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BIG TEN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 5, 2011Lykendra JohnsonKalisha KeaneSuzy MerchantINDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA Ohio State – 72 MODERATOR: We will go ahead as follows where we have the coach have an opening statement and then we'll have questions for the student-athletes. Coach? COACH MERCHANT: Well, obviously we're disappointed. I think we dug ourselves a hole in the first half. I thought Jantel Lavender was like just amazing and just caught everything, finished everything. I felt like it was the best I've seen her play all year. And we kind of had some careless mistakes defensively as well as offensively. But then I really liked our fight when we came out. I thought we -- eight and a half minutes to go, it's a tied game, and we were in the hole. We adjusted at halftime what we were doing with Jantel, and I thought that made a difference. Obviously slowed her down a little bit for a while. And then obviously we had three straight turnovers and it was a 9-point game and that was that. And that was disappointing. All three of those were kind of turnover for touchdowns or follows. And then obviously we fouled them too much. They shot 26 free throws, I think, to our 12 and 22 to 12 in the fouls, and that's just -- that was one of our goals is not to put them to the line, and we apparently didn't accomplish that. MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes? Q. Lykendra, can you speak to the physical nature of this game and how it affected the flow at a certain point? LYKENDRA JOHNSON: In the first half it affected our flow a little bit, but in the second half, like coach said, I think we did a pretty good job on limiting her touches, and if she did get it, I was being physical with her. So it was an all-out war and, I mean, tonight wasn't my night. Q. Lykendra, could you speak to the difficulty of having to body up with that gal? I mean, she's got the rep, she's got the points, everybody knows who she is, but you have to try and get on her and stop her somehow, right? LYKENDRA JOHNSON: I mean, yeah. She's a very solid player. I mean, she's got at least 60 pounds on me or something like that. But, I mean, I'm just -- I was trying to do anything and everything I can just to stop her. And I think just trusting that my teammates run in there and have the help side there, it just changed the whole momentum in the second half. Q. Lykendra, can you talk about adjustments you tried to make in the second half with trying to body her? LYKENDRA JOHNSON: In the first half we just fronting her, of course. And the second half coach told me to play behind her, and I think it was better for us because me, I had a little pride on the line, and she had 21 in the first half. So just playing behind her and just basically limiting her touches, trying to do anything and everything. But at that point she had 21 and probably six rebounds and almost a double-double. I mean, it was a pride thing on the line. Q. Kalisha, with Jantel scoring so often, how much pressure did that put on your offense to try and match her? KALISHA KEANE: I mean, any time the offensive team goes down and we're on defense and tries to score, we get the same opportunity. So we needed to get stops in order to get good transition looks and good shots at the basket. Did we do a great job of it on her? She had a great night, so no. It happens. I mean, the game was within reach about at the eight-minute mark and then there was a two-minute stretch where we turned the ball over and they capitalized on our turnovers. And the game of basketball can switch like that. So we take this and we learn from it and we get ready for the NCAA tournament. Q. Kalisha, you talk about that stretch. What happened in that stretch in terms of how those turnovers were made and what happened defensively? KALISHA KEANE: We turned the ball over for what Coach calls a touchdown. You can't defend that kind of stuff. It's hard to if you turn it over and they get any transition looks like that. And then we put them to the free throw line and, you know, that's not what we really were trying to do, obviously. So it's tough to guard those things and then get a flow offensively. Q. Kalisha, you, Lykendra, Brittney all ended up with four fouls. Did you feel at some point that you guys were restricted or limited at all being in foul trouble, and what you were trying to do out there offensively or defensively? KALISHA KEANE: You know what? I'm a competitor, and I know my teammates are competitors, and we're never going to blame any kind of refereeing or anything like that. We're going to go out and play as hard as we can and play within the guidelines of how the game is being played. So if we weren't getting calls going our way or if we were, we're staying going to play as hard as we can. And like I said, tonight was not our night in that two-minute stretch, but I would never in my life blame any kind of loss on a referee at all. Q. Kalisha, the positives obviously outweigh the negatives of this team, how many wins you've had, the outright Big Ten title. You've done so many great things. But how much does it sting that you didn't follow through and win tournament championship? And I'm trying to -- KALISHA KEANE: You're being very blunt and honest with me. It hurts to lose any time. Obviously this year we're not very used to losing. So losing obviously sucks, and losing to a team three times in a season sucks even more. But this is motivation for us going into, you know, this next week and to this next round of playing for our lives. So it's motivation. That's all I can look at it now. It's over. It already happened. I'm not going to dwell on it. Q. Can you talk about what you learned about a game like this in terms of preparing yourself with the atmosphere here and to get ready for the NCAA Tournament? KALISHA KEANE: First of all, this is the probably the best atmosphere I've ever seen at a Big Ten Tournament in all four years that I've been here, so that was incredible. Preparing happens when you deal with the different situations. So that two-minute stretch, next time we're in that situation with a turnover, we're not going to have back-to-back turnovers like that. We're going to learn from the situation, and once we have that one turnover we're going to regroup and not allow 2 points to turn into 8 to 10 and then foul and put them on the line. So you learn from the situations and that's all you can do. MODERATOR: Any further questions for the student-athletes? Thank you, ladies. Now we'll open it up to questions for Coach Merchant. Q. Can you talk a little bit about like right in that same stretch? I think it was right when they started to pull away and you had a bunch of players with four fouls. How does that change and affect your coaching in that spot? COACH MERCHANT: It's difficult, obviously. I mean, I think we had four kids with four fouls. Maybe not all at that same time, but they were definitely in foul trouble. Even Taylor Alton, who only played seven minutes in the first half, had three fouls in seven minutes. So she was in foul trouble out of gates too, which forced you to play Cetera longer, who they weren't guarding. That made things a little difficult for us, too, in terms of options there. But like Kal said, certainly our goal was not to foul them and keep them off the line, and we didn't do that, and they scored between the free throw line. And I think Jantel's barrage in the first half, it was really difficult to kind of make that up. But at the same time that foul situation, we've dealt with that all year. I've never had it where there's so many of them, but I do think we played through it. I think to be able to finish with Kal and L.J. on the floor and Porsche and have some options, I mean, we didn't have anybody that wasn't available to us. So you have to adjust and play a little bit different and smarter. Q. The question I asked them, kind of the same thing to you. You've done some great things this year and the positives outweigh the negatives. How do you feel about not finishing the deal here? And maybe speak to what she said about maybe using this as motivation for the future? COACH MERCHANT: Certainly. I think you learn every time you step foot on the floor, whether it's a win or a loss. Obviously we had three straight turnovers, two by Brittney and one by Annalise, that you just can't turn them over for touchdowns. That's just -- not in these big games, not in the post season, not in survive-and-advance mode. You have to make people work. And our defense is obviously pretty solid. It wasn't as good tonight, obviously. But you can't defend those things. And our gift is defending in the quarter court. We've been a very good team there. And that's not a quarter court situation. And you're disadvantaged, which then leads to foul situations and puts more kids in tough spots. So it's -- I liked our fight. I liked our fight coming in the locker room. I was certainly disappointed in how we performed. But at the same time, to see them come out and fight and get right back in it and make that, it's not easy to do that. And I thought we did a great job of getting it to that point. And then Britt's got to handle it better. She's a senior point guard. There's no reason for her to cough the ball up or give it to the other team. I mean, A.P. is a freshman. Not that I'm going to make an excuse, you have to make a read. She's got to be a better player at that point too. But those really hurt us. And Britt's got to learn from that. And she's had four years of making sure that doesn't happen. So against Ohio State I thought they the did a really good job of getting into our point guards. And in that little stretch, we didn't handle it, and that's all they need. That's all they needed was just a little bit of a daylight, and they kind of broke through the wall there. Q. Lykendra talked a little bit about it being a point of pride for her trying to guard Jantel. What did you see out of her in the second half trying to take that upon herself to improve and maybe come out a little bit better out of gate? COACH MERCHANT: I think Jantel was really probably fired up to play Lykendra. I think Lykendra is hard to play against because she's pretty physical and can bug people, and we made the adjustment to play behind. We played behind her before and we've struggled to defend her. She's a great player. I mean, you know, like I'm glad it's the post-season and I don't have to see her again. She's -- and have an opportunity to coach her with USA Basketball. She's just the real deal. So you knew you were taking a chance. But we felt like if we could limit her touches, we could maybe take away some things. But then in the second half, pushing her off the block and trying to dig down from the strong side, I thought that was important for us. And then they got all the 50/50 balls in the first half, which also hurt us. And then I thought in the second half we kind of shored that up too. I liked our fight, I just think the air kind of came out of balloon there when Brittany turned it over in A.P. three straight times. Q. Were some of those turnovers as a result of the lineup they had in the court at that point? I think they had taken Prahalis out and put in their stoppers. COACH MERCHANT: Well, Stokes is a good defender certainly. I think that's normally what she does, is she gets up into people. Yeah. I mean, we made the run at times, too, and when both of them were on the floor, I just -- I mean, I don't think it was a direct correlation, per se, I just think Britt just didn't handle it. Q. It's kind of a follow-up. How physical was this game on the offensive end for you guys? COACH MERCHANT: I think it was pretty physical. I thought they got under our skin a little more than we like. I think we got to do a better job of handling that. I think L.J. had four fouls and three of them were offensive. That's kind of unusual. Hers are usually in the defensive end. So that was kind of difficult. But you got to credit certainly Ohio State. I thought Jantel just played possessed. That was just the best word for it. She was not going to have it today. And I think maybe even Lykendra being Defensive Player of the Year just tried to challenge herself a little bit more and be a little more aggressive. And 15 for 20 from the floor is pretty impressive. And didn't miss a free throw. And she did it more than one way. We got her out away from the rim, and she just killed it from there too. She just proved she is a big-time player today, and we didn't really have an answer for her. Q. Apologize, Coach. I'm just kind of trying to understand this a little bit. Looking at Ohio State, comparing it to past years when you faced them, I thought it was more of relying on Jantel. And last night when I watched them it looked like a totally different team that they were willing to spread it around, move the ball around. Is this Ohio State team you faced more unselfish, or is that more of a problem for you as a coach to face a team that looked like they were giving the ball up more and sharing it more? COACH MERCHANT: I think they were -- I think there's a difference in the two teams they played. Ohio plays nothing but zone and you don't make one pass in a ball screening and shoot it. You work this side, top side, you get some skips, you go inside, you go outside. Or a man team and they go to their two-man game with a ball screen on the wing and try to create and get it inside. So it was certainly -- I think they felt they had a height advantage in there and also think just Jantel was like wanting to make a point today, that, you know, she wanted to be the Player of the Year and she was going to against the Defensive Player of Year at the same time. And, you know, it was a good match-up. It was a good game. I liked their fight, like I said. We just had a two-minute meltdown, and sometimes that's all it takes. Q. Kind of looking forward to the next week, two weeks. First, what do you guys do in the next week while you're in limbo here in terms of practice or days off or whatnot? And then, secondly, where do you think that this team will fall when it comes to the Selection Show in a couple weeks? COACH MERCHANT: I'm not big into predictions. I think we're a heck of a ball club. I think we did our body of work this year. We beat some really tough teams on the road. You look at five losses, two of those were one possession, one was an away game to Baylor and three were to Ohio State, and one to Iowa who was obviously a last possession game too. So I don't think we've put ourselves in a position that doesn't warrant a positive seed in a high seed. I think Ohio State is a good team and making the run in starting to play better basketball certainly, so I think the committee will see that. What do we do now? We takes a couple days off for sure. We'll be off Sunday, Monday, and regroup on Tuesday and kind of set the plan, course of action from there. But it's an opportunity certainty for us to get better. It really is an opportunity for us to get better and to have a good balance of what we think we have to work on to make sure that things like this don't happen, we take care of the ball a little bit better. MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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