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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 9, 2011Amanda BestDon FlanaganJessica KielpinskiLAS VEGAS, NEVADA New Mexico – 67 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by New Mexico. Coach, we'll start with your general thoughts on tonight's game. COACH FLANAGAN: First of all, congratulations to Wyoming. They had a heck of a season. They have some really difficult players to defend. They run their offense extremely well. I thought probably the keys to our success was we really worked hard on not allowing Kennedy to get a good three-point look. Second time we played them, she had seven threes. She didn't score today. We did a good job. I don't know whether she stopped shooting or we were really defending well. Either way, I thought that was one of the keys. Vandiver is so hard to stop. We rotated people on her. Amanda guarded her for a while. Porche guarded her for a while. Had another play guard her. She's just a quality player, very difficult to defend. She can score on the outside and the inside. We tried our best to defend her. She still gets 25. That's why she's conference MVP. Carlson is tough. I thought Jess did a pretty good job on her. The whole game I thought we did a pretty good job of controlling the game up until about four or five minutes to go, then they made a run, hit some threes, hit some inside cuts. I was a little nervous there that we were not going to respond. But we had a couple big plays. We're playing well right now. We're playing the best we've played all season. We had players that played with a lot of poise. So thankful for that. THE MODERATOR: Now we'll take questions for the student-athletes. Q. You played great defense all game. What were your thoughts, Porche had two big blocks on Vandiver, what are your thoughts on those? AMANDA BEST: She's hard to guard, like coach said. We tried to battle her all game. Like he said, she had 26 points on us. Those blocks and the charge at the end was a very big momentum change. If she would have made those shots, it could have been a different story, so those were huge. Q. Amanda, what did she say on the technical foul? AMANDA BEST: I don't know. Like I just saw her like yelling at Jasmine. So I didn't really know. I was like, Ref, check it out. I didn't really know. She was yelling, though. I don't know. Q. Jess, what is it about this place? You are 3-0 at this place this year. JESSICA KIELPINSKI: Well, I guess they call it Pit West, whatever. It's a home away from home. I guess when we're here, we just gel together. I don't know, it's the atmosphere or something. Something clicks when we're here. AMANDA BEST: I mean, the place is special. It's a place we played really well. I think for this team, it's just us coming together at the right time. I think that we could still play like this if we were at any other gym. We're playing together, talking on defense, all staying really positive with each other. And we all believe. When you have those things, I don't think it's really the court. I think it's just our team. Q. Did you play like 28 practice games just to get to the tournament? AMANDA BEST: It pretty much seems like that, huh? We lost to Wyoming both times we played them. Tonight, we were focused. We stayed together and stuff. Yeah, I guess you could maybe say that. We have a lot of young players on our team. So it took this much time for us to figure out what we need to do. Q. Amanda, how much did it help that you had already played a game going into this one? AMANDA BEST: I think it helped a lot and I also think playing against UNLV also helped a lot, us getting used to the court, the rims and everything. I feel like it's a disadvantage to have to come in after teams have already played a couple of games because they're used to the court, the rims. They got a win there, they have confidence. So I do think it's an advantage. Q. Jessica, now you have an off day. The starters have played a lot of minutes. How badly is the off day needed? JESSICA KIELPINSKI: It's definitely needed. We need time to recover. We need to refresh. I think mentally also we just need to, I guess, gather ourselves and just prepare ourselves for the next game. Yeah, I think it's going to be helpful. AMANDA BEST: Personally I'd like to play them right now (laughter). Q. Both teams you've played so far swept you in the regular season. What's different in the tournament? JESSICA KIELPINSKI: I guess, like Amanda said, it kind of took us all season just to come together, understand each other as players, know that they're going to help you out on a screen or something. We're gelling right now. That's the biggest part about it, yeah. THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll dismiss our student-athletes and continue with questions for Coach Flanagan. Q. How big was Porche on Vandiver and those blocks in the last two minutes of the game? COACH FLANAGAN: Those were big. Also she tipped the ball a couple times. We had an offensive possession. I think the separation was four points. She got an offensive board. Two times she tipped it out. One time she grabbed it, one time she tipped it out. Both of those retained our possession. We had some time to run some clock. Jasmine shot a shot about five seconds off the clock when instead of pulling it out a little bit. We're still suffering sometimes from not executing things quite as well as we could. But, you know, that happens to every team. But Porche did an excellent job. Now, we put three or four different people, rotated three or four different people on her. Porche, I thought, did the best of everybody. I was just worried that Porche would foul out. But she did a real nice job of staying in the game. Q. Wyoming cut the lead to three late in the game. Crowd is on their side. You call a timeout. What do you tell your team? COACH FLANAGAN: I thought it was four, but it was three, huh? I hope I didn't tell 'em, We're only up by four. You know, I'm just trying to calm them down. I think the most important thing is to have a calm, relaxed team. Then caution them about what they're going to do. It wasn't too difficult to figure out what they were going to do. They were going to go inside to Vandiver. What was happening a couple times was we were helping off on players that weren't real scorers, like Sewell wasn't really scoring that much. We helped off on her a couple times and left Carlson open for shots. We had to take care of that business. The other thing was to help out as much as possible on Vandiver and try and prevent the ball from getting into her. I thought we played her pretty well and she still gets, what, 25 or 26 points. That's about as good as we can play her. Q. You were baffled by this team at times this year. How comfortable were you coming into the tournament? Did these two games surprise you or did you expect it? COACH FLANAGAN: No, I knew we were going to win. Honestly, I knew we were going to win today. I really felt comfortable with that. Coming to the tournament, I didn't feel that comfortable because I only brought one sport jacket (smiling). But I got different ties, so I'm okay. Q. The start of the second half seemed like you got a couple of threes that changed the momentum of the game. COACH FLANAGAN: We got a cushion where we could be comfortable. I thought Lauren played a good game not only offensively but defensively. She was on Kennedy for a period of time. I thought she played her very well and hustled. Then, you know, in transition, she hit one, might have hit two, then Best hit one. All of a sudden we're playing relaxed, we're feeling comfortable, we're thinking in a positive way. We were baffled, going back. The first time we played Wyoming, I mean, we couldn't figure out where the screens were coming from. They were getting layup after layup, and it wasn't just Vandiver, it was everybody on their team was getting good shots. But we had a young team there. They didn't really understand all the screening that takes place in the Mountain West. So we've adapted quite well over the season. But it's taken us a while to really get pretty good at this. I think we're defending pretty well right now. Q. Last night you said you were glad you played a game. Now you played two. Do you have twice as much of an advantage Friday? COACH FLANAGAN: You know, with the way they set up this tournament, I think it's a disadvantage to the teams that are sitting and waiting. Even if it isn't, I'm telling our team they're at a disadvantage. We're going to play that card. This is Vegas. We're playing that card as long as we can play that card. Q. Can you talk a little bit more about Jasmine, how impressed you are with her performance in her first tournament. COACH FLANAGAN: Jasmine, you know, she's a unique kid. I don't know whether it's true -- I'm sure she has emotions, but I'm never seeing them. She's very relaxed. She'll make a big play. She doesn't miss situations where you'd think that a freshman would be nervous. Her breakaway layup on a press breaker, you know, a lot of kids might miss that layup. Her steal and layup. She's a quality player that competes very hard and she's learning. She's gonna be a heck of a player when she gets her skill up. I keep saying that. But when she really gets skillful, she's going to be a very difficult player to stop because she's got a pull-up, she's got a three. She really doesn't dribble that well. She's so fast, she dribbles by people. Then she defends. She's a good defender. All of those things are quality. She's a nice kid. She's a quality kid, too. I'm really fortunate that I have a chance to coach her. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. COACH FLANAGAN: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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