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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 11, 2011Amanda BestDon FlanaganJasmine PattersonLAS VEGAS, NEVADA TCU – 61 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by New Mexico. Coach, we'll start with you with some comments on today's game. COACH FLANAGAN: Congratulations to TCU. They played a really strong game today. We felt like going in that we had to at least limit Sverrisdottir's effectiveness in catches, which I thought we didn't do. I thought we defended everybody else pretty well. We had been shooting quite well, at least quite well for us, in our previous games. Today we just did not shoot well. We reverted back to part of our season where we weren't shooting well. Shots that we were hitting in the first two games we weren't even close today. So it was disappointing that we didn't play up to our potential. But congratulations to TCU because they haven't played a game in 10 days. It looked like they were in the best of condition. So congratulations to them. THE MODERATOR: Now we'll take questions for the student-athletes. Q. Jasmine, you had a great tournament. Can you talk about not having any nerves or jitters the last four days. JASMINE PATTERSON: Well, my first tournament since I'm a freshman. Apparently, like, I just came out to play, not knowing that it was just important for the seniors. I just wanted to come out and play basketball, not knowing I was really in an important conference game. It was just like a regular game. I wasn't nervous just because of the fact that I thought it was just another simple game. So just, I don't know, another game. Q. Amanda, obviously you were a little bit concerned about playing your third game in four days. Was that a little bit of an issue today or not really? AMANDA BEST: I think maybe the day off kind of hurt us because we were on a roll and stuff. I don't know, maybe we just didn't get into the same routine that we were in the past two days. Like we didn't have time to take shoot-around and stuff. Maybe that was a fact. I think our shooting wasn't good. If we would have hit those shots, because we got good looks, we would have been probably in the game, so... Q. Jasmine, from the very first play of the game, TCU came at you with very physical play. Talk about the physicality that happened in the game. JASMINE PATTERSON: Are you meaning the play of their play? Q. Their play. JASMINE PATTERSON: She just basically posted me up and threw her body into me from the get-go. Right after that I knew it was going to be a physical game. Throughout the whole game, we were just getting hit, just taking it. They're physical. They're more physical than us. Q. Obviously this is not the way you wanted it to end. Do you feel the performance you had in the tournament overall gives your season a little bit better of a finish? AMANDA BEST: Yeah, I think it does. I think we came in and we really battled hard here. Put our whole season behind us when we came in here and started new. I feel like we fought the entire time. I think that's the things I'm most proud of with our team. JASMINE PATTERSON: With underclassmen, I think we'll all build on it and just be ready for next season. It shows us that we're able to do and play just as well as any other team in our conference. THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll dismiss our student-athletes and continue with questions for Coach Flanagan. Q. Can you talk about your two seniors throughout this tournament, throughout the season, what they've meant to you. COACH FLANAGAN: Well, both of them I thought had a good tournament. Today was the exception. But they both played, I thought, as well as they played all year long. Amanda had a couple really outstanding games. And Jess was starting to hit her shots that she hadn't been hitting during mid-season and also was very aggressive. I'm not sure that we ran out of legs a little bit today. But both of those players were very positive with their influence on our younger players. They were really good mentors. They were very understanding of the younger players. Sometimes when there's only two seniors, it's hard on them because most of our players are underclassmen. I thought they did a great job there. Both outstanding students. Amanda is a Rhodes scholar nominee, All-American academic. Jess is a really outstanding student. Both of them are really special student-athletes and have been quality people all four years. Q. Your team has had games like this before this season. Could you tell early shooting was going to be a problem and you might be in for a long night? COACH FLANAGAN: You know, I kept thinking in the first half that we can, you know, hit a couple shots. I thought we had transition opportunities all game long. They got back pretty well on defense. But we were down there to get transition opportunities. We just weren't converting those. Then our outside shooting left us. Sometimes when you got a player or two missing outside shots, then all of a sudden everybody starts thinking about their shot. I thought there was too much question in their mind when to shoot, when not to shoot. They played pretty good defense. But I also thought them mixing up zone and man bothered us a little bit. At times we were running our man offense against their zone. That confused us a little bit. Then not knocking in shots. Had we knocked in shots, it would have been a game. But we just didn't hit shots. When you shoot 20%, you're not going to win a lot of games. And Sverrisdottir, in my opinion, is a very difficult player to defend. Especially in a big game, she controls the game. Q. First half you went to a lineup that nobody had really seen. Did you have a feeling it was time to mix it up? COACH FLANAGAN: Everybody was taking shots early in the offense. It seemed to me that everybody had the panic mode going on. We hadn't been doing that the other parts of the tournament. So I went to some other players to try to calm down those players that were not patient. When I did that, Tina hit a couple threes, which helped us. Then I was trying to give everybody a little bit of rest, then get them back in there. But even when I got them back in with our first team, we did not shoot well, so... It didn't work. Q. TCU seemed to come at your players physically. Can you speak to the physical nature of the game. COACH FLANAGAN: It was a very physical game. Everybody that they start is 6'1", 6'2". It was a very physical game. Besides being physical, they're quite quick. They're a very experienced team. Sverrisdottir has been a four-year starter, Carter has been a four-year starter. They have a lot of players that have played a lot of basketball in the Mountain West. They're a successful team obviously. I thought the experience in them executing their offense gave them the opportunity to shoot well. They shot almost 50% the first half. Second half I thought we defended better, but we still couldn't hit our shots. The difference definitely was we were trying to keep them in the high 50s, low 60s, and we did that, but we couldn't keep up with them scoring. Q. Early in the game it seemed your offense was able to create space to find open shots but they weren't falling in. Why do you think the ball wasn't going in? COACH FLANAGAN: We've had bouts of that this year. We had times where we didn't shoot particularly well. This was one of those times. We have players that are streak shooters that shoot well a period of time, sometimes the next game they may not shoot well. I have some that shoot well every third or fourth game. We really this year were inconsistent in our scoring. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. COACH FLANAGAN: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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