebounds against one of the top rebounding teams in the country. Q. Do you think you've done enough now to be playing in the postseason? COACH BUTLER: I know that we'll be playing in the postseason. It's just a matter of who we'll be playing against and which tournament we'll be participating in, and regardless of how that works out, I think you'll see the same excitement and fire and determination and all the things that I think have been characteristics of this ballclub since we first tipped it up against Xavier, and you'll see our best. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. End of FastScripts |
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