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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 6, 2014Nikki CaldwellJeanne KenneyShanece McKinneyDULUTH, GEORGIA LSU – 78 THE MODERATOR: We'll begin with an opening comment from coach and the student‑athletes. COACH CALDWELL: Well, it's tough to have to come back and play a great basketball team like Alabama. They've got some players that are just hard‑nosed. They propose a defensive nightmare for you. But I was very proud of our team for staying disciplined in our game plan, for executing it.  Again, just playing this game with a lot of heart. We saw that tonight. THE MODERATOR: Shanece. SHANECE McKINNEY: We came into the tournament with the mindset of this won't be our last 40 minutes together. We just kind of kept that in our heads all day long and dreamt about the game, just brought it to life that we would come out and dominate. JEANNE KENNEY: To piggyback off of all those, we did have a mindset of this wasn't going to be our last game. As seniors, it's something that it's very evident and we realized it's coming down to the end so we wanted to make sure it wasn't our last game. THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. Coach, can you talk about specifically your post players. Both had double‑doubles. COACH CALDWELL: I thought McKinney did an exceptional job of just being accurate. Everything that she put up was pretty much going in. She played very aggressive. She did so defensively for us. She's our clean‑up lady. Her presence on the defensive end, when players are trying to get to the basket, you got to be aware of her coming over and blocking shots. She had four of them tonight. It set a tone. Then obviously Theresa is one of those players that we have counted on. She answered the call tonight. We're going to continue to go to these two. We talked about establishing a power game. We even named an offense 'Power' so we could play that way, and I thought those two played phenomenal tonight. Q. Shanece, you said you guys dreamt about this game. Expand on that a little bit. SHANECE McKINNEY: Well, last night, I won't go into detail about the dream (laughter), but I pretty much saw us cheering after the game, going back, talking to our families about how we won, just stuff like that. COACH CALDWELL: You literally had a dream? SHANECE McKINNEY: Yeah (laughter). Q. You hurt your arm on a block. SHANECE McKINNEY: I blocked the girl's shot. When I came down, I guess my triceps caught her shoulder. It kind of caught her shoulder. It's good, though. Q.  Coach, I think it would be fair to say that y'all struggled late in the regular season. You didn't seem to struggle much tonight. What was the problem and how have you fixed it? COACH CALDWELL: Well, the SEC is just a tough conference to play in. You look at our road stretch, the last seven games. At Kentucky, that's a tough game. At Texas A&M, that's a tough game. At Georgia, that's a tough game. Obviously we also had South Carolina and Tennessee in that six‑, seven‑game stretch. Our team, though, through those losses, I thought we grew up. I thought they showed resilience and determination, especially in the Tennessee game. We didn't give up, although we were 21 points down at the half. We could have went on to win that game. They put themselves in position to do so. But this team is going to grow from all of that. Again, we have the strongest RPI in the country. We have the best coaches and support staff in the country. I do feel like we have some of the best players in the country. So night in and night out, it's going to be competitive. Q. Coach, can you talk about Jeanne's leadership. COACH CALDWELL: Well, she was a great floor general. The one thing about Jeanne, we have a unique relationship. I give her her moments and she'll give me mine. But the other night when we were meeting, you love this when a player says, Hey, coach, you have 5 or 10 minutes, but we sat and talked about how we're going to be on the same page, how she's going to be an extension of this coaching staff. Her teammates respond to her. There's not a job too big or too small. She makes the sacrifice for her team. That's one of the greatest qualities of a leader, the ability to sacrifice. I'm so glad she shot the ball tonight. She looked for her teammates. She did a nice job of controlling the game for us. Q. You talked about playing for 40 minutes. Was this a 40‑minute effort tonight? JEANNE KENNEY: No, it wasn't. I feel like the reason we didn't play 40 minutes was because of our defense. I looked up at the scoreboard at one point during that stretch, we went on that scoring run, but we got defensive stops. We could have been up 30, yet we come down. They had 39 points at this moment. Probably seven minutes left. They end up scoring 65 points at the end of the game. I mean, Alabama can shoot threes. We know that. We got burnt by that last week against them. We have to work on our defense. We have to finish out games. We have too much potential to just play 30 minutes, 35 minutes in stretches. We have too much to gain to play that way. Q. Coach, Williams really hurt you last time at Alabama. Tonight you were able to neutralize her for the most part. And look ahead to tomorrow night's game. COACH CALDWELL: Williams is a tough guard. She plays with a different bounce about her. She's a great rebounder. We did a nice job of really trying to not allow her to establish early position. So that was good. Simmons picked up the slack. We guarded Simmons pretty good at Alabama. I thought she was really hunting for her shot more. Looking ahead, I told the group, Enjoy today, enjoy the moment as far as having another game. But tomorrow we get to play again for 40 minutes together as a team. That's what it's going to be about. It's going to be about us executing our game plan and playing it to the best of our ability. We've got to be ready to defend, like Jeanne said. We've got to keep people off the boards. Those are the two cornerstones of great teams, is their ability to defend and rebound the basketball. Offensively let's just take care of the basketball. When we're taking care of the basketball, we're pretty efficient offensively. I don't want this group to go into tomorrow hoping or wishing, We hope this, we hope that. I want them to go into that game and make it happen. They're capable. They've shown they're able. They just got to trust in that, but more importantly trust each other. When they do trust each other, they play the way they're capable of with this togetherness, they have a strong bond, and it's unbreakable. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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