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BIG TEN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 6, 2014Ameryst AlstonMartina EllerbeKevin McGuffINDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA OHIO STATE – 86 COACH McGUFF: I'm extremely proud of our players today in that I think we put forth great effort to get this win. Northwestern played well, and both teams made a lot of big plays down the stretch, but we just made a few more to get the win. It's a great opportunity for us now to move on, and we'll be very diligent with our preparation tonight and show up and play a very good Penn State team tomorrow. Q. Both of you, what was it like being in the middle of the flurry of those last five minutes of that game? MARTINA ELLERBE: I think we just knew that we needed to play hard, and we were just trying to stay focused, stay with the game plan, and just grind it out to the end. AMERYST ALSTON: Just remembering back from last game, we came out really strong, but we had some downfalls down the stretch of the game, so I think concentration was really key that last five minutes of the game. Q. Martina, there was a stretch where you guys were just back and forth and back and forth and they were answering your baskets pretty quickly, but you got back on a play I think that turned into a steal for Craft. Can you just set me up what happened on that play and how you got back there? MARTINA ELLERBE: I knew they were running really hard in transition, and I think I was just trying to get back, and I kind of got lucky I got in the way of that one, just trying to stop the long pass because if she would have got it, it probably would have been a lay‑up. Q. Ameryst, when she did that I think she followed that with a three‑point on her own, but how big was that for the outcome? AMERYST ALSTON: That was really big. They had been getting some transition buckets and that caused to kind of go back and forth with the scoring, which is something that we don't want to do, so she did a great job of getting back on defense, and that gave us some momentum, and we pushed it in transition. Q. Either of you, how big a lift was it to get two or three big plays from Lisa Blair? MARTINA ELLERBE: It was definitely big. I mean, we all have confidence in her, and I know it's her freshman year, and to see her go out and do great, we're happy for her. Q. Martina, the inside play, I think you wound up with 13 rebounds, but basically Darryce had 10, but just what was it like inside, I guess, playing against these guys inside and how hard was it to get the rebounds? MARTINA ELLERBE: I mean, their team is really good, and their post players are really athletic. But we as a whole team were like boxing out pretty well, so I don't think it was really just me, I think it was everybody just boxing out. Q. What was it like in the first half when things weren't going well for you guys? AMERYST ALSTON: We can't get down on ourselves. That's something you really don't want to do. The game is over, we go to the locker room, we talk about it, and it's 0‑0 from there and you just play the rest of the second half really hard, and that's what we did. Q. Could you ever relax in that game? Did you finally relax in the last minute? AMERYST ALSTON: No, we never relaxed. It doesn't matter if we're up 30 points. It doesn't matter. You play the hard game all the way to the end until the clock says zero. Q. Kevin, the end of the first half wasn't going very well. What did you talk about at halftime and how do you think your kids answered what was going on? COACH McGUFF: The biggest problem we had, our transition defense was really poor at the end. Northwestern was playing hard. They were running harder on offense than we were getting back in transition defense, and so that was the biggest issue. To compound it, we were taking a lot of quick, contested threes which were resulting in long rebounds for them and igniting their transition. Q. You had some foul issues in this game, too, but Darryce was in foul trouble and you went to Lisa in the second half. What kind of minutes do you think she gave you? COACH McGUFF: I think Lisa was terrific. She had a tremendous presence around the basket, especially on the defensive end. Even there late in the game when I put her in, she altered a shot Douglas got at the rim. She plays really hard, and she also had two big free throws during that stretch where we needed them. Her minutes were really good in the second half. Q. Overall can you speak to the offensive execution in this game, especially down the stretch? Is it about as good as it's been this year? COACH McGUFF: Yeah, for the most part we played very aggressively, and we had a great balance of driving the ball at the rim and either getting to the rim with shots that we could make or sucking the defense in and pitching it for open threes. But it was just our aggressive nature, I think, that made the difference in today's game on the offensive end. Q. I was going to ask about going to the basket, but I guess was this the best that you guys have rebounded? COACH McGUFF: Yeah, we had great effort on the boards, and part of like as a result of us really being aggressive driving the ball, we'd force their post players to help quite a bit on the drive, so even when we missed some of those shots, Darryce or Lisa were able to clean them up on the backside. Q. You don't have much time to celebrate; you come back tomorrow against the No.1 seed. You've seen them twice this year. What makes them the No.1 seed? COACH McGUFF: Well, they're deep. They're big. They're very physical. They have an elite scorer and player in Maggie Lucas. I thought last time we played them at home, we played them pretty well, but in the second half Maggie Lucas made a lot of big plays, especially down near the end of shot clocks because she can do that and she's a special player. But they're also really big. They're the hardest team in the league to score around the basket. We won't necessarily get the same looks tomorrow that we got today. Q. Did you see a reaction to them? They were pushed a few times where maybe in the past the other team goes ahead and surges by, and this team really had two or three answers to things like that. COACH McGUFF: Yeah, and one of the things I was really happy to see was Martina and Darryce had their best games in quite some time. If you're going to win this time of year any time, you just have to be with your seniors. They played like people who didn't want to go home, and so I think that was the difference. We had a lot of effort, great effort, and that was‑‑ Am was certainly special today, but our seniors, in particular especially Darryce and Martina were exceptional. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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