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BIG EAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 8, 2011

Muffet McGraw

HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT

CONNECTICUT Â– 73
NOTRE DAME - 64

THE MODERATOR: Joining us now from Notre Dame is Head Coach Muffet McGraw along with Skylar Diggins and Natalie Achonwa. Coach, an opening statement, please?
COACH McGRAW: I was pleased with our competitiveness today. I thought we really fought, we battled. We got down about 13. Cut it back to three, really kept going at them, kept attacking the basket.
I thought Natalie Achonwa off the bench had a great game for us, a double, double. Frederica Miller gave us a great first half. But in the end we missed too many shots. We got a lot of really great looks and shots around the basket that just didn't fall for us. And Dolson, she really hurt us again. We thought we were going to double team her, but we didn't get down there in time and she was too much for us in the post.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for our student-athletes.

Q. Natalie, can you talk about being able to come off the bench and produce the way you did?
NATALIE ACHONWA: When Coach came to me looking for me to contribute off the bench, I just tried to come in and utilize the minutes that I was given and tried to compete.

Q. And Natalie, can you follow up on just what you take from this tournament and how you came into this tournament off of a tough game and the way you produced in this tournament?
NATALIE ACHONWA: I think that that loss coming into the tournament against DePaul gave us motivation from. From the git-go we knew we had to reprove ourselves from our finish in the regular season and I think we did that in the first few games. The first one was ugly. We came out and we gave DePaul a little payback.
Then tonight we wanted it. There was a stretch where they had gone on a run, and that killed us.

Q. Skylar, what is the level of frustration on your team's behalf losing to UCONN for the third time this year?
SKYLAR DIGGINS: Obviously, losing period frustrates us because of how we've been working to get to this level. You know, we work very hard. And I think this team had the mindset that we were going to win.
I think we didn't play not to lose, we played to win tonight, and that is the difference. Obviously playing against a team like UCONN three times and losing is very frustrating. We know that was the end of our second season. We're starting the tournament. We'll see where we're at on Monday. We can't do anything but learn from it and move on.

Q. Skylar, looking at the big picture, what do you take out of this tournament that can help new the NCAA's?
SKYLAR DIGGINS: The Big East is great for getting us ready for the tournament. Great teams. This is an Elite 8, Final Four game, championship game with this tournament. So we're going to take this momentum to where we're at. See what we need to work on, and like I said, get ready for this tournament which will be very competitive. But we're excited to get started and excited to get back in the gym.

Q. Skylar, as far as the missed shots, was it anything they were doing defensively or you just weren't knocking them down tonight?
SKYLAR DIGGINS: I think it was a little bit of both. We got them in foul trouble, they got us in foul trouble, and we needed people off the bench to step up. They did. They held it down for us in the first half until we were able to get back in in the second half.
In transition, I felt like a couple of possessions in transition hurt us, maybe some rotations, just Maya and Dolson. So on the offensive end, we were making some shots and the shots we took were some bad shots. The other shots we usually make those shots, but they just weren't falling.
Great defensive pressure. The Connecticut team's going to get up, and they're not going to let you get the ball in the screen, so it was a combination of both.

Q. Coming in here, you had the home crowd advantage. Did you just want to keep the crowd as quiet as possible as long as you can?
SKYLAR DIGGINS: I think we wanted to play hard. We were winning the four-minute games, I think. We were saying we have to divide it up. Like I said, when you play a team like UCONN, the game can seem so long.
So for us we were playing together. We had great positive criticism. We felt like it was just the foul trouble that got to us early. But the crowd, I really wasn't paying attention to the crowd. We figured it out when we came here. We knew that.
Just really playing with each other, and playing together, and playing hard.

Q. Can you talk about Natalie Novoste's coming back from the injury? Is she getting medical treatment now, is that why she isn't here?
COACH McGRAW: Yeah, she hyperextended her knee, and she wanted to get back in and play. It was obviously bothering her after that. But you know, she wanted to stay in, so we left her in. I think it affected her shots a little bit down the stretch.
She usually makes a few more of those. We got really good looks and she did what she needed to do. She drove it to the basket. I thought the beginning of the first half really killed us. She got some good looks in the first half, just didn't knock them down.

Q. (Inaudible)?
COACH McGRAW: I thought she really hurt us in the last game as well. She played really well when we came out here last time. Had about the same number of points, I think. She's a big force inside for us to guard.

Q. Hayes and Hartley both had three fouls after the first half. Did you think you can get them maybe in foul trouble a little earlier in the second half when they got the fourth late?
COACH McGRAW: That was our hope. Maybe that's why we missed so many shots, we were trying so hard to get them to foul us that we probably should have concentrated a little more on trying to make the shot. We knew they weren't going to come over and guard us because they were in foul trouble.
So we went over to attack those two and we did that. But Natalie was maybe trying too hard to get fouled.

Q. How much is what Natalie did in this tournament help you going forward to the NCAA? She's another huge inside presence of a freshman that played really well tonight and just the whole tournament?
COACH McGRAW: I thought she had a great tournament. I thought she could be on the all tournament team because she did so many things for us off the bench. She's playing with a lot of confidence. She was a real force inside. You could see she wasn't intimidated. She was encouraging her teammates. I thought defensively she was trying to lean on Dolson, which wasn't quite as good as we hoped.
But overall I was really pleased with the way she played. She's a battler in there. She's going hard after the ball. Got great looks around the basket. So, yeah, that's big news for us going forward.

Q. Can you talk about how difficult it is to knock UCONN's composure or crack it? It seems like you were going after them, going after them, and they never lost their poise?
COACH McGRAW: Yeah, there is a certain comfort level at home that is hard to shake. It's hard to win on the road in this league. When you have the home court behind you as we did in South Bend, it's a much different game. I think you're more comfortable. You don't get as rattled because you have the crowd behind you, and I think that's a big factor.
Also when you have Maya Moore on your team, I think that helps your poise a lot. She made some really big shots. I thought she looked cold in the first half, but then she hit some real daggers on us in the second half in that run.

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