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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: BATON ROUGE

March 23, 2008

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA

THE MODERATOR: I'd like to welcome back to the podium here Marist, the Marist Red Foxes. No. 12, Rachele Fitz; No. 22, Nikki Flores; and No. 14, Meg Dahlman. The head coach, Brian Giorgis.
COACH GIORGIS: Nice to be able to come back and make an opening statement.
We're excited to still be here and looking forward to tomorrow. I don't have that much to say; we'll just take your questions.

Q. Coach, happy Easter. What impresses you about Louisiana State?
COACH GIORGIS: About everything. Their length and their athleticism, just unbelievable. Their defense is obviously extremely strong, and we're going to try to find ways to attack it and hopefully score some baskets.

Q. Particularly the way the team won yesterday, what's that say about the explosiveness that they have, which you might need against a team like LSU?
COACH GIORGIS: The one thing that's great about our kids is because of their experience and the success that they've had, they're not going to quit on anything. They know that we have a formidable opponent tomorrow, but at the same time, you know, we've played against people like Tennessee in the last couple of years, and that doesn't mean we've won 'em, but, you know, it hasn't been because we were intimidated or haven't attacked.
That's what I like about our kids. They're just going to get after it. They know it could be their last one and, you know, that it's on their court, with their high-ranking. It doesn't matter; they're just going to get after it.

Q. Coach, going back and reviewing the end of the game, the 32-2 run. I'm sure you haven't been following anything like that. Is there anything in your recollection as a coach or watching the game that you can recall something like that happening?
COACH GIORGIS: You know, it's kind of interesting, when you're in the game, you don't even think of it. I didn't know we had a 32-2 run to finish the game until somebody told me after the game. I just knew that we hit a bunch of three's to get back into the game, and we got a lot of good stops, and our biggest problem was giving up second-shot opportunities.
And I noticed we were forcing tough shots and getting the rebound, so it was one and done for them, and we were finding ways to score from different people down the stretch. So, like I say, I hadn't been a part of something like that, but it was lot of fun being part of something like that.

Q. For Meg and Rachele, Coach talked about attacking the defense. Tomorrow night how do you plan to do your best against their bigs?
STUDENT ATHLETE: I think we have to realize we're not going to -- it will be hard to stop them completely, so they are going to get their buckets, but if we can limit them to one shot and rebound the ball really well, then hopefully that will lead to our offense on the other end.
STUDENT ATHLETE: It's going to be hard to get inside, we know that, from the get-go. So we have to use our ability to shoot outside and to draw the posts when we're going down low and kick the ball out. That's it.

Q. For the players, just kind of a question off the topic of basketball. Being here for Easter so far away from home, it seems like it would be a tough situation, but Coach Blair from Texas A&M mentioned you guys miss lots of holidays. Is this another one like it? Is this just the usual for you guys?
MEG DAHLMAN: We're used to being on the road a lot, and I think we like playing on the road, and I know my mom and brother are here; Rachele's parents are here, and Nikki's dad and mom, so our families are great, and they travel with us practically everywhere we go, so we're not that far away from them, because they're always with us.

Q. Nikki, how hard is it going to be for you to get the ball inside, and how imperative is it for you and Juls to have a good game from the outside?
NIKKI FLORES: Well, the guards are athletic, as is the rest of the team, so we'll have to be able to make decisions, utilize penetration and kick, maybe even kick interiorly, it depends on what the defense gives to us.

Q. Coach, it's a familiar refrain what Meg said about limiting them inside, but you limit them inside and Chaney might start hitting 3's, White might start driving, it might be hard to not be pro LSU here, but how hard will it be to stop everything they can do?
COACH GIORGIS: It will be extremely hard. Again, you've got to take something away and hope something else isn't working. We might try, you know, in certain possessions to try to hold down Chaney and those types of people, and other times we will try to limit what Sylvia can do inside. That's why they're good. We'll have a few different things up our sleeves and try to do the best that we can with them.
The one thing I like about our kids is when things don't work, they don't necessarily panic. Like with yesterday, with DePaul, the two guards just shot lights out. Then all of the sudden in the last, you know, quarter of the game, they went cold and we went on our run.
We didn't make a lot of different changes from what we've been doing all game. Just one slight adjustment and it seemed to help. We know that they can score in a lot of different ways, and really to be quite honest with you, we're more concerned with how are we going to score. They're the best defense in the country right now, I think, scoring, defensewise.
We've got to find ways to get good shots for us. Kind of like last year when we were playing Tennessee and they were asking how are we going to stop Candace Parker, we were like, how are we going to get shots for Julianne who is going to be guarded by a 6-3 kid, that type of thing. We've got lots of things to think about in the next 24 hours in terms of our game plan and what we're going to try to do.

Q. You've played big teams in the past couple of years but what is tomorrow night going to present as far as being here in their own gym with a Rocky can you say crowd, I can imagine?
COACH GIORGIS: Well, that's going to be the one big difference. We usually -- although we have faced Maryland at Maryland, Duke at Duke, we just like the challenge. Put it this way: There are not a lot of people out there that have given us much of a chance. We've been in that situation before, and sometimes we come through, sometimes we don't, but we don't care. We're just going to go out and try to be -- try to pose as much trouble as we can and hope that it's good enough.

Q. Could you see any way at all that the emotions that would be involved on LSU's side, with this being a senior class playing their last game here could work as an advantage to you, as players looking from the outside in?
Everyone would assume it's the obvious advantage with them, but could it be a distraction?
NIKKI FLORES: I think it will help us. We have a lot of senior leadership on this team. Between Courtney, even though she'll be back next year, and me and Meg, and then you have Alexis, who is still on the bench and basically leads the bench with cheering, I mean, the senior leadership on our team is going to help us.
With our experience being here and everything, I can see what you're saying, it can hurt us in a way, but I think it will work to our advantage.
COACH GIORGIS: To be honest with you, I never thought about it until you brought up the question. We've got a lot more issues with length and athleticism than in terms of it's their last game at home. We know that we've got a big challenge ahead of us. We like it that way.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach, and student athletes. Best of luck.

End of FastScripts

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