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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 3, 2012A'dia MathiesMatthew MitchellKeyla SnowdenNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE LSU – 72 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Kentucky head coach Matthew Mitchell and A'dia Mathies and Keyla Snowden. Coach, if you could start us off. COACH MITCHELL: Well, I want to congratulate LSU, what a terrific game they played. They played with a lot of heart, a lot of desire tonight, clearly wanted to play in the championship tomorrow. This time of year, it's a lot about that. I thought LSU did a great, great job, really took us out of just about anything we wanted to do, dominated the game. A great, great performance by a tough LSU team. I thought they did well today. THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Coach, I thought they really dominated you in the paint. Did you think so? COACH MITCHELL: Yeah, I thought they were really, really tough. A lot tougher than us today. From the opening tip, it looked like their desire was greater than ours. For us, we have to have that. We have to have an edge and desire. For whatever reason, LSU had greater desire today. They really wanted to play for a championship tomorrow. In the paint, they clearly had some big kids, have some good, tough post players. We just don't seem to be able to get any pressure on the ball. We foul them an awful lot. It just was a difficult game for us. We just had a hard time with them today. Q. I know you came back from the big deficit yesterday. Any confidence knowing that you had done that before or did LSU keep you at enough distance? COACH MITCHELL: Well, I just thought our top players would have been really aggressive, if A'dia and Bria could start playing aggressive and making midrange jumpers, because that's what you had to make today to beat them. You clearly could not get to the rim and make any. It was tough to get to the rim against them with their size. We didn't do a very good job with finishing with contact. It's the kind of game that you had to have somebody step up and make some midrange jumpers. We just couldn't do it. It was a tough day for us. I think we have a really good team. For whatever reason, we didn't play very well today. A big reason for that it was LSU. But I still didn't think we were never in much of an attack mode. So I have a lot of confidence in them, but we just didn't get the job done today clearly. Q. A'dia, could you talk about the first half. Only 16 points for you guys overall. What was their defense doing so well? A'DIA MATHIES: I think they were just doing a good job of playing out wide. We wasn't able to get the ball inside, attacking the gap. It was mostly our fault. We wasn't attacking when we should have. They just played good. Q. Coach, can you talk about the free‑throw shooting disparity, 28‑point differential. COACH MITCHELL: It's a big factor in the game. You lose by 9, get outscored 28 at the free‑throw line, we clearly fouled too much. I was disappointed with that, that we could not play a cleaner game. 30 more attempts for them. We definitely didn't play as clean of a game as they played. They obviously played a much cleaner game and didn't foul as much as we did. It's difficult for us, too, on a game like today. I think they really wanted our post players to try to beat 'em. They put a lot of pressure on A'dia, Keyla and Bria. We didn't get much production out of our post game today, could not make shots around the basket. You'd like to see the free throws a little bit more even. But when you have it like that, you have to find some way to pull it out. We had a chance to win today; just couldn't get it done. Q. Keyla, how do you fix the team offensively? You struggled almost the whole SEC tournament, never shot more than 50% a game. What do you need to do offensively? KEYLA SNOWDEN: We need to get in the gym and get some shots up and get confidence back. I think a lot of people are lacking confidence in their shots, their abilities right now. The main thing, we just got to play together. COACH MITCHELL: I don't know any other thing to do but get back and go to practice. I think Keyla put it well there. We at times this season had a real dedicated group getting in the gym, so we know we have people that will. They'll have a lot of time this week as we await and see where our destination is in the tournament. What a great job these players have done to win 14 games against SEC competition, finding ways to win, being the regular‑season champions. So today is very disappointing. To win the tournament, you have to play well for three days, and we didn't do that. But I think it's a great accomplishment to play the best over a 16‑game schedule. I think that is an even greater accomplishment. So real proud of the team for being the champions of the regular season. It's something that we should draw some confidence from. I just agree with Keyla, I think we just find a way to get in the gym. That's what you want to do. So now as we go forward, we have to decide how special we want to be. We're already a special team. We've already done something that hasn't been done in 30 years. My hope for them is they're never satisfied with where they are. I think when you do that in life, you have a lot of problems. If you get to the point of success and you stop working, I don't think that's a good formula for them as they go forward. That's what I'll try to share with them. We have a lot left to accomplish. Today is disappointing, but we need to bounce back and really try to focus in practice and try to take advantage of some of this time we have off to maybe regain some confidence shooting. Q. There's probably a very good chance the SEC is going to have eight teams in. When you consider some of the seniors that are in this league, looking forward, do you feel like all this preparation is going to do you a lot of good for the NCAA tournament? COACH MITCHELL: Absolutely. I think we have played in a lot of tough games. We won a lot of tough games. Clearly we won more than anybody else in the regular season. Had to win 'em in different ways. So we I think will be very much battle‑tested going into the tournament. I don't get a vote. My opinion doesn't matter. But if we don't get eight teams in, I don't know how. We really have eight strong teams. As you watched our eighth‑seeded team yesterday perform so spectacularly, they're so tough. I don't know if anybody would be jumping for joy if they draw Florida in the tournament. I think we should get eight teams in. It's been a good conference season. It makes you even prouder to be the champions of the regular season when the conference is so strong. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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