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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 5, 2011Victoria DunlapBrittany HendersonMatthew MitchellNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE Kentucky – 69 THE MODERATOR: We're here with Kentucky. We'll take an opening statement from Coach Mitchell. COACH MITCHELL: Just a tremendous win for us today. I'm so proud of our players. Turned in some unbelievable defense today against a really good Vanderbilt team. To be in the finals for the second year in a row and able to be right where we intended when we left Lexington for Nashville, in the finals, I'm really proud of that. We're excited to play tomorrow. I thought these two young women that are up here on the podium with me were absolute warriors today. You can tell by their rebound numbers that it was a great day for those two young women. So really proud of our team. We're excited to be in the finals tomorrow. THE MODERATOR: Victoria, your opening thoughts on today's game? VICTORIA DUNLAP: I thought we definitely came out really strong in the first half as a team. A lot of defense, pressure, intensity. We played really well in the first half. We ran the plays where we expected to be, like coach said. We're just ready to play tomorrow in the championship. THE MODERATOR: Brittany, your thoughts? BRITTANY HENDERSON: We knew it was going to be a rough game on the boards and things like that. We took a couple punches, and we gave some back, and we came out with a win. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for the student-athletes. Q. Brittany, you said it was going to be a battle. Knowing that coming in, did you know you were going to be really aggressive or... BRITTANY HENDERSON: We knew it was going to be aggressive. We know Tuomi is a great physical player. Also No. 34, Clarke. We had to battle. I knew it was going to be tough on the boards today. Q. Why do you think your full-court pressure gave Vanderbilt in particular a lot of problems? BRITTANY HENDERSON: We know that nobody likes pressure, so that's our mindset, just going in, pressure, getting turnovers, getting points off of turnovers. VICTORIA DUNLAP: That's our game plan for games, we go in with a lot of pressure, a lot of intensity. Just from previous times, it's expected for us to have a game like that. We know last time we played Vandy we had a lot of pressure, so we had to have the same mentality and pressure on the court. Q. Can you talk about how much different the start of this game was compared to yesterday? VICTORIA DUNLAP: We just had a lot more intensity coming out. Coach got us excited in the locker room. Just told us that it was about us today, giving our best effort. We had to know as a team we had to go out there with a Kentucky mindset of playing hard, up-tempo defense. We got it done. It started there. BRITTANY HENDERSON: We know we have to come out with a lot of energy the first four minutes. I thought us coming out, bringing energy the first four minutes kind of led into a great first half. Q. To score 22 in a row, what was that like? VICTORIA DUNLAP: It felt good just to know that especially our defense is what was getting us the points. We've worked on defensive fundamentals so much in practice, when you play intensity like that, you just know that we're going to get points in transition and on offense, being comfortable with ourselves. BRITTANY HENDERSON: We know we had a 22-point lead. But coach was telling us in the timeout, Don't worry about the score, keep fighting, keep getting turnovers, keep being scrappy with them. So that's what we did. Q. When they cut it to 8 in the second half, were there any big worries at that point? VICTORIA DUNLAP: There weren't any worries. I think we were really not focused as a team and together on the court. There was miscommunications on a lot of things. We just knew we had to stay together as a team and just know that what we were doing with our fundamentals had to get better and we just had to stay focused. THE MODERATOR: Ladies, we'll excuse you and continue with questions for Coach Mitchell. Q. Coach, what is the status of A'dia? COACH MITCHELL: She took a charge back in the Arkansas game and bruised her back. It's right down in the small of her back where her back ends and her hip starts. It's been real painful for her. She took a charge early on. It just started tightening up. It just got progressively worse. So we think she'll be checked out right now. When we had her out of the game, we didn't have any intention of not putting her back in. But then we had the game in hand, we thought. Then once she had stayed out for an extended period of time, she really got tightened up. It was a situation where she couldn't come back in. So we don't know anything that would prevent her from playing tomorrow, but we'll just have to see. We're trying to be as cautious as possible with her health obviously. But it's a contusion. That's all we know right now. She's going to go for an x-ray to make sure that there's nothing structurally wrong there. So we'll keep everybody up to date on that. Q. As far as the difference between halftime yesterday, the message was a lot different. What did you say to them when you were up 22? COACH MITCHELL: Well, we were excited about the defense at halftime, but we had just gone in and tried to talk to them. The danger with this team is that we lose intensity. We gave up a three right there at the end of the half. We tried to talk about that play. That's the kind of play that can hurt us and let Vanderbilt back in. 22 points or even 27 points, as you could see today, was not safe. Anytime a team can drive the ball as well, post up as well, shoot threes as well, they're so explosive offensively, you don't feel as a coach they're ever out of it. We just tried to talk about we would love to see the same kind of intensity and win the first four-minute segment; we did that. We won the second four-minute segment and were really feeling good. We thought if we could win the third one, it would be just outstanding. We were just talking about staying with it and trying to play really tough defense like we had in the first half, which was a really incredible defensive performance in the half. Q. Victoria said you got them fired up before the game. What did you say? COACH MITCHELL: I didn't say a whole lot differently. I just talked to them about how special it is to play at Kentucky. As we were driving back from the shoot-around today, you see all the Wildcat fans out in the street, a lot of people had given a lot of their money and time to come down here. And the reason they did is because they're excited about the way our team plays, and the players have created a lot of excitement. I just wanted them to understand that they're part of something real special right now that's happening at Kentucky. The way we could go out there and show everybody how much we appreciate that is to play Kentucky basketball with a lot of passion, a lot of enthusiasm. And I thought that they came out of the gates like that. But that's nothing that I haven't told them before. You'll have to check with Vick if there's anything different or special that was said today. It's always to me about the players. It's not about the coaches. It's about the players. And when this group makes up their minds they're going to play with a lot of passion, a lot of intensity, play Kentucky basketball, they are awfully tough. Q. You don't have much time to celebrate. Talk about the next game, the matchup with Tennessee. And talk about Brittany today. COACH MITCHELL: Really proud of Brittany Henderson. I thought she was one of the keys to us having a successful day. I didn't know how many she had as far as rebounds go. I just knew that early in the game, there were a lot of tough plays. I felt like there was a lot of contact on rebounds early in the game, and she was coming out of there with them. That made me excited, because that is where she needs to be. Obviously 18 boards in one game is unbelievable. But just her mindset allowed her to do that. She was tough and tenacious today. I can't say enough good things about her performance. Really happy that she played so hard. We'll need something like that from her tomorrow. The matchup tomorrow, we have a very, very tough opponent that we had a tremendous game with in Lexington. They are a very talented team. They are a team that poses you a lot of challenges. We came down here with the goal of winning this tournament. You know, as a coach, I figured that if we could get to Sunday, I figured we'd see Tennessee, and that's what's happened. We will try to get back to the hotel and get ready. Have to rely on our defensive fundamentals, what we worked so hard for to get to this point, turn it loose, give it everything we have tomorrow, see if we can be the champions of this great, great tournament that I love so much. Q. 12 turnovers in your first game here, then only 13 tonight. Can you discuss your ability to take care of the ball? COACH MITCHELL: Well, I think that is really, really key for us in a lot of areas, is to try to out-hustle a team. That's a lot of the hustle plays, loose balls, taking charges, things like that. We did a lot of that today. I think that the rebounding battle is really, really important. Looks like they won that by one, and won that by two yesterday. So that was important. Then the turnover battle. When we can get to plus 10, plus 12, that's a great day for us. Our goal is always 25 turnovers and 25 points out of that. Looks like we hit the 25 and got 27 points. The turnover battle I think in the Southeastern Conference is one of the three main keys you have to pay attention to, and we've done a good job the first two days. We'll need to do that tomorrow. Q. Can you talk a little bit about that game in Lexington with Tennessee. Do you have some confidence going into tomorrow, playing Tennessee as close and as well as you did in Lexington? COACH MITCHELL: That was a really tough basketball game. Both teams played hard. We certainly had a chance to win there at the end. It's been a few weeks back. Our players need to have confidence because they worked so hard to get themselves into this position, and they now have an opportunity to compete with Tennessee again. We need to have a different outcome this time. We need to win the game. I know it would mean a lot to those players back in the locker room to do that. So we definitely know when we come with the right mindset and we do what we do well, we can beat anybody. So that's what we have to come to the gym with tomorrow. Q. Were you surprised how effective the full-court press was? COACH MITCHELL: I think you're always, as a coach, planning, especially in the semifinals of the SEC tournament, for a real tough, close game. I don't know if 'surprise' is the right word. But I was very, very pleased that our pressure was causing them problems, because that's what we have to do against a team like Vanderbilt. We cannot let them comfortably run their stuff because they're so good at that. So our only option against Vanderbilt is for our pressure to work. So we worked really hard on it all year long in practice day after day. And so just really pleased that it worked. But, you know, I may be wrong on this. I never go in expecting for something like that to happen. You're just trying to get yourself prepared for close, tight situations. I just thought the performance in the full-court press, when we really had our starters in there going, was one of the best we've seen all year. It was a great, great effort by our kids. Q. Coach, how do you think Crystal played? COACH MITCHELL: I thought Crystal had a terrific game. I thought Crystal was very good in the first half. That duo worked well together. Both of those kids need each other to play their best. And, as you saw, when A'dia went out and Crystal had to go those extended minutes, that puts her in a situation where she gets a little bit tired and doesn't play her best. So when we have both of them going and she plays the way she played today, it really excites me about the future of this basketball team. I think that she has made unbelievable strides over just the last two weeks. So I'm real excited about the way Crystal Riley is playing. Q. Earlier this week you talked about making it more about what Kentucky does. COACH MITCHELL: You focus in on your fundamentals, what your principles are. It's going to be a very, very simple game plan tomorrow. I tell our players all the time, Don't confuse simple with easy, because it will not be easy tomorrow. But we will have to work extremely hard to try to pressure Tennessee and try to make them uncomfortable in their offense. And then the big, big key is working hard to compete on the boards. We need to really bow up tomorrow and win the battle of the boards. When you do that, you have an opportunity to win in those three areas I talked about: the hustle, the rebounding, and the turnover battle. It's Tennessee. They're really talented. It's going to be tougher. It should be in the SEC tournament finals. It should be a tough, rough game. And that's what we need to be ready for. I know our team will be. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much for your time. COACH MITCHELL: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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