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BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 9, 2011Yvonne AndersonGail GoestenkorsKathleen NashKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI THE MODERATOR: Coach Goestenkors from the Longhorns is now with us with her two student-athletes, Kathleen Nash and Yvonne Anderson. Coach, your thoughts about this evening's game? COACH GOESTENKORS: Just really disappointed. I give A&M credit. Their defensive intensity and pressure was really, really good. Some of the best -- well, it is the best that I've seen all year. They were ready to play in passing lanes and they got us back on our heals. They've done that consistently through most of the game that's we've played. So credit to them and their defensive effort. But for us, just very disappointed with the way we handled the pressure. I didn't feel like we played with a lot of poise. Obviously, 31 turnovers, you've got to do the little things well to be successful, and we didn't do that. All the turnovers, and the pressure, we just couldn't defend. When they turn it over up top, there is no defense. They got a lot of just breakout lay-ups, so overall just really disappointed with our lack of valuing the basketball. Q. You guys are a fairly veteran team with veteran guards. What do they do to force so many turnovers that's better than what other teams do? YVONNE ANDERSON: I think for us it was more just us making mistakes, allowing the pressure to kind of mess with us in a way we were throwing the ball to them. They had a couple of those, and that's what their team's big on is that pressure defense. A lot of the times there were charges, they were throwing the ball to where no one was, throwing the ball to the other team. I think we just let them get in our heads tonight, and we didn't execute the way we wanted it to. Q. You talked yesterday about how you really wanted this for your last game against them. Where's the frustration level for you with the way you all played and this being your last game with A&M? KATHLEEN NASH: It's frustrating. We've gotten close the last time we played them. This time we didn't fight back in the second half. It was pretty much the same first half, last game to this game. But the difference was the second half. We didn't come out and fight back. Q. Can you talk about the three-point defense in the second half? You were really able to exploit them. What was different this time about their three-point defense? KATHLEEN NASH: I felt like most of the three-pointers I took were pretty rushed, pretty contested more than usual. There were a few that were just wide open. But most of them had to be pretty quick, because they were getting out on me. Q. You said you were disappointed, but are you surprised? You've got some guards who had played, even freshmen at the end of the year? COACH GOESTENKORS: Disappointed and surprised. We're a much better ball handling team than what we showed this evening. Like I said, I give A&M credit, but at the same time I don't know when I've had a team with 31 turnovers. So we're a much better team than what we showed tonight. It just seemed to snow ball. They got us back on our hands early ask got some easy run outs. We didn't really recover and gain our poise. When you've got a junior back court you expect them to take care of the ball and run your sets and give the them confidence. But when they got a little shaken, I think everybody else did as well. Q. Yvonne got into foul trouble early, and I guess you were upset with the third foul she got, taking a charge at mid court. I don't know how you explain that. But also, were you playing in the zone because Yvonne didn't have as many minutes as usual, and just trying to stop the penetration? COACH GOESTENKORS: Absolutely. We've had success with them in the zone the last game. And K-State just played them in the zone and beat them. So I thought they weren't as effective against the zone as they were on man-to-man. So we need to try to protect Yvonne, but at the same time we knew the zone would get to us the last time. So we were hoping for the same result. I thought they were well prepared for the zone as well as the man-to-man. They picked us apart on offense. But a lot of it was transition lay-ups. It wasn't even our quarter court defense, it was the fact that we had no defense. Like I said, when you get a steal at half court, it's pretty easy to go down and make a lay-up. Q. I know you've got a good RPI and you're in a great league. Any fear that committee members will see this particular score at this time and have second thoughts maybe? COACH GOESTENKORS: I don't think so. A&M's ranked highly for a reason. They've beaten a lot of teams badly, and I hate to be one of them. I know her strength of schedule is around 10, and it will go up after this game again, even though it was a tough loss because they are highly ranked. So it's been a tough schedule for us. I feel like we're in, but we've got some work to do if we want to make any noise while we're there. Q. After the game yesterday, everybody seemed so confident. You talked about sustaining things for 40 minutes. Do you worry about what this does to the confidence after this? COACH GOESTENKORS: I would if we had a game in the next day or two. But because we've got some time, I told the players we're going to boot camp. They're going to take a couple of days off, and then we'll be on spring break next week. So, sad for them, but glad for me. Two days, we're going back to boot camp and we've got to work on the basics of basketball, passing, ball handling, the little things. Against great teams we have to do the little things well, and we did not. We didn't hit free throws. We didn't set good screens. We didn't make good passes. So it's good for us, actually, that we have this break where we can just really break things down and get back to basics. I think we will gain confidence through that. Q. I know Baylor and A&M are going to be 1 and 2 seeds. I know you hope to get in and win it yourself. But would you think their chances of winning it all this year are pretty good? COACH GOESTENKORS: I think they're both pretty good. I think it's going to depend on, as always, it will depend on match-ups. But they're both very, very unique. That is a great thing when you get into the tournament. Baylor is unique because of Brittany Griner. Nobody gets to practice against that, nobody can prepare for that. I think A&M is very unique because Danielle Adams is such a unique player as well, because she's so big and strong, but she can shoot the three. Their defense, you know, in the NCAA Tournament so many times you're a little nervous so sometimes your shots aren't falling offensively. It's the team that's play great defense and can rely on that defense to get them through those cold shooting times that are successful. So because of those two reasons, I think they've both got a great shot of getting to the Final Four. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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