	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOUR

April 3, 2010

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

THE MODERATOR: I'm pleased to introduce Oklahoma head coach Sherri Coale, as well as student-athletes Danielle Robinson and Amanda Thompson.
COACH COALE: Obviously we're excited to be here. Love the city of San Antonio and the way they host the Final Four. Nobody in America does it better than this city. Our kids have enjoyed being here, and now we're ready to compete.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Danielle and Amanda, in Oklahoma Sherri Coale's a rock star. Can you talk about how -- has any of that gone beyond the state borders, any of your travels with her, have you had any experiences that can speak to her celebrity status nationally?
DANIELLE ROBINSON: Everywhere we go, Coach Coale is known. You just hear people, we'll be walking, Oh, it's Coach Coale from Oklahoma. I mean any particular incident, I can't recall. But I know she's pretty well known around the nation.
AMANDA THOMPSON: I think she's pretty high status, I mean, even out here. We walked the River a little bit and it was only a couple of us and someone was like, Is Sherri Coale with you? I said, No, she's probably in the room somewhere.
But she's pretty high. She's pretty high. Celeb.

Q. Danielle, there were a couple of items in the media guide I was intrigued by. One of them, as you could probably guess, is you have a notation: Not my team, Stanford. And that was probably done quite a while ago. And, secondly, if I may, the other item is if you were not playing for Oklahoma, you'd probably be playing for Cal. How close were you to going to play for Cal?
DANIELLE ROBINSON: Cal had been recruiting me before Coach Boyle had got there. And I just really enjoyed my visits up there. And early on, I guess you could say, Cal was at the top just because something important to me was being close to home so my family could watch me play. And Cal is pretty close in distance.
And so I definitely took that into consideration when I was making my decision.

Q. What about Stanford?
DANIELLE ROBINSON: I grew up watching them, you know, for many, many years. And then as I took more and more visits and, you know -- I respect the program a lot. Tara VanDerveer is a great coach. She has great players. But I just didn't feel it was the right fit for me.

Q. For both Amanda and Danielle. You guys have played the toughest schedule in the country. During the season you played three teams that wound up being No. 1 seeds and now you're playing a No. 1 seed in Stanford. How is that schedule playing particularly tough nonconference games, how does that help you get to where you are now?
AMANDA THOMPSON: I feel like it's helped us a lot. We faced all different kind of teams, all different kind of styles. We've come from behind. We've had leads. It's just given us opportunity to experience different kind of play.
And a long time in the tournament, you know, you need that because when you're scouting somebody, you can say, okay, we can compare that to a team we played and it helps us go along and helps our game plan.
DANIELLE ROBINSON: Like she talked about, we see a variety of teams throughout the whole season, especially in nonconference. It prepares us well for the Big 12 conference, and that prepares us for the NCAA tournament.

Q. Danielle, could you talk about playing against Jeanette Pohlen in the CIF final in, what was it, 2007, and what you remember about her as a player and also what -- if you've watched her develop over the years at Stanford and obviously she's made headlines in the last week?
DANIELLE ROBINSON: You know, we played our senior year in the state championship. She wasn't the point guard then as she is for Stanford now.
She's a great player. I think she led her team for the whole season. I think they only had one loss coming into Long Beach, if I recall that correctly. So she was a great player, great leader.
I got the chance to play her this past summer, learned a lot about her. She's a great person. We've actually become pretty close friends, and we keep in contact, especially since she's close to home in Palo Alto.
So excited for where she's at. I was excited when she hit that shot last week. And ready to play her, I guess.

Q. Amanda, just to pick up on what you were saying earlier, what do you think accounts for why Sherri is so popular? Is it just victory, or is it her style or personality? What do you think it is?
AMANDA THOMPSON: I think it's just the way she carries herself every day. I know she pays attention to more the little things. She's all about tradition and just doing the right thing.
And people see that. And they feel that and they just gained a lot of respect for her. And I gained a lot of respect for her for doing that. And it just makes everybody else follow in her footsteps, and she just makes great players and she plays great games and she's not afraid to challenge us. That's why she's so popular around.
So she's just a great person.

Q. I wonder, your program has been involved with some memorable games with Stanford in the past. Does the rivalry you have with that school still resonate with newer players who don't have any experience? And also how much would it mean to end that losing streak you have against Stanford that stretches to four now?
DANIELLE ROBINSON: I'm not really familiar with a couple. I just know the one that's the most recent. I mean, it's a great rivalry for women's basketball. I don't know how big it is. But I guess I could say it's somewhat of a personal thing for me being from California.
But we're just going to execute our game plan against a great Stanford team.
AMANDA THOMPSON: Well, like she said, I'm not familiar, but I've heard about the games in the past, and it was against Oklahoma and I feel like I'm a part of that family so I think it's going to be a rivalry however long it goes on.
That's how we'll play the game, as if we just lost to Sanford last year.

Q. For both of you, give me your thumbnail analysis of Stanford and what you all have to do to beat them?
AMANDA THOMPSON: They have really tall posts down there, and they just execute very well. So we definitely have to take away their cadence and disrupt what they do and outwork them and just play hard.
I think everybody's going to be good at this time of the year, so we just to do what we do well, to stop what they do well.
DANIELLE ROBINSON: We have to speed them up, use our athleticism to our advantage. We definitely have to block out against them. They're extremely good on the boards, especially Kayla Pedersen. We know that we have an advantage with our athleticism.

Q. For both players, a lot of teams, when they get to this point, look back at a turning point in the season. Outside of the Whitney Hand injury, there doesn't seem like there was. Was this just a building process and a maturity that you guys reached to get to this point, or what's your feeling on that?
DANIELLE ROBINSON: I think one of our turning points was the loss against Texas at home. We knew that for us it was unacceptable, and we had to make changes. And we went into that locker room and that's what we did. And from here on out we've been playing that better.
AMANDA THOMPSON: I think we've had several turning points throughout this year. You know, those are definitely one of the key ones.
But I think that great basketball, it has a lot of changing points. In order to be a great team you have to go up and down and go through struggles, and when you overcome them, that's when you get to points like this, times in the Final Four. You don't really look back on them; you just build on it and learn from them and keep going.

Q. We're obviously here for the Connecticut Invitational, but the fact that a lot of people are going to perceive the fact, well, it's going to be Stanford and Connecticut in the championship game and Stanford gets the chance to end the streak and all that. Do you get a little incentive from the fact that maybe people are just saying, hey, it's nice Oklahoma and, to a lesser extent, Baylor is here, but they're just kind of standing in the way of the Stanford-Connecticut game? Does that give you guys any motivation if that's the case?
AMANDA THOMPSON: Well, you know, people say what they say. I mean, they have their opinions. But I think it just puts us in a great position to change history. UConn is going to be UConn. Every other team is going to be themselves. Everybody's competing for a championship.
So we know what we expect of ourselves, so we're going to play our game and not worry about what everybody else is saying. We're just creating a bubble and staying within that and having fun while we're doing it.
DANIELLE ROBINSON: Like Amanda said, we know what we're capable of. We don't need the support of anybody beyond our Oklahoma circle, because we've been the underdog all season and people didn't expect us to be here right now, and we're here.

Q. Amanda and Danielle, how do you and your teammates get along on and off the court?
DANIELLE ROBINSON: Well, we're like sisters. We're like family. I can say this is probably the closest team since I've been here. We just have so much fun. And, I mean, we're pretty much together I feel 20 hours a day out of the 24 hours, regardless if you see somebody on campus, stop to talk to them, or at the gym or go to their house. We're like family.
AMANDA THOMPSON: I would have to agree. We're pretty close. And a lot of teams it's hard to have fun and be honest at the same time and take constructive criticism and encourage at the same time.
I think that this team, we can do that and also have fun. You kind of learn from each other and just enjoy every moment. I think I've enjoyed every moment with these guys all year. And I'm just thankful that I have them as teammates.

Q. Can you both talk about how last year's experience at the Final Four you think will help you this time around?
AMANDA THOMPSON: Well, I feel like we got satisfied last year with just getting here, and this year we kind of learned from that and know that we're going to enjoy San Antonio, but we're here to do a job and we're here to get to the next game. And hopefully we get that championship. And just never taking our eyes off of it and just kind of live every game and play every game like you're not going to have another one.
DANIELLE ROBINSON: Yeah, last year we settled -- we got here, we went into halftime with a 12-point lead. And we just came out flat. And we know how hard it is to get here, especially back to back, so we're just going to go out there and fight like we have for our whole season. We're just going to play for each other and go out there and have fun.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Questions for Coach.

Q. Tara VanDerveer said earlier that her first Final Four -- I think she said it was 1990. She wore a ribbon in solidarity with Oklahoma because they were going to drop the program. Could you tell the story what it was like when you got there: What was your office like, was it hard to recruit, what was your salary? Probably wasn't great. What did you creatively do to build the program and get people to come play and showing up to watch, too?
COACH COALE: Okay, how long is this press conference? There's quite a story there.
When I came to Oklahoma, I have used the analogy before that it's like finding a rusty old car out in the middle of the farm, and you think: I can do something with this. The windows are cracked and I can fix them, the tires are flat and I can fix them, and we can do a paint job. Okay, I can do this. And then you open up the hood and there's no engine inside. It's a little bit worse than you might have imagined.
We had nothing. There was not one single player being recruited according to the files. So I had never recruited a player before, so, okay. But I used my network. And that's what it's all about. You know people who know people who know people.
And I signed Phylesha Whaley, because my college coach, I had a friend who was Phylesha Whaley's high school -- who was a friend of Phylesha Whaley's high school coach. I had never seen her play. I brought her in for a visit and decided to sign her because she had great eyes and I thought she'd run through a wall for me. She turned out to be unbelievable and holds all kinds of records at Oklahoma now.
And we went and found Stacey Dales in Canada and nobody had ever heard of her. And I went and watched her in the first three passes she threw were off the wall. And called my assistant coach: She's fabulous. I love her. I gotta have her.
It was just a series of really God being involved in leading us to the right kids. I really do believe that. And knowing people and building step-by-step and knowing that it doesn't -- if you want to build it to last, you don't do it immediately. It takes some time.
And we never took the Band-Aid approach. We went out and found great kids. Character kids who believed in the way we wanted to play and believed in our mission for building a championship program. And they came and they toiled and Phylesha Whaley came and lived through 5-and-22 and 8-and-19 and got us to the stinkin' Sweet 16 where we won the right to play Connecticut. Whoohoo.
And a phenomenal group of kids who paid the price to build a foundation that would last which allows us to be in this position today.
So that's the Cliff Notes version.

Q. While we're dealing with past history, obviously you guys had a very simmering rivalry with Stanford in the past. Talking to the players, it sounds like it's not quite as intense as it might have been maybe seven or eight years ago. Is that fair to say? And could you talk about the rivalry that you had with Tara in the past and how it's maybe evolved over the years?
COACH COALE: You said we were 0 for our last 4? Is that right?

Q. (Indiscernible)?
COACH COALE: What's overall series? Because I have no idea.

Q. Two and four, I think.
COACH COALE: Okay. Obviously it's not a huge rivalry with me because I have no idea what you're talking about exactly in terms of numbers.
Here's the thing: The only time we meet Stanford is in the NCAA tournament. And Tara and I have tried for years to schedule. We would love to have that home-and-home matchup. We tried. When the twins got here we tried because of Danielle. And because of their final schedule and our final schedule, it just has not been feasible. We've not been able to make it work.
So when you say rivalry, I guess maybe it is. But to me the only time we meet is when we're in the Sweet 16 or Elite Eight or the Final Four and it's the NCAA tournament.
Of course we're going to meet quite often because we're both getting here. And the numbers say that you will.
I don't sense any special rivalry with Stanford over the years, especially with these kids, because they haven't played them. So sorry to bust your story (laughter).

Q. I'm honored to interview a rock star.
COACH COALE: I'm honored to be at the UConn Invitational (laughter).

Q. As far as the scheduling, is it a fine line between scheduling too difficult, particularly when you're going to be in the Big 12, you know, during the conference season, when you schedule non-conference, do you worry ever about, you know, burning your kids out or losing too many games and affecting their confidence? And has this team been able to handle the difficult schedule as well as maybe any you've had?
COACH COALE: You know, I think that's maybe one of the blessings of once being a high school coach and just jumping up to this. I didn't know you were supposed to worry about stuff like that. I just wanted to play the really good guys so I could figure out how far we had to go to become one of them.
And it seemed to work for a while. It got us into the NCAA tournament. Got us to the Sweet 16, and I thought this seems like a pretty good way to do it. Get me every tough team you can. Find me the best in America. I want to play home-and-home with them.
I just always had enough confidence in our kids that regardless of the tenacity involved in the Big 12, we were going to win enough games to get in the tournament.
And when we got in the tournament, we were going to be very well prepared to succeed there. Our goal was never just to get there; it was to get to the tournament and win. Even back when Phylesha Whaley and I were just dreaming about it, it was get to the tournament and win.
And I think that schedule has played a huge role in it. I know it's built this team's confidence. Not a doubt in my mind.

Q. You had the Paris twins. You have Danielle. Is there some sort of story to how you've been so successful recruiting in the Bay Area?
COACH COALE: I don't know that there's really any magic to it. Obviously when you get kids like Courtney and Ashley, who are so renowned, not only within the state of California but across the country, but when you get Cali kids -- I know when Geno got Diana, then that opened the door.
More people are looking at your school because there's that connection there. And I think that probably put us on the short list. I don't know that beyond that there's any real magic, except that there are a lot of Cali kids who love the way people support basketball at the University of Oklahoma.
And I know for Danielle, when she got there and saw how big of a deal it is. It's a really big deal in Norman, Oklahoma, to be on the women's basketball team. It's a really big deal in Norman, Oklahoma, to go watch the women's basketball team. I think for a lot of California kids that's very attractive.

Q. Kind of picking up on that Connecticut Invitational theme --
COACH COALE: Wendell started it.

Q. I know. Thank you, Wendell. I think there's also a little bit of a perception that this is not the sexy game that the other one is. This is kind of like the other game. I just wondered what your thoughts on that were.
COACH COALE: Well, we're playing. And as our team likes to say, we're still here. I don't really know that it matters what type of circus revolves around the game. And in some ways I think it's a blessing in disguise to be not part of the circus.
But one team is going to win that game. And either ourselves or Stanford are going to be playing for the national championship on Tuesday. So it's a pretty significant game, I would think.
And I think there will be a lot of folks who feel the same way.

Q. Could you talk a little bit about Abi? She spent a lot of time behind the twins on the bench, and just kind of her progress this year and what the task is in front of her playing Stanford?
COACH COALE: I'm glad you asked about Abi, because I think she's a fantastic story, because her story is refreshing. You know, kids these days play high school ball and they're All-World on their high school team and they play every minute and they think they're the end-all to the game of basketball.
Then they go to college, and if you get five of them and you've got some players left at all from the previous season, they're not all five going to play all the time. And for a lot of kids that's really, really hard. There are some who never get past it. They never get past the fact they don't start as a freshman. Abi didn't start as a freshman or as a sophomore or junior. Not only did she not start she hardly played. And she was willing to come to Oklahoma and not wait -- I want people to understand this, Abi did not wait. Abi got better from her freshman year to her sophomore year.
It took a year to figure how to work the way we wanted her to work in practice. From her sophomore and junior year she started to put the intellectual pieces of it together, the why you go here and why you don't go there and what the screening angle does and why we teach it, and it all started to kind of make some sense to her.
And then going into her junior year, she started to figure out how to really compete and add all those things together. The missing piece was she wasn't in physical condition enough to play any significant amount of time. Her junior year, she could have played more had she physically been prepared, because all the other pieces were there.
And so she looked around and said, Courtney and Ashley aren't going to be here next year, looked at her teammates and I look like I'm going to be the center. Uh-oh, I better take care of my business. And she did.
And look at what she's done. It's a fabulous story. And I think young athletes everywhere should really pay attention to it, because that's the right way to do it. She was in it for the long haul. She was in it for the stuff that matters. If you ask her right now she wouldn't have had it any other way.
People keep asking what are you going to do with Jayne? Jayne's a fantastic player. I don't want to take anything away from Jayne Appel. She's may be the greatest interior post passer we've seen in years, and obviously an incredibly capable scorer in either direction.
But Abi has played Cokie Reed from Texas, she's played Tina Charles from Connecticut, she's played Brittney Griner three times. It's not like Abi has been the biggest kid on the floor all the time.
She gets this. She understands it, and she'll be ready for it.

Q. You're the only coach here without a national title. What would winning the national championship do for you, professionally and maybe, more important, do for the program?
COACH COALE: I'm younger than the others, so write that, please (laughter). Just barely.
Oh, it's why we do what we do. It's the grand prize. Obviously. I think our returning to the Final Four this year put us in a different category. Put us in a different league, nationally. But you don't really get to be a part of that small circle until you get to cut down the nets here.
And that's what awaits us. And before you can do that, you've got to get here. So we did that part. But we've got some unfinished business.
And I think it would catapult us even into maybe an even more elite circle.

Q. You mentioned on the conference call Wednesday about the respect and the friendship you've had with Geno Auriemma over the years. Could you take us back to -- I think it was '96 when he first came to Norman to check out Stacy Hansmeyer and the first time you met and how that friendship has built?
COACH COALE: Yeah, it was the fall. It was snowing sideways. And Geno came in the gym and he had on loafers with no socks. Seriously, aren't you from Connecticut? It's winter and he's complaining about the weather and how cold it is and he doesn't have a coat and he has his jacket lapels up. I said, Go sit down. I've got to practice. That's kind of how it began.
He appreciated the way our kids worked and appreciated the things that we were teaching high school players. And told me that. There's just sort of been a mutual respect there in terms of the game of basketball and how it ought to be played and how it ought to be taught.
And it's just evolved through the years.

Q. Tara VanDerveer said that she thought that this might be been a really fun year for you to coach because of the losses from last year, expectations were lowered, and you just could go out there and do some stuff as a coach and try and build. Was that the kind of season it was for you, work with some unknown parts to get it this far?
COACH COALE: It really has been a fun year, but really made it fun has been the willingness of these kids to learn and adapt and transform themselves.
You know, coming into the year, we thought we would play in a certain way. And we were moving toward that when Whitney got hurt. And it had to be adjusted a little bit at that time.
And from that point forward, everything from everybody's role changing a little bit when Whitney went down to making changes in the lineup. Jasmine moving into the starting lineup after Carlee had been starting. Playing different guys, guarding post guys, moving guys around on the floor, changing defenses, whatever kind of manipulation we needed to have in order to be successful, these guys are all about it.
And I think you can ask any coach anywhere. One of the best things in the world is to be able to call a timeout and say, okay, we're going to do this. And it's something they've never done before and you draw it up and tell them to do it and they go out and do it exactly like that, it doesn't matter if you're coaching junior high or in the NBA, that's a pretty cool thing.
And these guys are receptive in that way. So it's been really, really fun. We get to tinker and try things out and they don't always work. The things we draw up or the ideas we have don't always work, but our kids always dive in head first to try, and that's what makes it fun.

Q. Seems like a size versus speed matchup. Do you see it that way? And will this boil down to who can take advantage of the mismatch the best?
COACH COALE: That's a simple way to look at it. And I think most games ultimately do boil down to that. For us, we've had an ability all year, it seems, to play the way we need to play in order to win, whether it's half court or full court, or patient on offense or scoring quickly.
We can do it a lot of different ways. Not necessarily real pretty whatever way we do it, but we found a way to be effective. So hopefully we'll be able to use our speed to our advantage.

Q. Stanford has been in only a couple of close games all year and were very fortunate to escape the last one. You've been in plenty of them. Does this give you kind of an advantage if this game is close?
COACH COALE: Oh, I think it does, just because our kids believe we're going to win. Does that mean I necessarily want it close at the end? I'll take 12 or 15 points if we can get them.
Our guys, when we went to overtime with Notre Dame, when I went to the huddle before the overtime, I knew we were fine. Our guys just believed they're going to win. And, again, that's a reflection of that schedule we played all year.

Q. You probably play that 2002 Connecticut team better than anybody. You gave them fits there in the second half of the championship game. This year you were ahead of Connecticut in the second half. Geno says that that 2002 team could beat this year's team 9 out of 10, but obviously they're doing something right. Are they doing anything that we haven't seen before in women's basketball, or what is singular about what Connecticut's doing right now? And I ask that with all the respect I know you could beat them Tuesday night if you played them.
COACH COALE: Thank you. I agree with him, I think the 2002 team was better. They were deeper. They had really a superstar at every position on the floor. When you look at what those kids have gone on to do in the WNBA, it's obvious.
I don't know, though, that there's been a more dominant center than Tina Charles and the way she's played this year. She is so consistently predictable. You just know what you're going to get.
With that 2002 team you might get Aisha, you might get Swin, you might get Tamika. You never really knew and what combination thereof. They know what they're getting from Tina Charles. They go right to her. And sometimes it's that focus, I think, on knowing where those baskets are going to come from that maybe makes them great in a different sort of way, if that answers your question.

Q. Considering what you all have been through this year, what you've overcome, where does this team rank, regardless of what happens in the next couple of days? Where does this team rank on your satisfaction meter and the other really good teams you've had?
COACH COALE: I don't ever rank teams. I love them all. It's like asking me which one of my kids are my favorite. I love them all for different reasons, and this team definitely has a special fiber. And because of the way they're wound up with each other, they're going to have similar relationships throughout their lives like the 2002 group.
That group, they get together every year whether they go on a trip or meet up somewhere, they just -- they talk all the time. This group will be like that. And some are a little bit more so than others. This one just happens to be -- maybe part of it is because of the small number. We don't have a lot of folks on our roster.
Two, when you do things together, you have a tendency to become pretty wound up.

Q. Coach, if you're familiar with the '82, '83 and '84 men's tournaments -- I know I'm going back a ways -- could you make a case that the Olajuwon family is due some good fortune in a Final Four?
COACH COALE: I was so deeply embedded in my incredible basketball career at the Oklahoma Christian College that I don't remember -- no, I do remember what was happening. And, yeah, maybe some magic in there.

Q. What kind of motivation do you receive after being in the Final Four twice before and not having being able to win yet?
COACH COALE: Oh, good question from the juniors. Well, it's like being invited to this incredible feast. They just set the table and the food looks and smells fabulous, and there's just dish after dish after dish after dish, and you get to get in the room and you get to sit down, and then they take all your utensils away. And so we're still hungry.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297