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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 7, 2009Whitney BoddieDeWanna BonnerNell FortnerNORTH LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS Auburn – 78 THE MODERATOR: Auburn with a 78-58 win over Tennessee today, and representing Auburn is Coach Nell Fortner, could you start off with some comments? COACH FORTNER: I thought it was an outstanding effort for us in the second half, and it took us 20 minutes to get our feet under us and figure out the flow of the game, but very proud of the effort in the second half. We were fully aware that you go through Tennessee to get to a championship, and that's what we had to do tonight. I felt like in the 20 minutes of the second half we understood that and played much better basketball. Proud of them. Q. To both of you, what did Coach say to you at the half? DeWANNA BONNER: That's a secret! COACH FORTNER: I'm going to bottle that up and sell it. Q. What do y'all do differently in the second half? COACH FORTNER: Easy! DeWANNA BONNER: What she said to us in the second half, basically they were outrebounding us, that was the focus, they got 10 offensive rebounds, and it's an easy 2 points for them, so that took us out of our game and we couldn't get into it. I'm sorry, what was the second part? Q. (Away from mic.) DeWANNA BONNER: We got into our running game and stepped up in the second half. I think we just stepped up. WHITNEY BODDIE: Well, she told me to play with more composure. I had a few plays out there where I got rattled a little bit, a little frustrated. Sometimes you have a great player like DeWanna, you can stand around and she can shoot from half-court and you don't have to do much, but we didn't worry about the name on the front of the jersey and just played, be more aggressive. Q. I think you have to go all the way back to the 1980s to see where Tennessee has lost a game by this much, two games to the same team. What does that say about your team and your program right now? COACH FORTNER: I think it says that these kids are pretty good players, they're a really good team. You know, they play with a lot of heart and a lot of passion. You know, Tennessee is a measuring stick for everybody, and I think that we measured up pretty well this year against 'em. It feels good but, you know, we're building our program at Auburn, and we feel good about the direction we're going and these kids right here are the reason we're doing what we're doing, plus two other seniors that came in with them, so very proud of them. Q. Nell, do you feel like you now have earned the No. 1 seed? COACH FORTNER: I'm not the committee, and I don't even -- I have no idea. I don't know. All we want to do is win the next game, you know, and we've been that way all season long, just win the next game, do the -- win the next game. And we have another game in this tournament and that's what we want to do, win the next game. That's all I can think about. I don't have any idea what the committee -- how they decide that. Q. (Away from mic.) COACH FORTNER: Do I think we're a No. 1 seed? Yeah, I do. Q. Whitney, your Coach wanted you to play with more poise, but in the second half you seemed more aggressive trying to create things, and in the first half you were standing around. What was going on? WHITNEY BODDIE: I was a little more passive in the first half. I tried to let the game come to me instead of making things happen, and Coach Fortner talked about being a playmaker. And the girls were in the locker room talking about making plays, and that's what I tried to do, you go backdoor and you can't sit back on your heels and force you to do certain things, but using their aggression against us -- they were using their aggression against us. Q. Were you concerned because Auburn had such a big win against Tennessee that maybe there might be a let-down and Tennessee might be more fired up? DeWANNA BONNER: No. COACH FORTNER: I wasn't concerned that we would have a let down. Again, we have a tremendous amount of respect for that program, for that team, for those players. So there was going to be no let down whatsoever. And at this point in time in the season there is no way you would ever overlook anybody, no matter what happened earlier in the season. No, I thought Tennessee was -- you know, they have pretty much a home court advantage every time they play this, the SEC tournament because they have so many great fans. I thought we just -- I thought the second half was just the difference in the game, we got our running game going and that made the difference. Q. Did you do anything specifically to shutdown Stricklen? COACH FORTNER: Whitney is a good defender, I thought we had good pressure on her most of the night. We didn't do anything special. We were trying to take care of their inside game because Kelley Cain has been playing really well and their post players, you've got nice post players over there, so we were not more concerned, probably a bigger concern about that, taking away the inside game, and I thought we did a nice job on Stricklen. We have good perimeter defenders. Q. For the players, whenever you're playing Tennessee, it's almost like playing a road game sometimes. Do you guys feed off of that, especially at the second half when you were making your run? DeWANNA BONNER: No, we knew it was going to be like that when we came in. Every game we've been here they played because they have the home court advantage with all their fans. But our fans were awesome tonight, you could hear them as loud as the Tennessee fans, but we kind of fed off our fans and Tennessee fans and Coach Fortner and our bench and we got the energy where we could. We just came out and played. Q. You mentioned Ruthie talking to you before the game. COACH FORTNER: Ruthie has become a special member of our team. She is a former player that has a special connection with this group. We appreciate her effort to come in and watch us play. She lives in Sacramento, and she made a great effort to get here. She has a great time spending time with them and she has such great wisdom, and when she speaks, you can't help but listen. She is funny, too, she is hilarious, the kids draw a lot from her and we appreciate her being here. Q. DeWanna, you guys were locked down on offense the first 8 or 9 points in the first half, seemed like they were in a man-to-man being aggressive, why weren't you able to get good shots? DeWANNA BONNER: We couldn't get our offense going, but the best thing for that is to attack the basket. You can't run no plays because they take you out of it, because they've got great ball pressure and off the ball play, wherever you go, they go. But I think we did a great job staying in the game, gave ourselves a chance at halftime. We were only down by 5 and we came back and kind of got the counters to them and that's what happened in the second half. Q. Talk about getting into the championship game and how close you guys are to making all those goals come true. COACH FORTNER: Well, we're excited about it. This is the first time we've been in it since this staff has been at Auburn, and so it's a definite goal this season, so we're excited to have an opportunity to play for a championship. I don't know what else I can say about that. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies. End of FastScripts |
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