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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2008Lorie Butler-RayfordJeff MittieAdrianne RossLAS VEGAS, NEVADA THE MODERATOR: Coach, you can begin with just some general comments on the game. COACH MITTIE: Okay. Well, I thought it was a sloppy game early. We were -- I thought we were really ready to play. You know, you worry about your energy level. I thought we had good energy early. Just a little sloppy, got ahead of ourselves. A few more turnovers than we're accustomed to. The assists number is not what we're normally accustomed to. I give credit to Air Force for keeping things off balance with their switching and things that they do. But all in all I think, you know, what we've seen is just happy to advance because anything can happen, and we've already seen that in our tournament. So we're just happy to advance. I thought we did some good things. There were parts of this where I felt like we were a pass or two away from looking really good. We didn't complete a lot of those, but there were some good things. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, coach. Q. Either one of you guys, knowing what happened in this tournament, was that on your minds, just thinking, Okay, we got to take care of business here? ADRIANNE ROSS: Um, yeah, until we're on the bus and we were shocked and Coach Mittie came back and was like -- what did he say, Lorie? He said something to get our mind off that upset and got us focused on Air Force. But you're right, anything can happen. So we got over that real fast. LORIE BUTLER-RAYFORD: Obviously we were on the bus coming here, getting ready for our game. I heard the news. I was trying not to pay attention to the game because, you know, we were so focused on Air Force, but we couldn't help but to hear the score of the game. It taught us two things. It taught us, one, anybody can beat anybody on any given night. And two, not to take anybody for granted. So we were the team that came in here thinking not to take Air Force for granted because we all know that Air Force is a good team, and there's no way we can look past Air Force. Q. I guess either one of you as well. Do you guys feel like you've done enough for the NCAA tournament? I mean, did you guys feel like going into this you needed one win or do you feel like you need to do more? ADRIANNE ROSS: I hope so, but I'm not going to count on it. We're going to watch this game that's coming on next after ours, really focus on that and try not to get ahead of ourselves. But hopeful. LORIE BUTLER-RAYFORD: I think we're here to win. We were here to win three games. And we're trying to get a championship which will, you know, secure that spot in the NCAA tournament anyway. So I think we need to take care of winning the Mountain West because our conference is kind of tough, and going on to the NCAA tournament. ADRIANNE ROSS: One game at a time. LORIE BUTLER-RAYFORD: Right. Q. Adrianne, at the end of the first half, I mean you guys were pretty much taking care of business. But at the end of the first half you hit the three-pointer then had the lay-up. Did you feel like that was important just to really step on it? ADRIANNE ROSS: Because, I mean, from the bench to the players on the court, we had great energy. Like we were yelling at each other, you know, like getting excited over those big things. And, you know, that carried over to defense. So we were able to get some stops as well. It was fun out there tonight. We were looking at each other yelling, like, Yeah, good. And it was just a free throw. So I think our energy really helped us. THE MODERATOR: Ladies, we'll let you two go. Thank you. Questions for coach. Q. Did you try to keep that score from them at all or did you show it to them, you know, make sure they were serious coming in? COACH MITTIE: Well, you know, with every game televised back at the hotel, you weren't going to keep the score from them. And I didn't try to anyways. But what I did step back in the bus, I said, Okay, somebody tell me what that game has to do with our game versus Air Force. And just said, you know, you got to control the game. We weren't going to play that side of the bracket till the championship anyway. So we have other things in front of us. But you can't deny the shocking fact of that score, okay. You can't deny, Colorado State hadn't won a game before they got to Vegas. You know, they'll be trying to play all neutral site games in Vegas next year. So you can't deny the shocking fact of that. So, you know, March Madness hit here pretty early. Q. You guys, like I said, were pretty much taking care of business. But that little spurt at the end of the first half, I know you like to close out the half well, but was that pretty important just to carry over into the second half? COACH MITTIE: Well, I thought it was important to get a little bit of separation. And I was not happy -- I wanted Helena to be more aggressive with the ball. You're right, the coast-to-coast, we could have taken the last shot and one of the assistants said something when we got it, and I said, Let's see what we get out of this. I wanted to see what she was going to do. And I liked her aggressiveness with the ball. You know, this is a player that we've talked about all year, her versatility. And she doesn't have to throw it to Mo every time on those. I want her to have that mentality of the point guard. So she took a couple coast-to-coast and I liked her mentality on that play. It was important I thought to get some separation. We were trying to accomplish a couple things. One, we wanted to play cleaner than we played tonight. Although I did like our energy. I thought we tried for a lot of home-run plays tonight, Mercedes. I liked that attitude about that home-run play but I would have liked to see us play simpler and keep things a lot simpler. The second thing is we wanted to get rest if we could. We wanted to get different rotations on the floor. We wanted to take a look at how players were playing together, just to see. I was pleased with D. Nunn. I thought D. was very efficient. Four of four from the field. I thought Helen Roden was aggressive from the field. She gets to the line seven times. There were good things that came out of this game. Lorie Butler was aggressive. There were good things. Adrianne had a good first half. So while maybe we had a chance to stretch this thing from 15 to maybe 20 to 25, I thought all in all we were decent tonight and we're just glad to be moving forward. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, coach. End of FastScripts |
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