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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 9, 2010Amy BegginDon FlanaganSara HalaszLAS VEGAS, NEVADA New Mexico – 67 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by New Mexico. We'll start with an opening statement from Coach Flanagan. COACH FLANAGAN: First of all, I thought CSU played a very fine game. They're difficult to defend. They have a lot of taller-version guards that can shoot the three. Their inside play is very strong. We knew that. Normally they turn it over a little bit. And I didn't think we took full advantage of that. They didn't turn it over nearly as much. I thought they played a really fine game. Got inside opportunities. We defended, I thought, pretty well getting up on Kim Mestdagh. She's very difficult to defend. Their inside kid was hurting us for a period of time. I thought the key to the game probably was the first four minutes of the second half. We came out, played well, shot well, and then the momentum changed somewhere around 10 minutes to go. They're very difficult to defend. They push the ball down the floor with good quickness at the little guards and good shooters at the big guards. THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll open it up for questions for the student-athletes. Q. Amy, you were fading a little bit in the second half, then had seven straight points. Do you know when to be assertive and when to take over games? AMY BEGGIN: I think those points I got were a credit to my teammates. They did a great job of setting me up and making it pretty easy for me to get some baskets. I do like to maybe make something happen when things aren't going right. I think that was a case of my teammates setting something up and making something happen for me. Q. Amy, they get within two points of you guys and then you don't let them score again. What does that say about your team? AMY BEGGIN: I think defense is something that has been consistent for us all year long. Some games we haven't shot very well. Our offense has been a little stagnant. Defensively we've been a pretty strong team all year long. I think that's something we need to continue to do in the tournament if we want to stay in games and something we need to do to be successful. Q. Sara, in the first half, we talked about Amy being aggressive, in the first half it looked like you were being aggressive. Describe what you were doing. SARA HALASZ: Just going in and working hard. Scoring, defense, everything. I couldn't have done it without my teammates, really. Just going in, working hard, not letting my opponent score on me, which she did (smiling). They're a good team. You just got to come back and fight. No matter if they hit shots or not, you've got to come back and play hard. Q. Sara, what did coach say to you at halftime? SARA HALASZ: Coach just came in saying keep the momentum up, keep working hard, keep pushing and keep attacking them, don't let them get easy opportunities, just keep pushing at them. Q. You seemed to thrive in Vegas in the tournament. You came out in the second half again big. Talk about that a little bit. AMY BEGGIN: I think Coach Flanagan does a great job of preparing us for this tournament. This is the third time we're seeing these teams. So, I mean, really just going into practice we kind of know. We do a good job of preparing ourselves and know what they're going to run. I think once we have a little bit of success in these tournaments, it gives us a little bit of confidence knowing we've done it before. Hopefully we can continue to do that and play a couple more games in the tournament. Q. Amy, at this point you can look forward to playing Utah again. Talk about that matchup a little bit. AMY BEGGIN: Well, I mean, I think everybody on our team remembers what happened last year when we played them here. We haven't beat them in a long time. I think we're looking forward to that matchup. If somebody on our team can't get fired up -- we're really fired up for this game. I think it will be a good matchup and hopefully we can just kind of break through that barrier and get a win this time. THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll let the student-athletes go and open it up for questions for Coach Flanagan. Q. What is it like as a coach to be able to have a player like Amy to rely upon down the stretch? COACH FLANAGAN: Well, it's been four years. I've enjoyed that opportunity to coach her for four years. But the thing I admire most about her is that she works just as hard in practice as she does in a game. I've never seen her take a day off. She's always enthusiastic. In fact, she actually wants to work harder sometimes than our practice is. So she's great to be around. Unusually active. I'm not saying she's hyper anymore, but she really enjoys the game of basketball. She's a true competitor, and she's an excellent leader and a terrific student. Q. Amy will never really take credit, but does she know when to take over games and be assertive? COACH FLANAGAN: Well, you know, sometimes I think she dribbles a little bit too much late in the game and takes it on herself a little bit too much. But, you know, she's been injured for a good portion of this year. I think right now she's probably more enthusiastic, more driven than anybody else on the team, and she really wants to make it happen. Who am I to say, Don't do it, Amy. She's done it for years. She's played big minutes for us for years. So I kind of step back and let her -- unless I think that she's just dribbling a little bit too much. But late in the game, we want to put it in her hands and get a ball screen and see if we couldn't get it inside or get a pretty good shot off of that. Q. (No microphone.) COACH FLANAGAN: You'd have to ask her that. She's always been a player that's been extremely enthusiastic about competition. You know, it's fun to coach people like that. For us to have an opportunity to coach players that are equally as enthusiastic as we are, because we're not the ones that are doing all the hard work, they are. And she certainly is extremely motivated to play and play well. Q. With Utah kind of skating through the first round, it was close throughout, you pulled ahead at the end, are you concerned that you wore yourselves out in the first game? COACH FLANAGAN: Well, right now I think that everybody's in pretty good physical condition. Now, we had a couple -- two of my players bumped heads in the game, so we got a few bumps and bruises. Other than that, physically I think we're ready. At this point in the year, you got to go for it. I mean, you got to be in great shape and you got to play hard all the time that you get your minutes. So I don't think that's going to be a factor. You know, one of the things, we had an advantage this week because we had our last game last Tuesday and we had an advantage of getting prepared. This game, this next game, nobody has a big advantage of being prepared because we don't have any preparation time - or very little. Q. Kast got two big blocks and an easy layup before the half. How important was that little run right before halftime going into the locker room? COACH FLANAGAN: A lot of times when things happen good for your team late in the half, it gives you momentum, it gives you a feeling at halftime that things are going pretty well. Even if you just came back and tied the score, you know, some positive things at the end of the half. I don't like to go into halftime, with me personally, us not playing well or, you know, not defending the three-point shot that they knocked down. So I think it's important that we go into halftime with a positive. And I thought Val's block was a positive, got the crowd in it. That's one thing I want to say. We have terrific fan support and it was obvious today. Q. Can you talk a little bit about your post play. You used a lot of different rotations today. As well, talk about Kielpinski and the mask and how she looked to you. COACH FLANAGAN: With Kielpinski, I'll answer that one first. She looked a little bit tentative to me. And I don't think she's got full vision. That's something that, you know, a mask readjusts as you're playing. And you can practice with it all day long, but you get in a game and somebody bumps into you and knocks it, you have to readjust it. A lot of time it takes you away from the focus of your game. Now, I thought she played pretty well. I thought defensively she played pretty well. But I didn't think she was much of a factor offensively. So I'm hoping either she takes the mask off, of course I'm not going to advise her to do that, or she makes an adjustment to the mask. I thought Val playing some positive minutes really helped us. Then we had a little lineup in there that we pressed with. I thought that was good for a period of time, until they started going inside and whooping us inside. But I thought Porche Torrance gave us some positive minutes. Eileen didn't shoot well the first half, but got herself in foul trouble the second half, but then started shooting better. Everybody contributed. We don't have a lot of post players. We're kind of short in that position. We have more guards than post players. Anything that we can get, I even had a guard in there guarding their post player for a period of time, anything that we can get for positive minutes with an undersized player, we're going to get - we're going to try to get. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you. End of FastScripts |
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