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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 14, 2008Lorie Butler-RayfordJeff MittieAdrianne RossLAS VEGAS, NEVADA THE MODERATOR: Coach, if you want to just begin with some opening remarks on the game. COACH MITTIE: Well, yeah, first off, I thought San Diego State played very well. Their pressure bothered us. They forced us into some turnovers. I thought we had some unforced turnovers. But ultimately they played extremely well second half. I thought they played their game plan very well. They deserve a lot of credit for this basketball game. I thought they did a lot of good things. Comes down to a play or two. And we didn't quite control the ball well enough to make enough plays to win this game. But I thought San Diego State played very well. And I thought our team fought really hard. Proud of their efforts. Maybe just didn't quite play as well as we would have liked. But we certainly played extremely hard. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Adrianne, that last play, where they inbound off of you, they have so many different athletes that can make plays, was there one person you thought they were going to and did that surprise you? ADRIANNE ROSS: The last play? Q. When they inbounded off of you to get the layup. ADRIANNE ROSS: I'm sorry. The question again. Q. Was there one place you thought they were going? There's a lot of different athletes on that team. Were you looking at it coming from one place? ADRIANNE ROSS: No, we definitely weren't expecting that to happen. I mean, this has been a tournament where you don't expect a lot of things that happened to happen. But we didn't take them for granted. We didn't take that last play for granted. Things didn't go our way that last play, but you got to deal with it. Q. What changed in the last couple of minutes? Seemed like they had some hard shots that didn't fall, but kept fighting. Did you feel like something changed there, maybe the last 10 minutes? LORIE BUTLER-RAYFORD: I feel both teams fought very hard. I just think it came down to them making more plays than us. I don't take anything away from our team. We fought hard. Just came down to that last shot. Q. What did you want there at the end? Adrianne, I know you took the ball. ADRIANNE ROSS: Just to make it and win (laughter). But... Q. Did you draw something up? ADRIANNE ROSS: We didn't have any timeouts. We were playing with two freshmen on the court. They don't play like freshmen. We were really focused, trying to get something good. Time was short. Literally we were just looking for a make. Nothing special. We knew they were pressuring, so there would be room to get to the basket, but... THE MODERATOR: Guys, thank you. Good job. Questions for coach. Q. Where did you feel like the game changed? COACH MITTIE: Well, we took the 10-point lead. Morris hits two threes coming off screens, ball screens. And then we fouled the three-point shooter in the corner. We had a pretty good flow up to that point. That kind of got them back in it after we took the lead. They put nine points up in about a minute and a half. It gets them back in it. I thought we had -- our failure to execute some things. We had a big advantage in some spots. We turned the ball over on some interior passing where we had some advantages where we needed to go shoot the ball. Those type of plays, you know, you can't give up many of those -- can't give away many of those opportunities, because we had some opportunities there. And then San Diego State, I just think their pressure continued to wear on us over the length of the game. And we just couldn't execute a lot of things. Q. The last minute seemed very uncharacteristic of you guys, a lot of the plays that happened. COACH MITTIE: Yeah, well, I think, you know, you talked about the "one play." There's two seconds left on the shot clock. So A's job is to help up because of the lob to Paris, okay? That's not an easy play for Davis to knock it off of a player and step in. So you talk about that play. I don't think that's an uncharacteristic. She probably needed to open up a little bit, which is what we try to get them to see both, but also be up so you pinch that post. There's only two on the shot clock, so we felt pretty good about our defense at that point. The last play is my fault. The last turnover by D on the out of bounds is my fault, so... So, yeah, I don't think we got what we wanted to. Q. Why your fault? COACH MITTIE: It probably wasn't what we needed to do at that point. I thought we could get the ball to A and give her some space, and we just didn't. I didn't design it as well as I needed to. Players tried to execute what I designed. It ultimately comes down to me not getting that play done to them. Q. The NCAA tournament. Any thoughts? Do you think you've done enough? COACH MITTIE: Boy, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I just heard the last part. We've got some good things on our resumé. You wanted a better quote than that (laughter)? They're not going to put me on the committee, so... By the criteria, okay, it's going to come down to comparisons, as it always does. But we finished strong. I'm proud that our team put us in position. November and December we didn't play as well against the tough schedule. When we started playing better, this team has played as well as any team we've had in the seven years we've been in the tournament. If that's enough at the end of the day, comparing to the other teams across the country, then I think... We've got a good win against Oklahoma State. I think we've got a good win against Wyoming. We've got losses that -- you know, two teams we played are in the Big 12 championship tonight, LSU. We've played a tough schedule. Some years there is different comparisons, and things happen across the country differently. I'm pleased that this team has put themselves in the position that I think we're on the board. I think our league is going to be one that they're going to have to take a hard look at because you have an improving San Diego State team that is a different team than they were in November and December. Obviously they have an opportunity to get that automatic tomorrow. That should be a great basketball game. I hope we're deserving. I hope on Monday they call our name. Q. Does it make it more difficult that it is the two teams who are playing for the championship potentially who maybe weren't going to make the tournament? COACH MITTIE: Well, it's one more spot that wasn't going to happen. You don't want to see too many of those spots because both those teams coming into it had to feel like they had to win it. The more spots that get taken, all it takes is one extra to knock somebody out. It's one more spot. So you don't want too many of those disappearing here in the next day or two. But we know that our league is going to have one of those spots that two teams came into initially and felt like they had to win the tournament to get there. THE MODERATOR: Thanks very much, coach. End of FastScripts |
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