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BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT


March 12, 2008


Alyssa Hollins

Jessra Johnson

Cindy Stein


KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

THE MODERATOR: Coach, your thoughts on this afternoon's game. We're now joined by Missouri.
COACH STEIN: I give the credit to Texas A&M. Going into this game, I thought they were the most experienced team in the Big 12. Not only the best defensive team in our league, but one of the top 5 defensive teams in the country, and they gave us all the reasons why I thought that.
You've got to play with a lot of poise, and you've got to have playmakers. And obviously, I've got two great playmakers next to me, but we've got to get a lot of help, and I think we're learning how to do that, and we'll continue to battle, but these two young ladies next to me have given us a lot to work for and a lot of positives going into next season.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for our student athletes?

Q. How much did fatigue play in the game?
COACH STEIN: I think it did play. You don't like to say that, but I felt like we hit a wall in the first half, you could see it in 'em. Kinda ran out of juice. That's where obviously your depth has to come in and bring in that energy. I thought our kids battled; I just didn't feel like we had the legs we had yesterday.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student athletes?

Q. Jessra, how gassed were you after yesterday? Even so, despite that, last time when you guys played A&M, you had eight turnovers. Today only two, so despite that, you played well today.
JESSRA JOHNSON: Personally, I don't feel like I played to my ability, but I just came in after yesterday hoping that we could pull out another victory.

Q. Alyssa, could you expand on what Coach talked about, the defense. Can you talk about how tough it is to get open on them and get good looks?
ALYSSA HOLLINS: Everybody knows about their defense, and they were face-guarding there. And every time I came off of an on-ball screen, there was a trap there. So they were making it tough for me, and you've got to give it to them, but I still need to knock shots down.

Q. Both players, can you talk about winning the game like you did yesterday; does that give you the feeling you could beat anybody? Was that the mindset afterwards, leading up to this today, that you guys were going to get it done today? You got that confidence and it was going to carry you for a while?
ALYSSA HOLLINS: After the victory yesterday, our team felt like we were No. 1 in the country, so I would say, yeah, we had confidence coming into this game. Like Coach Stein said, I think we hit a wall.
JESSRA JOHNSON: I think we came out feeling like we could play anybody, and Texas A&M is a great team. They were prepared, and I feel like they came out and took care of business.

Q. Even with today's result, how can you use your tournament here as kind of a building block for next season?
JESSRA JOHNSON: I think the whole experience is good for this team. Winning a game like that gave the girls a feeling of what it feels like to win and how great it feels and how high you can fly.
Then having to come back and play a team the next day like Texas A&M shows you how good the Big 12 is and how you've got to come in and focus. We did a great thing yesterday, and I think it was great to be able to produce. We know the level of play we need for next year and what we need to do to be competitive.
ALYSSA HOLLINS: I think it gives us what we need to know about going into next year, and we did well. And being undersized, we can beat anybody. We learned, and I think that's motivation for going into next year.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach?

Q. Coach, near the end of the first half, you guys switched to a zone. I couldn't tell if it was a box and one or what it was. If you could talk about that.
COACH STEIN: I felt like our legs were a little dead, but I also thought a zone could be effective. I thought Starks was getting into a rhythm there, just trying to throw something off.
We were having trouble with their on-ball screens and defending that, so I felt like trying to take them out of that to make 'em go into something else, but we did a decent part of that, but we didn't rebound very well out of it.
And that's another area we struggled in, and you can't stay in it too long because Coach Blair is an incredible coach. He's going to look to pick you apart. We're not a great zone team so we were going to use it to change momentum, but, again, it came down to we needed to score.

Q. Coach, just your thoughts on the future of this team and the program, how you feel like it's going to go.
COACH STEIN: I think we have a great future. I think that -- you know, it was tough this year because this was probably the toughest year in the Big 12. I feel really good about this team.
I think that we've -- we signed four kids early, all of them are bigs. We can 6-5, 6-5, 6-3 and 6 foot, and if you watched us play, we were undersized all year. And obviously that will help with the depth and I think we're going to get better from this.
Just the kids going through what they did this year, all of 'em got a lot of playing time. We came into this year, Jessra Johnson averaged 10 minutes last year and Alyssa Hollins was the only other person and everybody else was brand new to the picture, so we feel good about next season.

Q. Coach, you're down by 7 in the second half, 13, you're never able to cut it. Can you talk about the first three or four minutes, what you thought the key was?
COACH STEIN: I think we were back on our heels, I think that's what they did to us. They attacked us every single play, Texas A&M looked to take it at us.
Obviously getting Jessra in foul trouble, she is a key to us, throwing the ball in on inbounds to an offense. And I think you could see Alyssa and her play well together, and Texas A&M did a great job of taking that away from us; our main two options. So you have to have other people step up and we didn't have it.

Q. This has got to be the toughest conference in America, and yet at the same time we've seen Kansas State this year go from being one of the worst teams in the league to winning the conference. Oklahoma State loses every blessed game all year long and is in the tournament the next year. You've seen teams go from struggling a lot to being very good quickly. Can the girls you have do that next year and what needs to happen for you to reach those goals?
COACH STEIN: I think absolutely. We have talent on our team. The key for us -- the indication today is our consistency. You've got to learn how to play consistently hard and well. You just can't play hard, you have to do things right. And that's where we were inconsistent all year.
I don't think our kids gave up but they didn't always do things well. We could run a three-lane break 10 different ways this year. They know how to run it, but they wouldn't do it and that's the discipline that it takes every single day. That's something we got better at but had yet to complete.

Q. Talk about the effort this team showed. They lost some games by pretty significant margins, and I have seen teams go through seasons like this and just quit and y'all never did.
COACH STEIN: Well, and I appreciate that. We don't want to quit. That's not going to happen. We have fighters on our team; they're going to keep working at it. They understood what we were facing and I think that -- we're proud to play in the Big 12 and we believe that it makes us better, it makes us tougher and stronger, and we do believe in what we can do next year.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you for your comments.

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