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BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 8, 2014Hallie ChristophersonBill FennellyNikki MoodyOKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA Oklahoma State – 67 BILL FENNELLY: First of all, on behalf of our team and Iowa State University, I want to thank everyone in Oklahoma City and the Big 12. There's no better tournament in the country than what happens here, and we appreciate it. The hospitality and everything was great. Beautiful place to play. As far as the game goes, our team is one of those teams that we don't make shots, you're not going to win games. When you shoot 22 percent and you miss seven lay‑ups against a good team, a Top 20 team, you're going to lose. Sometimes it's not real hard to figure out, and to me that was the difference in the game. Q.  Hallie, you opened the second half and Oklahoma State goes on a 9‑0 run. What was going on offensively leading to them getting all those points so quickly? HALLIE CHRISTOFFERSON: Yeah, I think when they started out first half, they were kind of shying away from the basket, and then second half they knew they really had to attack us, get us in some foul trouble, and that's what they did. Q. Nikki, you started off really hot in the first half and then kind of died off. What were they doing defensively that changed in the second half? NIKKI MOODY: I think they were breaking down more and trying to chase me off my shot. And mostly they were clogging the lane, so it was harder to get in there. Q. Hallie, you have 21 points, 11 boards, but you're one‑of‑eight from three. I assume that's dim on your stat line today? HALLIE CHRISTOFFERSON: Yeah, definitely. Q. Did you feel like you got good looks? HALLIE CHRISTOFFERSON: You know, coming in I was just trying to kind of focus on the post and the inside, and when I got the ball on the outside, probably just wasn't ready to shoot the ball, and it showed. Q. Hallie, what were they doing down low defensively to stop you? You had 22 points in the paint to their 40. What were they doing defensively down there that was so tough? HALLIE CHRISTOFFERSON: They're strong post players, pushing you out of the lane, trying to hold you off the block, and once you did get down the inside, if you put the ball down on the floor, then they're coming to double, they're coming to strip it out and you just had to kind of change up how you played knowing that they were going to be two or three coming. Q. Nikki, you had that four‑point play about five minutes to go in the first half. That's when the momentum was kind of swinging back and forth. How big was that play for you guys going into the break? NIKKI MOODY: I felt like it was pretty big. It gave us momentum going into the locker room, and we needed to carry it out into the second half, but it didn't happen that way. Q. Oklahoma State had six steals in the second half. Was that just a case of them being more aggressive defensively or were you more careless with the ball? BILL FENNELLY: I think it's both. When someone makes a defensive play, part of it is their execution defensively, and some of it was some lack of fundamentals on our part at the start of the second half. We were up seven at the half, and we run a play, we get a lay‑up around the basket, we miss, and we don't get back in transition, and they get and‑one. The points in the paint thing, a lot of it was some transition opportunities by them, but they're a good team. They're quick off the bounce. We tried to keep them in front of us as best we could, and for the most part we were okay. Our defense was okay. But again, offensively we really struggled to do some of the things that we need to do to be good to have a chance to win. Just didn't get it done today. Q. You had six threes in the first half, I believe, and I think the success kind of carried over from the last game against them. What were they doing defensively to kind of slow you down in the second half from long‑range? BILL FENNELLY: I don't think the game‑‑ I think they guarded us exactly the same way both halves, it looked to me. Sometimes you miss open shots. They clogged up the lane a little bit, but we still got‑‑ you look at the shot chart, which I don't do, there's seven missed lay‑ups. So if you're going to take away the three, you're going to get something else, and we didn't make them. And when you don't make shots, that happens. Except for a couple that you had to force at the end of the game when you're down, I would say most of the three‑point shots we took were pretty good looks, and that's our team. We're not making them, I'm sure when I get home I'll have lots of emails, we shoot too many threes and all that kind of stuff. If you said to me, Hallie's got a wide open three three times in the second half, will you let her take it? Hell yes. Didn't go in. But it went in the first half, didn't in the second. You've got to credit Oklahoma State. You're playing a Top‑20 team, a good team, and they played better. That's the nature of the beast, and obviously you're disappointed you've got to go home, but you've got to congratulate them for what they did, too. Q. You hold Donohoe, one of their better scorers and overall players, without a basket and didn't really have an impact in this game. What was the key to that? BILL FENNELLY: You know, we got a lot of help. I thought Brynn did a good job guarding her. We really wanted to chase her off the three and then help a lot, which I thought we did, and then I thought because we did a decent job of guarding her, they took her out of the game, and they really tried to beat us off the bounce a lot more. Brittney Martin was really good. We had no answer for her, and Tiffany Bias is a first‑team all‑conference player and played like it, I thought, in the second half. Their balance and our inability to get enough baskets at critical times is probably when the game swung. Q. That run to start the second half by Oklahoma State, was that just lack of effort, just slow on their feet to start the half? BILL FENNELLY: No. Don't ask me that question. Q. Was that Oklahoma State‑‑ BILL FENNELLY: No, no, no, let me finish. You've been covering our team all year, right? Q. Yeah. BILL FENNELLY: I don't want to hear lack of effort. You want to say this team is coached bad, you run bad plays, they made mistakes, you can write anything you want. You don't say lack of effort about my team. You understand me? Q. Yes. BILL FENNELLY: They guarded us great. We made mistakes. The team was poorly coached coming out of halftime. Write that. Don't say anything about lack of effort about my team. Ever. Ever. They have busted their hump all year, all year. Look at the minutes. Look at what they tried to do today. Don't‑‑ don't do that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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