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BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 9, 2011

Bonnie Henrickson

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

BAYLOR Â– 86
KANSAS - 51

THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by the Kansas Jayhawks Coach Bonnie Henrickson and her two student-athletes, Monica Engelman and Angel Goodrich.
COACH HENRICKSON: I give Baylor credit. They got after us on the defensive end. We're trying to go from doubling in a man defense on a miss and doubling a zone on a make. And both defenses going into the locker room were equally as far as field goal percentages, they were saying they were six or seven in transition on our turnovers. That's obviously a problem for a team that's that good in the half court offense, or one-on-one and score that in transition.
And we talked about going in, your best defense may be your offense. Not turning the ball over and giving them high percentage shots. But like I said yesterday when we were talking about what happened with Brittney Griner, certainly she's impactful on the offensive end.
But the longer you watch her and you have that opportunity to play against her, just how much she impacts the game on a defensive end. Again, especially for a team that scores and spends a lot of time throwing the ball inside 52-18 in points in the paint. She changes that because there's not much room to score, and the lane's awfully crowded.

Q. Angel, can you talk about what Bonnie talked about Brittney and how much and how difficult it was for you guys to try to feed the ball to Carolyn and to drive yourselves?
ANGEL GOODRICH: We tried to bring her out and bring the fours or when we had two bigs in, whoever Brittney Griner was guarding, put them on the ball and get it down. But she really didn't commit to one person coming up high. So we had to change that up and kind of go through the hustle.

Q. Monica and then Angel, I believe after the K-State game coach had said that this team has played the schedule in everything to where you should get a WNIT bid. What are your plans over the next few days? Will you take a breather from basketball or will you go ahead and get back in the gym and look forward to the announcements this weekend?
MONICA ENGELMAN: The plan is to take a little break, get off our feet a little bit. Depending on what day we're going to play, we'll be hitting the gym. And then focus on school because we have midterms coming up. We'll take a little break, work on ourselves and get back to the gym.
ANGEL GOODRICH: Just like she said, we're going to talk a break a little bit, and then once we come back in, we've got to focus on what we have to do and get better each and every day.

Q. Angel and then Monica, what do you attribute your shot clock struggles with all the shot clock issues you guys have throughout the game?
ANGEL GOODRICH: Well, at the beginning we wanted to, like Coach said, we wanted to slow it down just, so we weren't rushing anything. Then we kind of waited too long and needed to adjust the offense and try to get the defense hammered in the screen. So once we got that we were free. We had to try to find open man. I think we kind of panicked after it started getting low.
MONICA ENGELMAN: Same thing. We kind of wanted to control the tempo a little bit at the beginning. Then a couple of low situations and a couple of extra plays, so from that we scrambled and tried to find a way to get good ball in the hoop.

Q. Monica, you really stepped up and took that leadership role today like you had yesterday. What was driving your performance today?
MONICA ENGELMAN: Just the opportunity for my teammates. We all talked about coming in the game and being aggressive. I think I try to keep up with that goal and expectations.

Q. Melissa Jones is basically playing with one eye out there. What did you think of her effort and what she did for them?
COACH HENRICKSON: She's a tough kid. She's been a tough kid since she got there. Didn't surprise me. I'd be surprised if she didn't bring to the table what she brings.
No excuses. She's a no-excuse kid. Leave-it-on-the-floor-every-night kid, it speaks volumes to her character and the pride she plays with for herself and her team.

Q. Monica, can you talk a little bit about Griner's effect directly on Carolyn? She seemed to settle for more jump shots today than I've seen her take all year?
MONICA ENGELMAN: At our place she struggles, gets one deep in the first half, and then get two and quick shoots.
So I told her you don't want to finish this and never try to challenge her one-on-one. She's trying to go up and under. But if you get Griner deep, she's not going to move. She's just going to wait for you to release it.
I was trying to talk to her about a hook shot and get over the top of her, not present the ball to her. But, when you play these guys and have a chance to win, like in the game against Texas Tech. They score from the perimeter, small scores from the perimeter and they're big scorer on the perimeter, Wickett, scores and makes the three, then Mallard comes out and knocks down the shot. Baylor struggled offensively and they shoot 20 -something percent from the game. They go 3 for 27, so you know, they hurt themselves as well.
But you'll have to make perimeter shots. And sometimes your bigs are going to have to score from the perimeter because of how effective she is. So if she's altering your shot, you have to make the extra pass. And that's a big, long kid under the rim.

Q. Given what happened the first time and the fact that it would have taken a monumental effort to beat these guys today, can you just rate the disappointment in the locker room?
COACH HENRICKSON: Yeah, I will say it might have been more disappointment. The result was the same, do you feel the same, no. I was embarrassed for her. I mean, I get it. But thought we competed, but we made mistakes, and we both made mistakes, and there's no doubt about that. It comes a point where you have players that get us on the glass in the first half. It was a little disappointment that we just shoot ourselves in the foot too many times in league play that we're headed to the postseason tournament. Not being disrespectful or not appreciative of that tournament and that field, but that's going into the year, that's not our goal. But we'll huddle back up here and be excited. And get on a run here in the postseason.
Yeah, it's still disappointment. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. But I felt like we competed in night and day. I watched that thing late last night, and it made me sick. I didn't sleep. We had no fight, we had nothing. We just let it happen. The result was the same, but it felt different. I don't think I'll feel different when I watch it on film.

Q. You mentioned already that's not where you wanted to go, but this is four in a row now. Are your kids disappointed? Does it drive you crazy?
COACH HENRICKSON: Yeah, it drives us all crazy. But we're going to have to get over that fast because in the NIT, those that don't want to play in it don't last very long. There are a lot of teams that are excited about it. It might be their first chance at postseason for whatever reason. And we have Krysten that played in it, Aishah that played in it. Angel was on the bench for that run we made. Krysten will tell you playing in Kansas in front of 16, 000 people for a championship was the highlight of her career.
So we're a group, and by the time we get back together, this group is in a good place to be able to make a run. Now we've got to catch our breath here and get over the disappointment and we'll allow them a chance to do that. But they're a competitive group. They play with a lot of pride. They want to hang a banner in Allen and get this right. They want to keep playing. They want to play in the other one.
But it's not like they don't want to play. They'll play and compete with a lot of individual pride and program pride in that tournament with no doubt, absolutely no doubt.

Q. Boogaard and Jackson both had some surprisingly impressive performances today. What do you attribute that to?
COACH HENRICKSON: Well, we played Carolyn and Krysten together. And we worked on that walking through the hotel last night playing two bigs. Because we wanted to be able to in taking the post -- Griner guarded Carolyn, so Krysten got in low post touches against their fours and had some success there and hit that high post jumper.
Today we used the pick and pop. And the four's kind of sit and grind the lane. So she's a perimeter face-up. She scores the very first play in the second half. We go post to post back screen. She moves up the ball and Angel drives it, and we throw the extra pass, because they'll disrupt and destroy your offense pretty quick. So the answer to the low shot clock was when you get in your primary look and secondary look and it's still not there, that's what happens. You end up with a low clock. Then we were aggressive with the primary stuff and it was late.
So those two, Krysten ends up scoring the four. She doesn't have the Griner match-up. So we play Carolyn high. Carolyn plays the four spot just to keep her eye and try to get her in the lane. And on the face-up she hit some shots in rhythm.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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