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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 5, 2009

C'eira Ricketts

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

Ole Miss Â– 65
Arkansas - 60

THE MODERATOR: We have Coach Tom Collen and Ceira Rickets, who recorded her fourth double-double, Whitney Jones her fifth double-double.
Coach?
COACH COLLEN: I think it's hard. We're extremely disappointed on a couple of fronts. We're disappointed that we -- I know a lot of people in Little Rock and in the state of Arkansas put forth a great deal of effort to host this tournament down here three times, and at some point in time we would really like to be able to reward them.
We hope we get another opportunity, but we would like to really be able to reward them with a first round win and try to advance and drive interest in Arkansas women's basketball and give back to that community.
So first of all, I want to make sure that all of those people out there, and there are many, many people, I want to make sure they know we really, really appreciate everything they've done to bring this tournament here, and we feel like to some degree we let them down a little bit. That's kind of painful.
It's painful to lose. You know, I want to try to look at it from an optimistic perspective, since I've only been at Arkansas for two years. I can tell you we've made a lot of progress since last year. Went from the 11th seed to the 8th seed. Going from a game, really, we got blown out last year in the first round to a game where we competed right down to the wire. Clearly there has been a lot of progress. We understand that and we know that, but the bottom line is losing is painful.
It's just as painful this year as it was last year. At some point in time we've got to understand that we don't want to experience that pain. That's what you got to do to grow a program. We're going to keep working hard, grow the program.
I thought our effort was good tonight. I feel like these two young ladies sitting here, one on her way out, one that just arrived, I think they played their hearts out. I think for the most part I'm not satisfied with our kids' effort. I think we failed to execute throughout the course of the game and it cost us the game, and that's frustrating from a coach's perspective.
But we're going back to the drawing board and we're going to keep working hard and this program is going to be rebuilt, and rebuilt the right way. And hopefully we will have an opportunity to come down here to Alltell again and we will get an opportunity to win a championship here. We just need the fans to stick with us.

Q. Tom, you had plenty of chances there at the end, but a lot of turnovers down the stretch really hurt ya.
COACH COLLEN: I think we clearly got into a rush. You know, I heard -- and I repeated this to my team, Geno Auriemma made a comment during his last game with Rutgers, I have one of the best teams in the country.
Their greatest strength is they can come down and make a pass and score quickly on almost every possession. It's one of the greatest strengths of this team. And one of the greatest weaknesses is they think they can come down and make a pass and score every possession.
I think that's true of us right now. When we're in a rhythm, a good tempo, I think we can come down and make plays, but I really believe that sometimes we come down and rush just a little bit and we try to make plays without slowing down and executing.
And I agree, I think there were two or three times when we had some momentum going our way, we got some stops, they missed some free-throws and we came down and we rushed. We'll get better at that. A lot of people that made those passes are young kids who were just trying to make things happen.
So the good news is they're young kids that want to make plays. The bad news is they have to slow down a little bit and learn to get into a rhythm and learn how important every possession is when you get into a game like this.

Q. It just seemed like you guys could never get all five on the court on the same page at the same time. Did it feel that way to you guys? I guess just how frustrating was that if that was the case? Ceira?
CEIRA RICKETTS: Yeah, it was frustrating that we couldn't get all the players on the same page at once, but I think we tried hard to do that, you know. It's going to take us time to get all of our players to work as a team on defense as well as offense.
WHITNEY JONES: I felt like we weren't on the same page. When we are on the same page, we are a good team. Defensively we weren't communicating that well all the time and that played a big part in it.

Q. What did you guys think about the atmosphere?
COACH COLLEN: I thought the atmosphere was terrific. I think that crowd so badly wanted to stand up and cheer over a period of time, you know, and we gave them moments when they stepped up.
I think they were difference-makers, and they could have been, but we didn't give 'em enough moments. I don't know what it's like in the first round game. I think it was a tough time for us to draw a big crowd at noon, people are at work, kids are in school.
We're in the middle of the boys' and girls' high school state tournament. I think to get the crowd that we got this first round, and I don't know how it compares, but I thought the crowd was terrific, I was very happy with it.

Q. Ceira?
CEIRA RICKETTS: I thought the crowd was good, I like playing in front of big crowds, not used to having a big crowd on my high school team, but I thought it was a nice crowd. I enjoyed playing in front of them.
WHITNEY JONES: I felt like we had a good crowd, we had a lot of support. The fans stayed with us whether we made good plays or bad plays.

Q. Ole Miss' Bianca Thomas is dangerous in spurts, and Whitney and Bianca were going back and forth. Can you talk about going back and forth with that and the tempo that was set?
COACH COLLEN: Well, Bianca obviously had a great night, you know? She had a bad shooting night when we played her up in Fayetteville, we gave her a shot and she couldn't hit.
Tonight she made some shots when we were right there contesting her and she made open shots. But it wasn't any one person probably that gave up all her shots. We spent a lot of time switching screens. So it seemed like four or five times we were there ready to guard her and she shot it in our face, but we were spaced a couple of feet away from her.
I think collectively we understood that we were supposed to guard her tight, but I think it was four or five different players that in the moment got switched out on her and thought they were there where they were supposed to be, and she buried the shot in our face. To her credit the kid scored 31 points, and she wasn't wide open on everything.
I thought she did a great job. Clearly our breakdown was when we did have different people matched up on her, we didn't get on her tight enough so she could step up and shoot the three.

Q. And Whitney, the second half?
WHITNEY JONES: Bianca is a good player. She made the big plays at the right time. I tried to step up for my team and make the big plays, also.

Q. Whitney, I know it would have meant a lot for you to get the win. How frustrating was it to come so close and not be able to get a win?
WHITNEY JONES: Very frustrating, I felt like we prepared really good for them during practice throughout the week. I thought we were going to win it. I think we all believed we could win it, but they made their plays and we didn't get the win.

Q. Whitney, I guess NIT is a possibility if you guys want to keep playing?
WHITNEY JONES: Yeah, we want to keep playing. I'm not ready to stop playing, me and Ayana are seniors and we're going to try to prepare for NIT.
COACH COLLEN: We would be very excited if we get the opportunity to play in the NIT, whether it's home or away. We would love to play at home if the opportunity is there, but if not, this team has proven they can play on the road, and as long as we're invited that's the important thing.
I think we have a lot of things to play for. I don't want these two seniors to go out with a bitter taste in their mouth, and we clearly understand unless we win the NIT championship they may go out with a loss, but I want them to go out on a higher note than what this felt like. For all the young players, they simply -- this was their first opportunity -- we had six new kids.
This was the first time where they came into an arena where they check your bags at security, and the media cameras are in their face, and they get put into the locker room after the games and aren't allowed to leave. There were a lot of new things that they had to experience, and this is what postseason play is like, like an NCAA game or NIT game.
We're going to have another opportunity, and we need to take advantage of that and embrace it because that's how you grow programs. We would be thrilled.

Q. Is it kind of an ideal team for that, Whitney and your older players want to play in it and you have younger players that would benefit?
COACH COLLEN: I think so, and I've had teams before where half the team didn't want to play and half the team was seniors, and I don't think that's the case. The one thing I've never doubted in Whitney Jones and Ayana Brereton was their dedication to the team and to Arkansas.
I believe them when they say they want to play. Right now our freshmen may be disappointed but they'll be jumping at the bit to get back out on to the floor, and we've got to get them some experience.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

End of FastScripts

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