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BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2008Kurt BudkeTaylor HardemanAndrea RileyKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI THE MODERATOR: Coach, your thoughts about the win tonight, and then we'll take questions for your student athletes. COACH BUDKE: Obviously very proud of the win tonight. I thought, you know, anytime our team comes out and has five people in double figures, we're dangerous and tough to beat. I thought we had good balance all night long. When Andrea -- she wasn't struggling, but early on other people got us going tonight. This is kind of the next step with our program right now; since we've taken over anyway. This is our first Big 12 win, we're excited about it. We're excited about our next game. We know we're playing a great opponent in Texas, but right now we feel like we can beat anybody that goes on the floor with us. We're playing with that kind of confidence. THE MODERATOR: Student athlete questions. Q. Taylor, I just wanted to know what were your thoughts coming into tonight, knowing that so far it hadn't been such a good week for the high seeds? TAYLOR HARDEMAN: Excited to be here. We were just ready to get out there and play and just excited that we got the 3 seed and we worked so hard to get there. Q. You guys got here on Monday, right? TAYLOR HARDEMAN: Yes. Q. That's a long time to be here. What was it like to have so much time and how anxious were you to play? ANDREA RILEY: It's an anxious feeling that you have. You're like, man, two more days, three more hours, you know, just hesitant to get out there. And when you think about the excitement that everybody is playing with and the intensity and the focus that you're playing with, you want to be a part of that. And watching the game before us, got you motivated. COACH BUDKE: It's tough on you when people play two games and you haven't played one yet. It's tough on you. THE MODERATOR: Hold on. We have no audio right now. Okay, we'll go back to the question. Repeat the question, please. Q. You guys got here on Monday. What was it like to have to wait around so long? And what time did you get here on Monday? COACH BUDKE: We got here at 5:00, and we had a shoot-around for 45 minutes that night. ANDREA RILEY: It was an anxious feeling, you know, going to games and seeing how people have so much energy and seeing the emotion that was pouring out of all the players. It made us want to get on the floor. Q. Andrea, talk about getting this first post-season win and what it means. ANDREA RILEY: It means a lot. We just wanted to focus more and just play with so much emotion. Q. Andrea, a lot of high seeds were going down as you guys waited to play. Both you guys, did you notice that and did it get your attention? ANDREA RILEY: It really got our attention, but it didn't really bring us down, because we knew that we are the Cowgirls and we are OSU, and we don't have to worry about any other team. It's about us, you know? We just have to focus on us instead of everyone else. It was hard seeing top seeds going down like that. It was like they worked so hard, and for it to go down like that, it was bad. TAYLOR HARDEMAN: You know, just -- it's crazy, anything can happen in these tournaments, I know. Like Andrea said, we know who we are and what we need to do and that pumped us up to get us ready for our game. Q. Taylor, just about when you guys took over this game, what do you think kicked in there? It seemed like in the second half you guys put it in another gear. TAYLOR HARDEMAN: You know, our defense deserves credit, and we needed to get stops and that defense led to our offense. We were doing what we knew how to do and we knew what we had to do and what our weapons were, and we just had to use them. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies. Coach, a few questions for you. Q. Sometimes players can be oblivious to -- THE MODERATOR: We lost the audio again. Hold on. Modern miracles. COACH BUDKE: It's easier to wait with you when you win. But we do have a game tomorrow, so -- THE MODERATOR: We'll get you out of here by 2:00! (Chuckles.) Q. Coach, No. 1 and 2 went down, Oklahoma lost yesterday. I just wonder what your thoughts are as a coach coming into this game. Were you worried about that, having seen those upsets? COACH BUDKE: Not really. KU grabbed our attention last year by beating us in the first round. So we didn't talk about other teams going down. We remember how they eliminated us last year, and that was our sole motivation, was to make sure that didn't happen again. Q. You guys knocked down another so-called barrier, winning a postseason game. Talk about the importance of that and getting past that. COACH BUDKE: I think it's real exciting for our program. We have, in three years, knocked down so many barriers. And we've talked about when we got here, never winning a road game, never winning a south game, never winning a north road game, chopping them down. And this was the next thing we needed to get to. We finished last year with two straight losses in two straight tournaments, and we didn't want that to happen again. I'm just very proud. We talked about it before the game. We're proud of the year we had, and we're not done yet. We don't want to be satisfied, because any time you're satisfied, you take a step backwards, and I don't think you saw a satisfied team tonight. I think you saw a hungry team that wanted to advance. Q. Coach, early in the second half, they cut the lead to 8 and then Boogaard picked up her fourth foul and you guys went on a run. Talk about that run and what it did for you guys. COACH BUDKE: It was important to get the foul on her. She is a great player, and she's going to be a great player in this league. She was changing the game for them to get back in the game. We weren't moving well. We got off to a slow start, and it's so hard to put 40 perfect minutes together. There are going to be times when those kinds of things happen, but it's how you recover out of it. We started shifting defenses a little bit and moving, and we created offense with our defense and I think that changed the game. Q. Coach, your thoughts on playing Texas tomorrow night and taking another step in this tournament, a team that you split with twice and has a lot of momentum after their win this afternoon. COACH BUDKE: I don't think there is any question they have a lot of momentum. They're one of the most talented teams in the Big 12. It's taken them a while to adjust to a new coaching staff, but they're adjusting well. And I think they're a serious threat in this tournament and also the NCAA tournament. They're going to be somewhere in the NCAA tournament that you're not going to want to look up on that board and see you're playing them in the first round. I think it is a great team, a great coach and should be a great atmosphere tomorrow night and a lot of fun. Q. How much momentum can a team carry from one game to the next with Texas closing out, having a huge second half. Is that something that concerns you that they'll be carrying into the game tomorrow? COACH BUDKE: I think and I hope we have the same momentum, though. What they did in the second half was unbelievable, but it's a new night and a new system that they're going to be facing, and it's not going to be the same exact thing. We're all going to have to start over and come out excited, but I promise you, both teams will be excited tomorrow night and hopefully we carry that same motivation and that same excitement into the game that we brought tonight. End of FastScripts |
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