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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: BATON ROUGEMarch 21, 2008Morenike AtunraseGary BlairA'Quonesia FranklinLa Toya MicheauxBATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA THE MODERATOR: Our head coach of Texas A&M, welcome to Baton Rouge, Coach Gary Blair. Do you have any opening comments about your team and your visit here to the NCAA? COACH BLAIR: First, it is great to be back in Baton Rouge. It's been 03' since I coached Arkansas and used to come back to play Coach Gardner. And we had a great, great ten-year rivalry. And then eight years of Stephen F., when I coached there. And Coach Gardner said, Gary, you need to come bash to Steven F. Austin. Coach Gardner has meant so much to me being a mentor in my program. She coached my first all-American at Steven F. Austin, Barbara Brown played for me in high school, so Coach Gardner has meant the world to me. It is great to be back here. The weather is good. These three young ladies up here, they're very, very special to me. And this is the Texas girl, the little one that would remind you of your Erica White or Temeka Johnson that played here at LSU. She is 5' 3", a pistol. A very, very good point guard that knows what leadership and running a team is all about. LaToya, Micheaux, I believe your dad was born in Louisiana, or your mom? LATOYA MICHEAUX: My mom. COACH BLAIR: She's gonna have a lot of relatives. She is from Houston, her dad played for Phi Slama Jama, the great teams at University of Houston back in the day. And she is one of the best defensive players in the country, and I'm just proud to have her. The next young lady is from Shreveport, Morenike Atunrase. Played for Southwood High School. Won a number of championships there. She is a kid that's been injured for about the last year, but she is back full strength now and is playing very well down the stretch. We're happy to be here. We're a 2 seed. The highest Texas A&M has ever been, the highest I've ever been as a coach, I believe. I haven't checked the records. We feel like we got a fair -- very, very fair seeding. And we're happy that we're only five hours away from College Station-Bryan area driving-wise, and then five hours away from Oklahoma City if we could advance to the next round. So we're excited to be here. I think the field is good. I think the committee did one of their best jobs at getting the right 64 teams in, and they've spread them out geographically, I think, very well. So we are hoping to win a few ball games here, and we'll be eating at Mike Anderson's tonight. So I know where the restaurants are. We were at TJ Ribs last night. Q. Coach Blair, I would like you and A'Quonesia to answer this. You have momentum going in. That's all we're hearing on the national media. What are we going to see out there on the court? Can we keep that 13 out of 14 going? A'QUONESIA FRANKLIN: Yes. We have a lot of momentum coming into this game, coming off a tournament championship. Before that, winning our last four conference games, which were huge games for us. We have a lot of momentum coming into our first game against UTSA, and we are just going to keep what we have been doing, basically playing intense defense and creating offense off of our defense. COACH BLAIR: Momentum is a beautiful word. I cannot think of a word momentum whether I am in a golf match or you're a NASCAR racer or basketball or football or whatever, it's a beautiful word. And we have tremendous momentum going right now, but I think we have tremendous leadership and chemistry and a hunger right now. The first year that we went to Trenton, New Jersey, I think we were just happy to be there, looking at the skyscrapers of New York City and going to ESPN Zone and Times Square and all of that type of stuff. I didn't do a good enough job as a coach on having my team ready. When we went to Los Angeles last year, we faced a team that was equally as good as us in the second round, and that was George Washington, and they outplayed us. This year our team realizes the significance, the importance first of being a No. 2 seed and living up to that, that the committee said the Big 12 should have that No. 2 seed. And we feel, one, it's an honor. Two, we want to represent that 2 seed for our whole conference. In years to come, if you've had a run like us, you should be rewarded at the end, even if you were not round-robin conference champions but you were tournament champions. I love my basketball team right now. We want to play our way through. We are not Cinderella where we've been in years past. We're just a good, hard-working basketball team that we're going to face some very, very good teams here. We want to use that word, "momentum," and just keep going. THE MODERATOR: Coach, any comments from any of the student athletes that came with you? Question here. Q. Coach, and I guess for the players, go ahead and break down UTSA for us and what can we expect to see tomorrow? COACH BLAIR: Well, I love the coach's last name, Blair. That's first. We go back a long way. Rae Rippetoe-Blair, when I was at Arkansas and she was at Oklahoma State, she had done a tremendous job. I think we're intertwined so much because Lynn Hickey is the former coach at Texas A&M when I was at Steven F. Austin, that more or less is really the architect of the Texas A&M program. I mean, there's been other coaches since, but she's the one that's really built the program and took it to a Sweet 16, I believe, in '96. You are looking at a point guard, Whitney York, that has been to our camps a number of time. She would go in there and do an excellent job against us. But last year, we had already had our mind made up on Sydney Colson and we didn't need an extra point guard. Amber Gregg is another young lady that has been to a number of our camps. Amanda Foster is a kid we played against. She was at Oklahoma State and then transferred to get a little bit more playing time. Coach Luby, the assistant coach, used to be at A&M with Coach Hickey. I am not sure if she was with Coach Harvey or not. The schools are very close. I am a product of the Southland Conference. Ms. Donahoe right over there is a product of the Southland Conference. We're very proud of our roots, but we will never, never underestimate a Southland Conference school. Because when we coach there, some teams underestimated us and we would beat their butts, okay? And it's not going to happen here. UT-San Antonio is has an excellent school. They have earned their way. They won 23 ball games. I liked their style. They are very similar to the UTA team we faced last year. They might not be as good defensively as UTA was last year, but they're better offensively because they have a lot more balance. They have two left-handed guards, and we are going to have to get used to that because we can't simulate that in practice. The only left-hander we have has an ACL injury and can't play. We're not used to going against two lefties out there. Q. For Coach, for Morenike, can you just talk about Morenike's role, the come-back and especially the boost she's given you now in the second half of the season. COACH BLAIR: Chuck, I would like for you to send this to your managing editor there at the Dallas Morning News. There is no reason that the Dallas Morning News should not be delivered in College Station-Bryan anymore. I'm serious about that. I read five a day, and I don't know how to use a computer to pull you up online. So we need it delivered back. Okay. Work on that. I mean -- I'm serious as can be. It is just a small piece of heaven that I like. I want my Dallas Morning News, since I used to throw the Dallas Times Herald as a kid growing up. Morenike, she was the face of the basketball team her freshman and her sophomore years. First, once everybody learned how to pronounce her name, it just sort of flowed like she did. She was like a deer running through a basketball court. She's the most well-conditioned athlete that I've ever had a chance to coach. The game came easy to her as far as the conditioning part and running and just being able to make plays. The fundamentals of the game, we're still teaching her, even sometimes now as a senior. She's getting better and better. At the junior year and now as a senior, how many athletes could come back and accept the role of coming off the bench? Accept the role of saying, hey, our starting five's pretty good even though you were freshman of the year and you were All-Big 12 First Team and you won the John Wooten list. The other player I can think of that accepted that role is a couple years ago when Cappie Pondexter did that from Rutgers. But her role wasn't like hers coming off injuries. This kid has had three different significant injuries in a period of 12 months. And she's come back from them like a champion. She's playing as good as she was when she was a sophomore. She's going to get better and better. But no one in the country has a sixth man that can come off like she can and produce. MORENIKE ATUNRASE: Following Coach Blair, I would just like to say, it has been -- well, last season was different for me. I had to go about it a different way, and being a basketball player, but this season I have learned how to do that with the help of Coach Blair and the rest of our coaching staff. But I think that injuries do help you in the long run. Everyone doesn't go injury-free throughout their season. I think it's something that I have had to adjust to. I have learned how to accept my role. I have no problem coming off the bench and just playing my part. Everyone on the team has a different part, so I look at my role on, I guess, the defense is just rebounding, getting the little boards and blocking shots like I've always done in my career. Q. Morenike, can you talk about the significance of playing back in Louisiana? Does that hold anything for you? MORENIKE ATUNRASE: It is nice to finally come back home after four years. I have a lot of family here. New Orleans and Shreveport and I look forward to that. I have also played here my senior year in the all-star game. So it's fun to be back home. Q. LaToya, how much of your family will be here for the game? Second of all, you look at the No. 2 seeds in the tournament, LSU have been to four straight Final Fours, Rutgers won the National Title game last year, Stanford has won a couple of national titles, and Texas A&M. Do you have to make yourselves believe that you belong in that group and have the confidence to advance like the other teams expect you to advance? Or is that already instilled from the Big 12 tournament or from what you did last year? Where does the confidence come from and how important is that? LATOYA MICHEAUX: I don't think that we necessarily believe. We already do believe. We're here. We made that step by coming -- we won the championship last year and we just won our tournament championship. I think that the confidence of this team with the momentum is sky high. And you just have to take the game by game and hopefully we'll get to that Final Four and get to that championship. I think right now the focus is on UTSA and then we can look forward after we get a victory with that. To answer your question on the family, I'm looking at about 25 right now coming through. A lot from Franklin and New Orleans. It is just my mom's side, her family. Q. Ladies, this run has been really -- your defense has been out there. Obviously Coach Schaefer handles the defense. Coach Blair handles the offense. I wonder if you ladies could tell me how is it playing for each of them? What's the difference between Coach Blair and Coach Schaefer? Give me your synopsis, please. A'QUONESIA FRANKLIN: Yes. Like Coach said, it is like night and day. Coach Blair, he's soft. He's a sweet guy. Coach Schaefer is just -- he's hard-nosed. He's so adamant about everything that he does, especially on defense. And he wants things perfect and try to play perfect. Coach Blair will go ahead and let us slip away with little mistakes here and there. He is the one that will pat you on your back. If you can just pay attention when you come out of the game and look at Coach Schaefer and see his actions, there's nothing negative about it. He loves the game and he wears his passion on his shoulders. That's one thing I like about him. And Coach Blair, he is the head coach. He is over everything. And I just think that they play a good role. Like I said, night and day. COACH BLAIR: I think a good comparison would be Chancellor and Bob Starkey. I'm probably closer to Chancellor, not just because of our age but because of how we talk. I mean, I think we both went to the Dale Brown school of BS, but we're very similar. We've got a story to tell. We've got kids to coach. We've got kids to love. And that's what we do. I'm looking forward to next year -- correct me if I'm wrong -- seeing that the tournament will be held a week later. Is it next year? I think for the growth of women's basketball, particularly in the media, I was reading an article in there yesterday that they wanted us in the same dog-gone city. We're not a stepchild of the men's game. We are -- we can carry ourselves. I'm looking forward to going back to the 16 sites while we're still in the growth stages of building fans and attendance even though it is a huge advantage for the team that does host. But I am looking forward to going to the weekend afterwards. People say, well, how can you compete against the Masters? The last time I played golf, I played golf in the daytime. So we can compete against the Masters. We can compete against anything because women's basketball is the fastest growing big sport. You had over 110 schools that had crowds of -- not 110 schools, 110 games that had crowds of over 9,000 at their game this we are. Wisconsin does that. You can pull it up on the Web. But that's mind boggling. Compared to when I coached at Louisiana Tech, there might have been three crowds in the '80s over 9,000 in a regular season. And we had over 110. It is going to continue to grow. I am just glad to be a part of it. Our product is in good hands, but we need to tweak it a little to make sure it grows in the right way and the stories need to be about the student athletes, not about us coaches when we screw up. It needs to be about the student athletes and all the great human-interest stories there are out there, including these three up here. So hopefully we'll continue to grow the right way and the media will report the story instead of looking for the negative. Thank you, y'all. End of FastScripts |
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