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AMERICAN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 10, 2014Geno AuriemmaStefanie DolsonBria HartleyBreanna StewartUNCASVILLE, CONNECTICUT UConn - 72 THE MODERATOR: While we are waiting for Coach, we have Bria Hartley, Breanna Stewart and Stefanie Dolson. We will take questions. Q. Stef, you talked all year about how you build up to this point to be ready. Do you think this team is playing it's best at this Tournament? Has it reached a point where you're starting to fire on all cylinders? STEFANIE DOLSON: Yeah, things are definitely clicking, and tonight we went out there and played extremely well as a team. We executed on offense and played great defense and there is always room for improvement because we know the NCAA Tournament is coming up and everybody is going to keep getting better. We can't stay complacent and not get better ourselves. Would he played great tonight and are we're extremely excited that we won, and we've got to keep getting better from here. Q. Stewie, they cut it to 28‑20 about two minutes left in the half or so, three minutes, and then you had that three‑point play, the "and one" and you scored 7 points in the final two minutes to send it back to 18. Do you kind of sense there are times to take over and get it back to a comfortable margin instead of letting them get it back to a closer game? BREANNA STEWART: I think you always want to go into halftime on a good note and then we kind of set up the game. Our transition game kept working and we kept pushing it at them. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions? Q. Bria, it seems whenever there is a big game you like to start the game off with a run yourself. Talk about the differences in a game like this and how you go about taking advantage of that. BRIA HARTLEY: I think when the game starts, you kind of‑‑ I know Coach told us he wanted us to push the ball in transition, and I love to run and in transition; that's what I try to do. I was trying to get out and the my teammates found me and I was able to knock down a 3‑pointer or whatever and I think we had an aggressive mentality in the beginning and we got started and it went through the whole team. Q. Stewie, we watched you grow up so much last year as a freshman, you went through that rough stretch, you did what you did in the Final Four in the NCAA Tournament. This year you've been consistent all year long. How much better can you become as a player, not just this year but through the next two years? BREANNA STEWART: There are so many ways I can improve. Being able to do a lot of different things on the court, that means there are so many other things that you can get better at, just not getting complacent and wanting to be the best player I can be. Q. Bria, over here. What are the signals you look for that tell you that the team is performing at its optimum? What do you like for? What clues you into that? BRIA HARTLEY: I think it's a feel, especially when we start the game the way we started the last two. Everything is clicking, we're making the right pass at the right time and everyone is sharing the ball and we have so many threats on our team, and we are playing our best basketball when everybody is contributing and putting everything in for the team and you saw how it is these last two games, when we were playing well. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach? You ladies can go. Q. Coach, can you give us a comment on the middle of the second half and what was going on? Both teams looked like they were somewhat ineffective offensively. COACH AURIEMMA: You know, I can't speak for them. Looked like they were trying‑‑ probably trying too hard to get back in the game and they were playing way faster than they needed to be playing. I think we lost some concentration there for a little bit. You know, you start missing free‑throws, you start‑‑ just all of the sudden playing like every other team plays, you know, for long stretches. It's something we talked about coming into the game. I don't ever want them to feel, we're up 18 at halftime so let's coast home for the next 20 minutes. I thought we regained it pretty quickly. I was happy to see that. Q. Could you talk about the experience that you had here at the Sun, and if it were up to you, would you want this to come back? COACH AURIEMMA: I had a huge win last night. I played blackjack for two hours, and I left with the exact amount of money that I started with, so I am way ahead! I can't wait to come back! It's something that we wanted to do for a long time. We've always talked about it as coaches. I always thought it would be a great experience for the fans, a great experience for the players. It's a beautiful venue, the crowds are great, the people that run it understand how to run these events. It was it everything that I thought it would be. I hope it was everything that all the other teams and everybody expected it to be. But I'm not surprised it was as good as it was, and I can't think of any one thing that I would say I was disappointed in. Q. Geno, what are the keys that you look for that tell your experienced eye that your team is playing at its capacity, at its optimum? COACH AURIEMMA: Mostly for me it's the combinations that we're scoring in, kind of like a boxing match, you know, when if you just throw the same punch over and over and over again, I don't know how effective that is. So if we're taking the same shots over and over and over again, then I know we're just settling for whatever, the easy way out. But when we are getting out and getting layups in transition, we're getting to the free‑throw line, we're getting enough three's, we're getting the kind of movement that's crisp and clean and everybody is touching the ball, that's an indication to me that everybody is kind of dialed in. The stretches where I'm not sure we're like that is when it gets very much like one pass, all right, let's hurry up and score, throw another pass and shoot it, whatever shot that is, I don't care, just shoot it. And then we get complacent, but the first half yesterday and the first half today, I don't know that we could play much better than that. Q. Coach, every coach says they want their team to get off to a fast start, your team continually actual does it, every game. They seem to get into it and open up the early lead. What is it that's different about the kids that you have versus other teams that they continually get that fast start that they're looking for? COACH AURIEMMA: You know, we do some things at practice that right at the beginning of practice that if they're not into it right away, and there is a couple of things that they've got to get done immediately, then they have to keep doing it until they get it. So we kinda start every day with, all right, these first, 15, 20 minutes better be absolutely perfect so we can move on to the next thing, and I think that carries over into the games. The first five, six, seven minutes of a game, we feel like those seven minutes we're going to be absolutely perfect in what we're doing. I have tried that other times and my players weren't that good, and it didn't work out so well. It's nice when everybody you pass the ball to has the ability to put points on the board. That's‑‑ you know, our offense‑‑ the skill level of our offensive players is pretty high, even playing top‑10 teams in the country, it's pretty high. I hope my teams look the same year after year after year because we spend a lot of time, number one, trying to recruit those kids and number two, we spend a lot of time in practice on offensive skills and it shows sometimes. Q. Geno, you have won a lot of conference titles and this is the first conference championship for the American, and no one can take that away. How does that feel? COACH AURIEMMA: We had a conversation in our locker room with the team and we talked about it's not so much‑‑ it's not so much the trophies and the watches or whatever you get, the hats and shirts, they're meaningless. It's nice but they don't really mean anything. The significance of this is you have a goal when you start October15th. Our goal is to win the conference championship, and then the process is about that. So when you actually do it reinforces that our process is right. We're doin' it the right way. New league, new coaches, new venue, you know, all that was kind of exciting for us. That's the way we looked at it. We looked at it as an exciting time. I don't know how many conference championships the American Conference is going to host in their lifetime, but as you said, we won the first one. And yesterday I think was a pretty special day here in the sense that you have a conference where a team that's not in the top‑20 like South Florida takes the No. 3 team in the country down to the wire, down to the last possession. Nobody in the country is talking about South Florida, but I wouldn't want to play them in the NCAA Tournament, and if anybody gets in ahead of them there should be an investigation. I don't think there is any team playing better basketball right now than South Florida is. Q. Geno, I was wondering if you think it would be fair for the No. 1 overall seed to be sent to a bracket where they could be playing a true away game in the regional final? COACH AURIEMMA: Somebody is going to have to do it, you know? Somebody is going to Notre Dame, somebody is going to Louisville and somebody is going to Stanford and you're going to end up playing the home team in one of those three places. Do I like it? No. We had that situation in 1995 we had a regional at Gampel, and back in the day it was called buying your way into the Final Four. You put in a bid, a lot of people aren't going to bid, so you get it and the regionals are at your place every year. I don't like it. I'm not in favor of it, and I don't think this is going to happen again, either. It's a one‑year deal, I think. Regionals should be played on neutral sites. I understand going to places where the game is popular, but I think the three home teams probably are in position to get a No. 1 seed. Louisville, Notre Dame and Stanford. So if they are, the absolute best 2, 3 and 4 teams in the country should all be in those three regionals, make them pissy about having a Final Four at home. They did that to us in '95. We had us, Virginia, Louisiana Tech and Alabama. It was actually better than the Final Four we went to. Q. How do you combat the natural instinct that players develop over time when they can't beat a team that's clearly blocking their path to great things? Your program like it was for Notre Dame for a long time is standing in Louisville's way from doing things that they want to do to, win National Championships and Conference Championships? How does Walz convince them to forget about it and it's possible. COACH AURIEMMA: Well, nothing lasts forever. My first two or three years I think in our league we couldn't beat Villanova, and I thought we would never beat Villanova. And then Kim made the only three of her career and we won at the buzzer, and they didn't beat us again for the next 15 years. Things don't last forever. The object I think is to put yourself in a position where you can win, and at some point you will. I don't know that, you know, we're not the only team that's standing in any team's way. I think in order‑‑ you know, in order to win the National Championship you eventually are going to have to beat some really, really good teams. They're going to a different conference now, so everything will be different for them. Notre Dame and Louisville can slug it out over there. Eventually it changes. It's cyclical. I'm not‑‑ I'm not naive enough to think that you could play Louisville twice a year for the next ten years and they would never beat us. They're too good of a team, and he's too good of a coach for that to happen. It just that he's caught us in the National Championship game with some of our best teams ever and he caught us this year, the first three times, maybe with one of the best teams we ever had. At some point it will be different. It will be different. That's the only explanation I have. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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