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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 6, 2009

Renee Ladner

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

Auburn Â– 71
Ole Miss - 65

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Ole Miss and Shawn Goff, who recorded a career high 25 points, 10 rebound, a double-double.
Coach, if you would start with an opening comment.
RENEE LADNER: I'm extremely proud of the way my team played today. You know, we've been down before and sometimes didn't fight back, but there was no question today that we were going to fight with everything we had to the end of the game.
Twice we closed it to within three and had we made a big play, I think we would have had a shot at beating the Number 1 team in the conference.

Q. Can you guys talk about the difficulties from playing from so far behind against a team like Auburn?
RENEE LADNER: Wow, there is nothing easy about playing Auburn at any time whether you're close or behind. You know, I just think they're a team when they put their foot on you, they can continue to do that because they have weapons at five positions.
Today their All-American stepped up, she played All-American -- in an All-American status today, All-Conference, everything. I thought they contested Bonner, and she still did an outstanding job and that's what players do in that situation.
It's always a dig but we were fighting and we were tired and we kept fighting and that shows a lot about our team.

Q. Shawn, your thoughts?
SHAWN GOFF: I just think we realized that we had to stop doing what we were doing because we were hurting ourselves, so we had to play smarter on offense and get stops.

Q. Coach, I know it's difficult to reflect immediately after a game, but Shawn showed today why she has been such a strong player for you throughout her career. Can you just talk about how she kinda carried you guys?
RENEE LADNER: She absolutely did. She played as a senior, as an All-Conference player, she was preseason pick and she had a subpar year at times, today she played consistently and as Shawn Goff can play.
We knew that Bianca was going to be shut down, and that either works on your psyche one way or the other and she stepped up today and showed the player that she could be or the player that she actually is.

Q. You mentioned about Bianca. What did you see from that defensively, they were paying attention to her wherever she was on the court and how did that affect what you guys wanted to do on the offensive end?
RENEE LADNER: It affected us at the beginning of the game because we were shaky. We knew they were going to stick somebody on her like a piece of Velcro, for the most part that's what they did.
Everybody is going to take away your leading scorer, or try to. She fought with it for a while, and when Shawn was making big shoots, she had the tendency to relax, thinking she didn't have to carry the load, at times, or so it appears.
It's a scout, and the first name at the top of your list on points is the very person that they're going to try to pick up. Auburn did an outstanding job on us all day long. They're big, they're wide -- we gave them fits in man-to-man and they had to change to zone, and that's because our guards kept dribble penetrating.
We finished our shots, we were going to be leading them. We could not finish shots. But anytime your leading scorer is shutdown or struggling, everybody is looking around the room trying to figure out who is going to make the next play and on this particular day it was Shawn Goff.

Q. Renee, they had fouls at the end of the game --
RENEE LADNER: Flagrant fouls.

Q. Any thoughts on how many they had to give?
RENEE LADNER: Yeah, speaking of that. I thought there were some calls that we didn't get. I'm not sure we really got many in the course of the game. I thought they were very physical, I thought there were times they were over our backs.
I know in particular when DeWanna Bonner went in, one of the things that broke our back early in the second half, she goes in, she shoots it and they give her a free-throw. We're smaller, we have to back people up and we have to get them over our back for us to get a call sometimes, but I'm not sure that was evenly distributed, but we played through it. We still fought through it.

Q. Shawn, can you reflect -- again, I know it's difficult, but to have such a great game and your final one.
SHAWN GOFF: I wanted to play as hard as I could and you don't want to go into what can be your senior game and know that you didn't play hard for the team, so that's what I tried to do.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies.

End of FastScripts

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