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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 15, 2013Beth BurnsChelsea HopkinsMalia NahinuLAS VEGAS, NEVADA San Diego State – 67 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by SanDiego State. Coach, if we could start off with your remarks on today's game. COACH BURNS: First, again, we'd like to congratulate New Mexico on a great season, great atmosphere yesterday and today. They have a lot of really, really skilled pieces. Appreciate that we've had battles with them three times over, and their young players are really going to be something and continue to develop. For our team, you know, I really couldn't be prouder. What we do is hard to do. I'm not self‑aggrandizing it. I'm saying it's just effort. Get down, get in a stance, get after it. I think the way we've opened both games has been really impressive to us. New Mexico has very good skill positions. If you allow them to run their stuff, they really can be good. We know we have to give that extra effort to disrupt what they want to do. I thought we did that just in spades early. We got a little bit of fatigue in the second half, which led to a little bit too much fouling, a few more O‑boards than we would have liked. Overall I couldn't be prouder of our effort. I thought Malia started the game great. When you're pressuring people, to have someone that can erase things at the cup well helps us. Today Kiyana Stamps was big off the bench. She's versatile, can play multiple positions. I thought the lift she gave us was very impressive. Final comments, for those of you that were here yesterday, people wanted to talk about Chelsea and her assists. Chelsea says she does what's required. We were struggling a little bit offensively today. I thought you saw what she does. We needed her to score a little bit more, and she did. Thank you. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Chelsea, the general theme up here when New Mexico was at the podium was that you guys have this knack of jumping on people early, setting the tone right out of the gate. Is that easier said than done? CHELSEA HOPKINS: Definitely easier said than done. When you start the game, you have to set the tone, the dynamic. That's what we live to do against every opponent. We want them to feel our presence, we're going to set the tempo of this game, we're going to maintain it. That's what we look to do every time we go out on the court. Q. Malia, I want to talk about the defensive effort, you held New Mexico to 20% shooting from the floor. What was working for you on the defensive end? MALIA NAHINU: Well, we knew that this game would be a tough game, and we needed to come out with energy. As Chelsea said, Coach Burns always instills in us to come out and fight for what we want and come out strong in the first five minutes and really play defensive. Our program is built on defense. We want to maintain that forever. COACH BURNS: Great answer there. That was an answer (smiling). Q. Chelsea, we've asked you this a zillion times. Do you feel like you're in the NCAA tournament if you don't win tomorrow? CHELSEA HOPKINS: Well, we definitely don't want to leave any doubt in terms of tomorrow's game. I feel like the body of work kind of speaks for itself. We're on, what, like a 17‑game winning streak. Not that we really pay attention to that kind of stuff. We work so hard. It's definitely been a goal of ours since the beginning of the season. I think if we get the opportunity to get in, we could definitely turn some heads. We have the opportunity to win a few games. Definitely think we can compete with anybody in the country. I hope we get that opportunity, that chance. We're going to play it one game at a time starting tomorrow. We're going to look for our shot. THE MODERATOR: We'll continue with questions for Coach Burns. Q. Getting back to what I asked Chelsea a minute ago, when you jump out of the gate the way you have the last two days, how much of an impact does that have on just draining the morale out of teams? COACH BURNS: Obviously that's the plan. I think we have an experienced, older team. They were so excited. Our practices Monday and Tuesday were, I was like, Stop, stop, because our level of energy and excitement. You make them stay to task, stay to task, they can finally get to the tournament, a chance to cut down some nets. I steal everything I say. Somebody said it first. Our separation's in our preparation. I have terrific assistant coaches who, as we speak, somebody's is in a Wyoming room, somebody in a Fresno State room. We've been breaking them down for the last three or four weeks. You can't overburden them. You have to give them key things. You get confidence from great preparation. They trust in what they're being told and then they do it and have success with it. With that said, you can't know. You can't know. You can come out with great energy. Every 50/50 ball goes to the other team. I think we're confident. We have quick hands. We've beaten people. If you're playing somebody for a third time, the first five minutes are extra critical because we want to find a little doubt early. I think we've done a really good job in both games of doing that. Q. I think these first two games you've held these two teams to 10 points below what you did in conference play, 13 below what you did overall. Are you maybe a little more impressed than even you thought you could be defensively this far in the tournament? COACH BURNS: Ask me tomorrow. You play to win the game. I'll take Mark's question before he asks it, but you play to win the game. I think for us, separation is important. How we win is important. I think our team understands that. But more than anything, our team is not playing what's our RPI. They love to play. It's fun to play. If we play great defense, take the ball off the backboard, then I allow them to run. If they make a shot, then they have to run one of my plays, which sometimes are offensive, so they'd rather be able to run their own. When we take it off the glass, we're really good. I think they have fun playing that way. That's really been more the difference. We have skilled people and they have some experience playing together. I go back to January 9th when Fresno put 80 on us. I said in subsequent press conferences, We'll never know. Coaches don't need wake‑up calls. We're always awake and worried. Really, credit to Fresno. Probably my disappointment overall is that we should get at least two and potentially three bids, because I'm telling you right now, Fresno and Wyoming, they could win a game. They could win a game and get in. I've been in this league a long time and I'm glad I am. Mountain West this year is a lot better than Mountain West last year. We had three 20‑game winners. New Mexico has a win over Texas Tech who I'm told is already in the tournament. We schedule ourselves to put in position to protect ourselves so we wouldn't have to win three in a row. I think the things, like we've had double‑digit leads, we've never trailed in these games. I'm looking at notes because I never know these facts things. We've had big margins of victories against quality teams. It has got to help us. You all know when I'm immersed in this, I have no idea what's happening in the conference tournaments nationwide. Bottom line is if you don't walk in the front door, there's a lot of upsets, sometimes your heart gets broken. We'll do the best that we can to not be in that position. But I really think we have more than one team in the Mountain West that could get in and could win. If anybody's listening, anybody, I think that could happen. Q. Back to the margin of victory. How much have those kind of games helped your second‑line players? What have you made of them so far in the tournament? COACH BURNS: I think, too, getting healthier. Desi (phonetic) and Kiyana didn't start the season. As they get healthy and play, they really are capable of playing starter minutes. I think we're in a situation where we've got to play to win and we've got to play the people who are ready to play to win. I think more than anything, when you're allowed to have separation, kids can get in and get some experience because they can make a mistake and it's not going to be crucial. Q. They talked about hedging the ball screens higher. Is that something that you tweaked or something you did better? COACH BURNS: Well, again, they can shoot it. Look at when they played teams in our league that are more zone teams. They can really shoot the ball. I think we've gotten better at it. This is where we've really gotten better. At the beginning of the conference, I would say our team is going to guard ball screens this way, and that was it. We had to do what we thought would be most effective as a team. Now I can say, if it's Durbin, do this. If it's Halasz, do this. We couldn't have done that two months ago. And now I think if they allow our staff to do the work to give them the nuances of what they're good at, we're savvy enough and experienced enough, with very little breakdown, we're literally guarding ball screens different ways depending on who's the guy with the ball. Like this last eight, nine, ten games of the stretch have been really big for us. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, coach. COACH BURNS: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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