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NCAA WOMEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS & FINALS: KANSAS CITYMarch 28, 2010Kelsey GriffinDominique KelleyCory MontgomeryConnie YoriKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI Kentucky – 76 THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by Nebraska Coach Connie Yori and her student athletes. Coach, your thoughts on tonight's game? COACH YORI: Well, I want to congratulate Kentucky. I thought they played really well. They came out and got us on our heels, and we just couldn't get back to who we were all season until the latter part of the game, and that's a credit to them. You know, I've said, and these guys have heard this probably 1,000 times this year, ever since we started our conditioning sessions, I said, Guys, if we can rebound and we can compete on the boards, we can beat just about anybody. And tonight was an example of us not competing on the boards and the loose balls and the rebounds went their way and ultimately that was the difference in the game. But congratulations to Kentucky. Q. Kelsey, what went wrong, I guess, from your perspective just as a whole with the team tonight? KELSEY GRIFFIN: Well, you know, Coach said it. When we defensive rebound, we can be a really good team and compete with some of the best teams, and we struggled with that tonight. But you have to credit Kentucky; they knocked down shots. They shot really well. I mean, kind of like Coach said, we were on our heels and we never quite recovered from that. But I think how we lost the game in the last final minutes credits a lot to our character. We never gave up, we came back, we fought, and it was a bout till the end. Q. This is for any of you. What parallels do you see between the way this team played tonight and when you played here a few weeks ago against Texas A & M? KELSEY GRIFFIN: You know, both teams pressure. They're both pressure teams. Both teams out-rebounded us, and we knew rebounding was going to be important and taking care of the ball was going to be important in the game. It was good what they did in the first half as far as what they were able to do convert off of our turnovers and their steals, and that's what kind of gave them their lead. Then for us not being able to defensive rebound like we needed to, battles of possession is a huge thing in basketball and hard to win a lot of games if you don't win the battle of possession. Q. Dominique, can you talk about handling the ball against their pressure defense and how it played out into what you thought it would be going into this game? DOMINIQUE KELLEY: Well, we knew that they were a pressure team, kind of just to piggyback on what Kelsey and Coach had said, we were on our heels, and we did a better job later in the game, but initially in the first 12 or 10 minutes, we didn't handle the pressure very well, so.... Q. Cory, it seemed like especially in the second half late you started to make a run, you started to put things together, but Kentucky just wouldn't let you get back in it because they started hitting shots. What was your thoughts on that? CORY MONTGOMERY: Well, you know, when we got down, our team never gives up, and that's the great thing about watching us play is we're going to fight until the very end whether we're winning the game, whether we're losing the game, and we never were going to give up and just let Kentucky walk away with a win, and I think that really shows the determination that we had. We didn't get the job done, but we still stuck with it and kept in the game and gave them all that we had until the end. Q. Cory, I know that this probably stings a lot, but do you have any idea when it'll wear off and you'll have a second to think about what you guys accomplished this year, because it was a pretty remarkable season. When do you think about that? CORY MONTGOMERY: Well, it does really hurt right now, and I'm sure it'll hit us all when we wake up tomorrow morning and don't go to the gym to practice. But if you do look at our season, we ended up really -- it didn't end the way we'd like to, but we still had a really good season and we accomplished many different things for the Nebraska program and we ended up with a strong record and we were Big 12 champs, so we did some really good things. If you look back to our season, we still had a really successful season. It just didn't end the way we wanted it to. Q. Kelsey, can you talk about the impact of the early foul in the second half and how that affected the way you were able to play when you came back in? KELSEY GRIFFIN: Well, as of late I've been in foul trouble a lot, so I was kind of used to it. But fouls happen. I have to be able to play through them. You know, in hindsight probably should have taken the three instead of driving it all the way, but I tried to stay aggressive. I don't think it really took me a lot out of the game because I had two more fouls I could potentially get, and we needed to stay aggressive in order to try to fight back into the game. So I don't think it really affected how I played too much. Q. Did you guys feel that maybe there was a lack of energy or your legs maybe weren't under you or is that not a fair assessment? KELSEY GRIFFIN: I can't speak for the rest of my team, but my legs were fine for the game. I know -- I do know that all of my teammates wanted this game and we were all fired up and wanted to play. We were excited to play. We love playing with one another, so tonight was no different. Q. Kelsey, the way that you guys started, usually you guys start the second half kind of surging ahead or at least seizing momentum a little bit. But what happened there to start the second half because that's when they made their run to kind of create some cushion? KELSEY GRIFFIN: I don't know. It was just kind of a fight throughout the whole game. You know, every time it seemed like we could kind of get a little break, they just hit a big shot or stole a ball. Like Coach said, taking care of the ball and defensive rebounding was huge, and we weren't quite able to capitalize on it as much as we needed to. Q. The seniors can touch on this, just where you're leaving things now in your final game and where the program has come to in your years here. KELSEY GRIFFIN: You know, the thing that hurt so much about losing this game isn't the game, it's the fact that I'm not going to get to go back and practice with these underclassmen and the rest of my seniors. That being said, I think that we have helped Nebraska put Nebraska on the map, and I'm so excited to see what the team is going to do next year. They're bringing in some great freshmen. The freshmen this year got great exposure. Everyone grew up a lot this year, and so I'm really excited to see where Nebraska is going to go, and I know it's only going to get better from here on out. Coach Yori is a great coach. She's obviously done great things with the program, one of the hardest working people I know, and it's been an honor playing for her, and I know there's only good things to come in the future for Nebraska. THE MODERATOR: Ladies, thanks for coming. We'll take questions for Coach. Q. Coach, if you can just pick up where they left off on the senior class in general. I know you spoke volumes about them all year, but at the end of the season now. COACH YORI: These guys -- our senior class, I can go back as far as seven years ago and say -- and I said this at that time, that this senior class, which Kelsey was added to the senior class, but seven years ago when those guys were sophomores in high school, I said, this will be the most important class that we'll ever have. The recruiting part of it I could foresee ahead that it was going to be a big class. It was going to be an important class to get us over the hump, and obviously they've done a lot more than just get us over the hump. I mean, they have taken us to a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, won 32 games, absolutely shattered the school record, won their -- were part of winning the first Big 12 championship in program history, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, but 30-game winning streak. These guys are -- I've been a head coach for 20 years, and this is absolutely the most unselfish team that I've ever coached. They didn't care who got the credit. They weren't about points, rebounds, stats, minutes. They were just about being great teammates, working every day to get better, and there's nothing more that you can ask for as a coach than having an opportunity to work with the young women in our program who have that great character. Q. I was wondering if you could talk about how tough this Kentucky team is to defend because they're not particularly big, but they're so quick and they have scoring throughout -- all over the court. COACH YORI: Right. Well, John Wooden always says that -- he used to say when he coached, he'd say, if you have three players on your team that are quicker than your opponent, you have a really good chance to win. And if you look at their lineup, they were either as quick or quicker at every position than us, and that was the difference. They got every loose ball. They chased down loose ball rebounds. They beat us to the ball. And the collection of those plays added up to a win for them. They're a very quick team. It's not that we lacked quickness, but we weren't as quick as they were at every position, and ultimately that was the difference. Q. You shot 60 percent in the first half and then the first six minutes nothing went your way in the second half. I know that they asked the players about that. Just your comments on the start to the second half. COACH YORI: Well, we didn't do the things we talked about at halftime. We wanted to pound the ball inside. We didn't get the ball inside enough tonight. And that's been our bread and butter all year, and we did not take advantage of our size advantage on the low block. We just didn't get enough post touches. And finally when we did you could see Cory score down there and Kelsey, as well. We just didn't get an opportunity to get the ball inside enough. They hurt us. Again, they got us on our heels, and I really felt like to start both halves, I mean, their energy level was very good. You're always going to play a little bit quicker to start the half because you're a little more fresh, and I thought that's where the game was decided, at the beginning of each of those two halves. Q. That quickness that you talk about, how much of that was something that you fully anticipated coming into this, and what did you want to do other than take advantage of your size to counteract that? COACH YORI: Well, that's the main thing. We needed to -- and we needed to rebound, and we knew we had to chase down loose ball rebounds. We just weren't quick to the ball. But there's no reason why we didn't get the ball inside more. That's disappointing that we weren't able to do that. You know, we knew they were quick. They're not a big team. We watched plenty of film. We knew they were quick. We tried to simulate it. You do the best you can to simulate it but hard to simulate. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much for your comments. Congratulations on a great season. End of FastScripts |
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