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NCAA WOMEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS & FINALS: OKLAHOMA CITYMarch 28, 2009Epiphanny PrinceBrittany RayC. Vivian StringerKia VaughnOKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA THE MODERATOR: Coach Stringer has joined us, we would like an opening statement. COACH STRINGER: I would say congrats on a season that allowed us to be here. The most unlikeliest of teams, given how things started, but we did get started and we had a tough schedule. This has been an extremely trying schedule for me, and it's been gratifying, because ultimately we were able to see some of the things that we were teaching began to take root and to that extent we began to put things together. We're excited and happy that we got here, it's like the tortoise and the hare, and it didn't matter how quickly you get something done, but that you continue to trod along, and we did that. So here we are, in Oklahoma City regionals, which is a great region. If nothing more than the tremendous support that the Oklahomans have always given to basketball and to sports period. We're happy to be a part of that. Q. Coach, I'm curious from a coach's perspective, the general wisdom is that there is going to be a lot of people wearing Oklahoma gear in the stands. What's it like coming in with the possibility of facing an arena like that that's supposed to be a neutral site. Is that good or bad? What's the potential there for a coach? COACH STRINGER: I asked him to verify Oklahoma's colors and they're red, right? Good. When you look in the stands and you see the colors, that's great. In our case, we have to continue to manage it's the Scarlet Knight red. But I would rather play in a crowded arena than to get home and play in an empty arena. It is what it is. I think our women's game is about growing the sport and trying to get as much support in different areas of the country. So you might say it's a home advantage, but just as easily had we been placed in the Trenton region, which I imagine had we been the No. 1 seed we would have been able to do that and others would have had to deal with the same thing. The guys have gotten to the point where they can take on neutral sites and that's great, but the women's game is not quite there yet. I'm just happy to be playing basketball now, period. And I'm sure that the team is. We're really happy to be playing and we don't care if the game was in Iceland, we're just happy to play. Q. Coach, you've seen the kids take hold of what you're teaching, and before we came here you said that Monday was the first opportunity for them to see exactly what you've been preaching. Has it been a slow process? Or was there a moment? Was there something where you said "now they get it? Now they see it?" COACH STRINGER: We had a "now you see it, now you don't" moment most of the time. You didn't know who you were looking at. I think you remember a game where we had Tennessee down by 20, lost the game. We've lost several games by two or three points. We have sputtered, and had various players that would show up in one game but not in another. So we were never able to have all five hitting on the same cylinder at the same time. We believed, as has happened in years past, that we would come together. Generally our teams begin to play what we call Scarlet Knight basketball, but with so many freshmen, I don't know that they knew what Scarlet Knight basketball was, because if you did, you would know you address defense first and you would do it day in and day out in practice and always. Then you're looking for offensive execution. But we didn't do those things and it had to do with us in a lukewarm way accepting any of the things that we were trying to teach. But I think that it got really desperate after we lost our game to DePaul. We picked it up with Notre Dame, and it was obvious we had lost way too many games, far more than what we were used to losing and we were losing them by two and three points. Some days I was upset and took the team out, as was the case for Syracuse and didn't put the starters in. As I said to the team, if you want to lose a game, I'll help you lose it. And that's what I did. To me it's not that we win or lose, but that we play the game in a certain way, because I've come to understand that it has to be played in a certain way in order to win at a championship level. When we began to embrace the small things that make the big difference, that is defense, rebounding, taking care of the ball better, recognizing time, situation, and score, and that we would do anything as long as we won as a team, it was important. I think that everybody felt so bad that we began to look at ourselves and to see what could we do and how can we be a better team? Because no one enjoyed losing. We were too many individuals without realizing it, perhaps. But when you get desperate, you start to reach for a raft, and I just remember the moment for me was when prior to our Seton Hall game, they had had a meeting and they had a cheer that said "trust. We're all we have!" And it was important that we did understand that because prior to that, we probably thought as individuals each person can do their own thing and we can pull it out. But I thought they got really scared. And I came to be the bearer of bad messages. So I don't know that they took what I had to say as seriously as they did when they began to read, you know, in the paper -- you know how they do the Internet and all those other things, and they began to realize they were in trouble and we needed to step it up. From that point forward they have never looked back. Q. (No microphone.) COACH STRINGER: It has to do with youth. Even though we are split between upper classmen, we have as many freshmen as we have upper classmen and we needed leadership to win. Q. You see any similarities between the way that you play and the way that Purdue plays? COACH STRINGER: Actually a lot of similarities. I think Purdue is aggressive defensively. They push the ball down the floor and they have a lot of sets that are similar, and Coach Versyp has done an outstanding job. And I remember her being a great player at Purdue and she does a great job of motivating her players to play at the highest level. And I'm sure that it's her own pride having been with Indiana basketball, they're playing at Purdue, she now has a player or two that have been at Indiana, and of course the Purdue fans give great support to their team. Offensively as well as defensively I see a lot of things that are similar, so it's not going to be easy, but, yes, we are similar, they do take care of the ball. Q. Coach, your team has played very well in the last few games. You've been talking about playing hard against Connecticut and smart, but you didn't play particularly smart against Louisville, but you played hard. Are you concerned, even though you guys have gone forward that the inconsistencies that have dogged you all year might be lurking this weekend? COACH STRINGER: Well, I wish you hadn't said that, but you always have to know that. It's almost like if you get burned once, you get nervous when you get near the stove, even though you did pretty good before. Obviously that's always possible. But I'm hoping that we remember -- I have a feeling that I didn't think we would play consistent long enough for us to know that this is the way we play. When you play a certain way, as soon as you start to veer off that path, you can correct yourself quickly and you know, oh, we're in trouble, let's stop. I shared that in the Louisville game, I thought we played hard but we didn't play smart. We did play smart and hard in Connecticut, but we needed consistent play from people who had played consistently. For example, Kia had a spectacular game. And if we had the play from everybody else playing the way they can play, the outcome could have been different. Right now we need consistency, and it was important that I knew they felt a certain way after our win. I was asking them what was the best game they had played. It was interesting, it was going to be important to me that we didn't say, you know, maybe a game, maybe five or six, seven games ago where we may have scored -- they as individuals scored 10, 25 points. It was important that they knew they had understood their roles, and I think that was one of the key issues, is that we didn't understand our roles. So when I asked that question, for example, one of them said their best game was against Auburn, and I said you didn't score as much as you might have scored, but she began to embrace the parts of the game that are necessary to her role in functioning as a point guard, because the point guard's role is never to be the outstanding scorer as such -- if it happens it does, but she distributed the ball, it was obvious she was calm, she recognized time situations and she almost had a triple-double because she took good shots, she always rebounded and she was looking to make things go. It was important that I heard that. And from each of them, because they then talked about the complete game, I bet if I had asked that same question maybe two weeks into the season, they would have looked at their own individual game where they may have scored big points but not realize that they had played their roles. We now recognize our role. What's important is that we have amnesia about all those other bad games we played and like what we saw and try to seek that out again. Q. Talk about building the offense from the defense. Is that what happens in the first couple of rounds? COACH STRINGER: We've always believed in our defense creating offense. We have, as a rule, been confident with our ability to put pressure on opposing teams and to get ourselves 10, 12 points on any given night. We have been down by 18 and come back and wiped that deficit out in about four minutes. We are confident we can get that done. It requires a tremendous amount of hard work, but, unfortunately, we also play a game, so we're halfway going through it, and we look up and we're down by 20 and we have 8 minutes to go. So we get into this hurry up mode, let's go into our press. But we've come just 20 seconds too late, you know? But that's always just been a key part of our game. But I will say that in the last three or four games, the press has not been what it has been before. It's not given us at least 10% of our offense. We have executed better, and I'm happy about that, because I don't think that the press -- the press has not lost -- we have not lost it and it hasn't left us, but we're executing better and we're getting better shots, more settled in terms of who is taking the shots. And when the wall is going inside to Kia she is comfortable. She'll see a double when she can make the pass out. She's not trying to rush it. Epiphanny in some games had to score 25, she is not a selfish player, she just had to take the shots because nobody else was taking them. It caused us to be disruptive in our offense and it caused everybody else to stand around, there was no movement. If you look at the Maryland game, that's exactly what was going on. But everyone has now collectively bought into the fact that they have got to be offensively effective, each person there has got to do their part, no more or less. So offensively they're all looking when they touch it, they're looking to see is this me? Can I get this done? And that's important because now it looks as though no one is under pressure, they're just, you know, they're under pressure to execute and find the best possible person. So I do feel better. I would have liked for us to be able to have been clicking two weeks ago, that would have been good because I think then we would know our rhythm. I was telling the team the first time that I slept in the same way that I have always was about two weeks ago. I can't remember the game, but it was a satisfying win. It was the way that it was played, it wasn't about the score. I just felt good because I knew that once we embraced that, we knew what it meant to make good passes. You know, some of the strange things, when we're executing, for me to hear them say, "that was a nice pass" "nice flow, look at the execution" that's really Greek, had been Greek to this team before. But now they're appreciating good passes and movement. When you appreciate the game the way it has to be played then, you know that we'll be okay. We'll be okay in the future in terms of at least ball movement. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you for your comments. (Players enter the room.) THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by our student athletes Kia Vaughn, Brittany Ray and Epiphanny Prince. Q. Kia, after four straight Sweet 16s, is this old hat or is there still something special about this? If so, how does it distinguish itself from the previous three? KIA VAUGHN: It's always special, every year you get to go and attend, because you know that it's getting smaller and smaller within the great teams. So we're one of 16. This year it's different because I'm a senior, obviously. So we have to go out and play hard and have fun. Q. Brittany, Coach keeps on saying you are the unlikeliest of teams and it's a surprise you are here. Do you feel that way? BRITTANY RAY: Uh-uh. I mean, coming from where we did in the beginning of the season, I can see why she said that. I don't know, it's like a repeat of freshman year, she said we were the most unlikely team to get to the national championship, you know? It's just been, you know, an up and down season, but I'm fortunate to be in this position right now because, you know, we've improved so much as a team, not only on the court but off the court. We have become so close-knit and I think that has translated on the court, and I'm proud that we've gotten this far and I hope we can continue to go further. EPIPHANNY PRINCE: I think she said that because of where we came from, from the beginning of the season and how we improved so much. I think that we knew if we continued to work hard, then we would be able to get to this point. Q. Kia, was there a moment in the year where you thought you weren't even get to the NCAA tournament let alone the Sweet 16? KIA VAUGHN: Yeah, definitely. I think throughout the middle of the season, Coach Stringer kept saying we are not going to get invited, which to me, being a senior, was like a dagger in my heart. I kept asking myself, what could we do? What else are we capable of doing, how many more games do we need? Everything counted. No matter what, I wanted to get here and we are. So no more celebrating, we have to deal with the business at hand because we're a team that belongs here. Q. Kia, you guys had the home court advantage the first few rounds, now you're coming to a situation, especially when you get through this round and probably into the next round, you won't have a home court edge. How much of a difference does that make to you as a player? KIA VAUGHN: Home court, first year, it's never been done with us, so it's nothing new to us being somewhere else, having the opponents being home and being a higher seed. It comes with mental toughness, and I believe our coach prepares us well enough that our mind-set is to play the game of basketball and focus on where we are and make every place a home away from home. Q. Do you see similarities in the way that you guys play and the way that Purdue plays? BRITTANY RAY: I think we both take great pride in our defense and we like to run the ball. They run the ball a little bit more than we do, but I think they like to play a low-post game and then the outside game, and I do see similarities there. Q. Epiphanny, the fact that you guys scored 80 in your last game, does that take a load off of you offensively, knowing that you don't have to do everything by yourself, knowing that your teammates are chipping and scoring too? EPIPHANNY PRINCE: I think the last couple of games my teammates have been stepping up and taking shots and giving the team a lot more, so, yeah. THE MODERATOR: Ladies, thank you. Best of luck to you tomorrow evening. End of FastScripts |
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