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WNBA FINALS: DREAM v LYNX

October 7, 2011

Seimone Augustus

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: Game Three

Minnesota: 73
Atlanta: 67

THE MODERATOR: We will begin with Seimone Augustus. Questions for Seimone?

Q. Seimone, are you surprised at all that you were able to score at this level in the Finals?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: Was I surprised that I was able to score? No! No! No way. This is what I do. This year we have had an amazing team. I haven't had to score as many points as many years before, and I was able to get my teammates involved, and I think we had three or four people that averaged double figures this year, so I just never had to score as much as I did in the Finals.

Q. Seimone, congratulations on being named M.V.P. of the Finals. Can you talk about what this means to you, you came to Minnesota in 2006, you suffered an ACL injury, another surgery after that, now your team is winning in the Finals and on top of that you're the M.V.P. Can you discuss the emotion that you're feeling right now?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: I'm thankful, thankful that everything worked out well, I was able to recover from the ACL injury and the fibroids, the team stuck with me throughout the years, I was in my contract year when I was going through the ACL injury and it was great to know that they were with me and I was going to fight to get back on the court and do whatever I had to do to help this team go wherever we needed to go. They did a great job of bringing in Coach Reeve, and they made a great decision with the draft picks, we got Maya, we got Amber, ya know, Candice Wiggins hung around with us, Charde hung around, we got Rebekkah, Taj came in, in free agency, it's a masterpiece, it came together well.

Q. Seimone, when they made that big rush and got within 1, what were you thinking, were you thinking there might be another game?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: No, no way, no way! Only thing we said was "relax" poise. We were trying to do too much, too soon. They trapped and we tried to throw it over the top, they're big post players, they're going to get deflections, we have to beat them with bounce passes, and as soon as we got the ball we tried to get rid of it and they are too quick to do things like that so once we settled down we tried to move the ball around and forced them to make fouls and at the end made free-throws.

Q. Seimone, Rose Scott NPR Atlanta, can you talk about what this means for your city right now, it sorta struck me with the other sports teams.
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: I didn't know they hadn't won a championship within 20 years so it definitely gives the people of Minnesota something to smile about, something to be happy about until the Vikings and the rest of the teams there get on track. This is a very bright moment for the fans there and for us. We're still fightin' to get the exposure that we need for women's basketball and it's here, I think we have arrived as far as Minnesota is concerned, people paying attention.

Q. Seimone, the offense was certainly all there tonight. But it also was an incredibly great defensive game. You had the primary assignment I believe on Angel McCoughtry. She had probably one of the worst shooting nights of her career until the fourth quarter, can you say what you were doing and why it was working so well?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: Something we should have been doing in the first game, dictating, making every pass difficult, deny her touches, and when she tried to attack, contain her, stand in front of her, make her night difficult.
I think we're closer than we were in previous nights in containing her and contesting her shoots, the other nights she had a little more room and tonight we smothered her and forced her into bad shots.

Q. Seimone, Wednesday you said you want the title. Now you have the title. What's next?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: Celebrate the title! That's what's next, we celebrate right now, we don't focus on next year until it comes around. Right now we're celebrating this championship that we earned and deserved.
THE MODERATOR: Seimone, thank you very much.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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