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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 5, 2009Shantell BlackRenee LadnerBianca ThomasNORTH LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS Ole Miss – 65 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by the winner of today's first game, Ole Miss 65-60 over Arkansas. We are joined by Coach Ladner, and Bianca Thomas and Shantell Black. Coach? COACH LADNER: First of all, I'm extremely proud of my players. I didn't think we came into favorable conditions, we had to come into Arkansas and play Arkansas in what is their home court. That's always a disadvantage. But most importantly, I just believed in our kids and they competed for forty minutes, they played hard. We were imperfect a lot of times, but for the most part we found a way to make a big play when we needed them. THE MODERATOR: Bianca Thomas set a new career high, 31 points today. With that we'll take questions. Q. Question for Coach. What are your thoughts initially looking at the rebound numbers, you mentioned it was an imperfect game, that's one of the areas where it was. How frustrated are you when you look at that? COACH LADNER: That's never in the plan. When you put things on the board, you always think you're going to outrebound the team. Arkansas is very quick, they get to the rim in a hurry. I'm never happy when we get outrebounded, but I'll take it today. Q. Coach and Bianca, could you talk about Bianca's day and what she was able to do to hit the three's early? COACH LADNER: Well, you know, we could talk about Bianca's year, she has gotten better as the year has trudged on She has made big plays along the way and today she had this look on her face that she wanted the ball and in critical situations, so we put a lot of merit in Bianca Thompson's play and we ran a lot of things to her and she came through for us. BIANCA THOMAS: Today, the teammates were making screens, and I was coming off of them and knocking down the shot, it was just a total team effort. Q. Renee, Arkansas never looked like they got in sync or at least for chunks of the game. How much of that do you think was due to you guys going to the zone in the first half? And could you talk about the different ways that you guys were able to get Bianca open? COACH LADNER: Okay. Yeah, I thought our zone really shut down the three and they began looking around. We came into the game knowing that Ricketts didn't want to particularly shoot the three, she would set a lot of screens. We started out in "man" and that lasted about one minute. We knew when we went to the zone we were going to cover their shooters. And at different times there were four, so we asked our kids to step it up a notch and make sure their slides were in the right place with a high-handed position to keep them from getting looks. As a coach, you want to make the shooters move and the drivers shoot outside and our kids followed the game plan. Now a couple of times the middle of the floor got open, but you've got to give us something. And we were determined today, or made it a point of emphasis not to give up the three. Question about Bianca? We ran her off of every screen possible. As of late, she has been able to create shots. And when we could penetrate, they couldn't guard Shantell and Kayla Melson. If they held off Bianca, she was going to knock down a three, so we tried to keep her on the ball side of the floor. Those were our two points of emphasis there. Q. As much as Bianca did today, the turnovers in the second half were lopsided. Can you talk about that and how that helped you on the other end of the floor? COACH LADNER: Again, I thought the zone affected Arkansas and they hurried shots, rushed shots, forced shots and we did get some turnovers early on. On the flip side, I turned the ball over -- we turned the ball over three times in a row when I thought we were making a true run and we had a time-out and a little talk about that. So turnovers hurt them, I think we scored 22 points off of their turnovers, and that is probably the biggest difference in the game. Q. At the end of the game, Bianca, maybe it was 60 -- y'all had a 3-point play, did you try to miss the free-throw? Was that the -- on the back of the rim? BIANCA THOMAS: I never try to miss -- I don't know what was going on today, but I couldn't make a free-throw. Q. But after that free-throw, y'all hit the ones in the last 20 or so seconds. COACH LADNER: Not by design. We are the cardiac kids. Things get down to the wire, sometimes we go hay wire. We always know that Bianca is the leading free-throw shooter in the league, and we feel confident with her up there. And when she misses one, our guys get big and we look over at the bench and we go, goodness, hope that doesn't happen again, and we hope she can make the one or we let her try it again. She shoots 60%, we want 90%, but we're still going to put it in her hands. We believe in her and those things don't happen very often. Q. I believe that was you, Shantell, that threw the ball up in the air at the buzzer. Can you talk about what's going through your mind? How much emotion did you guys put into this game? SHANTELL BLACK: We put a lot of emotion coming into this game. We were focused, ready to play. And just to get a win under our belt and succeed to the next round was great. It was a great feeling. Q. Let's talk about Auburn and Bianca's points against them, 29 I think it was, 31 tonight. COACH LADNER: You know, what do I need to say about Auburn? One of the best teams in the country, best team in our league. We played them very well at their place. We will have to be above and beyond the call tomorrow. We will have to regroup in a hurry, and they have to guard the big three for the most part, get bodies on them and Alli Smalley, we have all the weapons. At their place, we played 'em to the end and just did not make some shots down the stretch. We would like to make the game ugly, we can play well like that. We would like to be able to compete with them for forty minutes, just keep, you know, chipping away, chipping away trying to find a way. You have to get a stop on this defensive end of the floor and then you have to find a way to put the ball in the hole. I feel confident in my players offensively. We'll just have to really watch Bonner because she is explosive. We will have to take transition away. I think she is one of the best guards in the country in our conference and they have a pure shooter. We've played them before and we've faced a lot of contests like this one. This is the SEC Tournament. You give it your best effort for forty minutes, we have to compete with everything that we have. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Congratulations. Ole Miss plays Auburn tomorrow at noon. End of FastScripts |
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