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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 7, 2014Gary BlairJordan JonesCourtney WalkerDULUTH, GEORGIA Texas A&M – 86 THE MODERATOR: Coach Blair, if you'd make an opening comment, then we'll take questions. COACH BLAIR: That's about as good as we can play in transition basketball. I was proud of our guard play. We turned it over 27 times against them at their place against that same press. I think we worked on it because they embarrassed us at their place. We had a lot of zone offense called, but we never had to run it in the first half because we were breaking it, penetrating, shooting jumpers by Walker and Williams, and Jordan was just feeling it. She was getting the ball to the right hand. That wasn't a zone offense we were running. We ran the triple post a couple times. She hit Karla a couple times on that. Other than that, it was hitting gaps after they set up into the press. And nobody presses as long as they do in a ballgame, probably them and Kentucky press more than anybody in our league. Happy with my team. Happy with my bench. Obviously I was a shooting coach for Courtney Walker in that ballgame. I take all credit (laughter). THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. What was the defensive plan going in? COACH BLAIR: We were trying to stop their right‑handed drives. I wanted to make sure to start the second half, we opened up in a press when we went to the line. We don't usually do that. Why I wanted to press, I didn't want us to get content. We forced a couple early turnovers. I think that took all the life out of them right there. Then we got out of it. I wanted to make sure we were doing what we were supposed to. You had to stop Tanner from driving at the high post, which she was very effective in the first half.  Muhammad, I thought we did a good job on her. I think she's a little banged up. She's not the Muhammad we normally know. She's a little banged up. I thought their inside players, they let them play, they let us play inside. Just a solid, good game plan by Coach Starkey, then the on‑ball defense she had on their point guard allowed us to get into a lot of the passing lanes. Q. Courtney, what was working for you tonight? COURTNEY WALKER: I think we were getting the fast break, pull up, also the reverse five on their zone they really over‑rotated on their zone, so a lot of times, a lot of the players would be on one side of the floor, the other side was open. I think we just took advantage of it. Q. Coach, I think Karla tied the school season single block record. Jordan is coming up on the single season assist record. To be setting these kind of things every couple years, what does that say about the state of the program overall? COACH BLAIR: I think it says a lot about my assistant coaches who are great recruiters. I think it's the traditions. I think it's our players doing a great job. When kids come on campus, they want to play with other great players. We're just trying to be consistent while we're at the top. I know who's at the top. Even in here knows who's at the top. We want to be there where the Tennessees and the Connecticuts and the Dukes and Notre Dames and Stanfords and Baylors. They've been there for quite a while. I think it's time for us and the South Carolinas and the Kentuckys to all be that consistent. Three out of the four of us are still chasing Tennessee. But I think the top four are all playing tomorrow. I challenged my team. I said, Hey, Florida did a good job of staying with them for a while. I'm getting confused. South Carolina ran away with their game with Georgia. I'm proud to be part of this four. Now, how can we stay there? I've got good guards that are all sophomores. We need to replace Karla. She'll graduate this year. We've got those two young post players that were playing and a good freshman coming in. I love my team. I love the tradition. We're going to keep working as hard as we can to try to stay at that level, to be consistent, to stay with those top five schools I mentioned. Q. Being able to get your starters out of there with seven or ten minutes left in the half, how important is that when you're playing a team like Tennessee? COACH BLAIR: I think it's important because we're playing at 2:30. It's going to be a long night for the assistant coaches breaking down film. It's going to be a short night for our kids getting in the cold pool to get ready to play tomorrow. Then you just play on momentum. We had the same thing last year. We played well. Last year we had to come from behind and beat Tennessee. Hopefully we can get off to a better start. They embarrassed us at our place. They had their A game. Beat us by an easy 21. We'd like to give a better showing this time. They're the best transition team in our league. Harrison is just killing people on the offensive boards. She's doing such a great job. Simmons, I don't know what she ended up with, but she loves to play against Texas teams. She's a Texas girl. We have our hands full, but that's what we want. Give Tennessee a lot of credit. It's going to be a good matchup. It's going to be a good matchup for the SEC. The whole nation is going to be able to see the top four teams play, and all of us are in the top 15. I think it's going to be great for SEC basketball. Q. Jordan, can you talk forcing turnovers. What were you doing defensively? JORDAN JONES: It really wasn't so much about what I was doing, rather what my teammates were doing. They made it very hard for her to get into the ball, denying the offense by denying the wings. Once I look over my shoulder, it gives me leeway to pressure the ball. By pressuring the ball it rattles them. They start pushing off, fumbling the ball. By then there's 10 seconds left on the shot clock for them to run their offense. It's about disrupting their offense and I feel like that's what we did tonight. Q. Jordan, you talked about wanting to get revenge on the teams that beat you this week. You get a chance to do that tomorrow. From a player's perspective, what does getting another crack at Tennessee mean? JORDAN JONES: I probably will be with the coaches tonight breaking down film because that's just how excited I am about this tournament in general. Playing Tennessee, it's a great platform because it's a team with so much history. Just tonight we saw the whole thing was basically, We back Pat, Coach Summitt. Most of them are legends. For us to be able to step on the floor with them tomorrow speaks great volumes to this program as well. I feel if we keep this momentum, keep on doing what we're doing, it should be a better game than it was out in College Station. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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