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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: BATON ROUGEMarch 24, 2008Rachele FitzBrian GiorgisJulianne VianiBATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA THE MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Marist postgame press conference. We'll have opening remarks from coach Brian Giorgis, then we'll have interviews with our student-athletes. Coach, your opening comments, please. COACH GIORGIS: You know, as I told the kids in the locker room, I couldn't be more proud of a group of kids. That's a great basketball team that we played today on their home court, and I think we gave them everything they could handle and more. Unfortunately we couldn't sustain it through, you know, the whole 40 minutes. I thought Erica White was the difference. Her energy and her hitting the perimeter shots, you know, caused us problems in our defense. And obviously Sylvia's Sylvia. I said it yesterday, I think she's the greatest center that I've ever seen as far as complete centers. There's a lot of them that can score, but the things that she does on the other end as far as adjusting shots, I mean, she came out of nowhere to block two shots, I'm sitting there, Rachele with a 14-footer is open, is money, and all of a sudden it's blocked. You know, way tip our hats to them. We left everything on the floor. I couldn't have asked more from our kids. We were right there with them on their home court. A sign of a great team is a team that overcomes adversity, and they overcame us. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Julianne, particularly on the perimeter, their defense made you dribble around so much, shot clock violations. How difficult was their defense to try to penetrate? JULIANNE VIANI: Their defense is really unbelievable, probably the best defense I've ever played against. You know, they really come at you, especially in the second half. I mean, they were swarming us. When Fowles starting jumping screens, it's even hard to see over her head. I mean, it's hard. It really was hard. We did the best we could. But, yeah, I definitely give them credit for their defense. Q. Rachele, it seemed like you had a good plan that when you got shots, they went in. You had to like your game plan. How hard was it to sustain against that kind of defensive pressure, even though you had a good plan? RACHELE FITZ: It's very hard. It's difficult because they do have such athletic and long players, especially inside. So it was difficult to get the ball inside, I feel. But when we did, we produced. We made our shots. It's hard, you know, after Julianne had a good first half, so I'm trying to set screens. Her girl was just sticking to her like nothing. So it's hard to set screens and continue to get her open. It's hard to get the ball inside when you've got someone 6'6" who's right there in your face. Even their other two post players are very athletic and long. So we tried to capitalize on their size if Meg had them down low, or me vice versa. It was just a rough game, battle down there. Q. The mood in the locker room at halftime to be only down two on their home court, how is the team feeling coming out of the locker room for the second half? JULIANNE VIANI: Well, we were feeling good because we were hanging right with them. We were down, I don't know, maybe 10 or more points at one point that half - more than that - and we came back. You know, going in at halftime, only down by a couple points was huge. Sometimes that's what happens when you play schools like this that go so deep. You start to lose gas in the second half. But we did, we were excited during halftime. You know, they just -- we ended up just kind of, like I said, running out. But the mood was good at halftime. RACHELE FITZ: Definitely, I think we came in with a lot of energy. We had confidence. Like coach said, we had our game plan and we made the other people heroes that we were supposed to. Q. Julianne, just hitting some big threes in that first half, emotionally how you were feeling you're helping to keep this team hanging around? JULIANNE VIANI: Well, it felt good to hit them. I knew I had to do something to get us going 'cause I felt like we started out a little slow. So it definitely got things rolling, I thought, both individually and I think as a team. I was definitely blessed that they were going in. It was helping us somewhat, right? Q. Julianne, in the middle of the second half, Erica, there about midway through the first half, single digits, she would hit a big shot. She had steals, did this, did that. When you're watching another player get hotter, get off like that in a stretch, what are you thinking? JULIANNE VIANI: Yeah, she started going off. But she was one of the players that we kind of wanted to force to beat us, and she stepped up, she really did. And it was frustrating. It's frustrating to watch another player just, you know, go off and light it up. There's only so much you can do. You pick your poison. We had a really good game plan. But, yeah, you know, to answer your question, it is frustrating when somebody's getting steals and then making shots left and right when it's somebody that you were hoping wouldn't. And she did, so I give her a lot of credit for that. THE MODERATOR: We would like to excuse the student-athletes now. Coach Giorgis will now preside at the press conference. Questions for the coach. Q. You said yesterday a lot of people weren't giving you a chance coming in today. Being down at halftime, how were you feeling about the way the team was playing? COACH GIORGIS: We felt great. First thing I said when we went into the locker room, I said, This is what happens when you execute a game plan. Again, we were a little out of our element because we switched to the matchup after the first couple of series where we obviously struggled with fouls. And Meg picked up the two fouls early, so she's going to be cautious. We said, You have to give up shots. Our kids aren't used to it. We've been a very good defensive team. We pride ourselves in getting out on shooters. Our whole game plan basically was, you know, if Thomas, White, LeBlanc, anybody else but Chaney and Fowles is shooting the ball, that's a good thing. That's what we tried to do. In fact, I think in the second-half run, if I'm not mistaken with the stats, I think White only had eight threes all year. She hit the two. She hadn't taken many. It's not that she wasn't a good shooter, but she only made eight threes all year. She hit those two in a row. The dagger was -- we had done a great job on Chaney. And twice we had communication problems where she got open looks. She hit the one three that put it into double figures. You couldn't hear yourself think. It really got the crowd back into it. That was right on the run when we had to call the quick timeout. Another one was on an inbound play. We switched out like we normally do and then all of a sudden we left her. She stuck the bucket. You know, for her to get 10 was really what we didn't want. We had done such a good job on her in the first half where she only had the one field goal. And I got on Erica's case because she was supposed to be all over her and force her to drive. We had just a couple mental errors there. Then when you're down 11 and now all of a sudden you start doing things, start panicking a little bit. The crowd did a great job for them, you know, because we'd call out things or we'd show signals and either we couldn't see them or couldn't hear them so a lot of kids weren't sure what we were in. Q. You've talked all year about the senior leadership. For the seniors in that locker room, how are you feeling? What are you going to remember about the years they've given you? COACH GIORGIS: One, I'm going to remember how hard they cried because they're pretty upset right now. But like we told them, I mean, 102 wins in a career, you can't ask for much more. You're averaging 25 wins a year. National rankings two consecutive years. Again, I think they said they felt they validated their top 25 ranking. I mean, heck, Tennessee lost to these guys by 19 on their own court. We were right there. If Rachele makes the bucket at the end of the half, would have been the ultimate contortion shot, we would have been tied at the half. You know, it reminded us when we played UConn a couple years ago in the NIT, we get to that 10-minute mark of the half, Gino benched his whole frontline because he's ticked at them, we're down three at the half, all of a sudden that same type of thing, that little run. Then all of a sudden, you know, you're gasping for air, you're trying to do something to get back. So, you know, hopefully we build on that. But, you know, we have some great seniors to replace. We've got a great recruiting class coming in. These kids have helped build what I feel is a top 25 program. I told the kids today when we did the tour of the football stadium, when you look at the resources you have here, compared to a school of 4,000, it's an absolutely wonderful academic school, one of the prettiest schools you'll see, you just see the difference in terms of that where -- you know, I can't be more proud of a group of people because we don't have any BCS scholarship offers for our kids, yet we played with them for 30 minutes today and had a crowd and a bench that was very nervous, you know, with kids who didn't receive scholarship offers from the big schools that have these types of facilities and resources. They just wanted to go and have a great academic education, you know, playing in a great conference that's known for its academics, so... THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much. You have an outstanding program. Best of luck next year. COACH GIORGIS: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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