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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 10, 2014Mia BellDanielle MillerKathy OlivierAley RohdeLAS VEGAS, NEVADA UNLV – 78 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by UNLV. Coach, just some opening comments on tonight's game. COACH OLIVIER: Well, we knew San Jose State was going to be a really tough matchup. They're just so explosive. They were shooting the three ball well this evening, which was a little scary, but I thought we had some key stops down the stretch and made our free throws. That was pretty much the difference of the game. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Mia, you went to the line with those three free throws, made one. When you went back to the line to make the two critical shots, how were you able to put that out of your mind? MIA BELL: Really, the two I missed, they both went in and out. It wasn't like in my mind, Oh, God, I have to make these two free throws. I wanted this game. That's all I was thinking about. Take your time and make them. And I did. Q. Right after you took the lead, you had that key steal down at the other end. Talk about what you saw and the importance of that play. MIA BELL: I saw opportunity, but I just felt like I had to go for it. It was now or never. I kind of just had to go for it, so I just went for it. In a couple plays, I threw the ball to Dani. I screamed her name. She saw me. I tipped it to her. Okay, we're good. It was a heads‑up play by her to begin the play. Q. Just prior to the steal, you were relentless. You could see it in your eyes. There was a lot of determination there. You yelled, Switch, switch, you were slapping your hands, getting on your teammates. From the start of that play to the steal coming back down, take us through that. MIA BELL: When you look up at the scoreboard and you need one stop, I think you kind of feel it. You kind of feel the urgency of the entire play. I definitely felt that. It was like we get this stop, we can live to fight another day. If we don't get this stop, we go home heartbroken. I didn't want to feel that feeling. I felt that before. Didn't want to feel it again. Q. Aley, you have a large ice pack on your shoulder there. Tell us about how much pain you're in, what the injury is, how you were able to go out there and make all six of your field goal attempts. ALEY ROHDE: Well, I mean, as far as we know it's torn, so it's pretty painful. But I'm at the point, right now, what Mia said, you got to live to fight another day or you're done. I already have surgery set up, why not go for it. Already going under the needle, so might as well do what I can. COACH OLIVIER: She was finishing, too. At the right place, at the right time. Big target and finished everything for her teammates. Q. Dani, talk about the determination you had to make the basket off the layup, then the two free throws. DANIELLE MILLER: Well, me and Mia had communication where I thought she wanted to get the ball in transition. I thought she wanted to make the layup. I guess we kind of, you know, had like a miscommunication at the end of that play. Fortunately they didn't box me out on the weak side. I was fortunate to be in the right place to be able to have that basket. Basically I'm just feeding off of Mia the entire time. Like she stated earlier, I was in the right place at the right time almost three or four possessions within that game. I'm just feeding off the captain's defense and go for it at the end of that game. We both felt that feeling together of not being able to play in the second round of the conference, you know, just being in that locker room for this 30 minutes right now not feeling great. We just wanted to really be able to be here right now, live to fight another day, so... Q. Mia, I've talked to you a lot about how important these tournament games are, your senior year. How important and how much does this win mean to you? MIA BELL: It's a huge win for us as a team. I love these guys. I love our coaches. I love our team. I feel like we have a very good team. We just get another chance to show how good we can be. We know we have things we can get better at for tomorrow. We'll do that. We'll come out and be even better. For me it's just another chance to keep playing and having those four letters across my chest. Nothing better than that. Q. They hit you with two big runs. How were you able to gather yourselves both times and hang in there? ALEY ROHDE: I mean, I think it's just kind of what we've been playing. Like we know that if we lose, we're done for the season. No one wants to be done at this point. We've been knocked out of the first round the last couple years. Like, we didn't want to deal with that again. Sit in the locker room for 30 minutes, hearing them cheering, us down. You have to keep yourself together. Basketball is a game of runs. It's going to happen. It's inevitable. As long as you keep yourself together, work as a team, don't do all for one, then you'll take care of the business you're trying to take care of. THE MODERATOR: We'll continue with questions for coach. Q. What did you tell the players when they were knocking down all those threes as far as weathering the storm? COACH OLIVIER: It was interesting 'cause when you asked that, I was going to jam in. They were on fire. They were hitting their threes. We weren't. I don't think we hit one three in the first half. I knew if we could get a hand up, contest their threes, making sure we were doing all we could to contest their threes, we could get the rebound and try to fast break a little, get on a fast run. I thought we did at the end of the first half. We needed to do that because we weren't making our shots. We needed to get our easy buckets. Our easy buckets come by our defense. When Danielle and Mia were talking about being in the right place at the right time, they're active. They're very long, have great defensive positioning. When they play defense like that, their defense and our defense creates our offense. I thought we did a good job of that during that run. We just kept talking to them about getting stops and really doing all you can defensively and we'll get some easy buckets on the other end. Q. Was it harder to weather that or once you finally caught them they hit you with another run? COACH OLIVIER: I mean, they're an explosive team. They made me nervous from the very get‑go when I saw that's who we were going to play. I thought, Oh, gosh. Jamie does a really good job. She has them doing that system, push, push and push. They look like they can play another game right now. They know the shots that they're going to get. So for us, it was more of just staying disciplined defensively, making sure we match up better. The first half we played more zone. I don't know how smart that was on my part. Second half we played more man. We could match up easier in transition. That to me was what the difference in the game was. I thought Réjane was the difference in the game, too. When she came in I thought she immediately changed the ballgame. We were just more in attack mode. I thought that was big, too. Then Aley, she came in and made some things happen. But Réjane for me was the one that made the difference offensively. Defensively I thought there were several of them. Again, when we play good D, our offense clicks a little better. Q. Considering they hit 11 threes, did you consider on their last possession fouling them? COACH OLIVIER: No. I don't do that. I get nervous about that. I don't like giving teams opportunities to put points on the board. I'm going to be honest. It crossed my mind. I thought, Oh, I'm not even going to go there. Our team was dialed in to get a stop. We really talked about just getting a hand up, contesting everything without fouling. If they're going to take it to the basket, let them go, don't even think about an and one. We were dialed in at the end. In the beginning, you have to know, these players are great people. They want to win so much. They want to do whatever it takes. They almost try to do too much. I think that's what Aley was saying. Everyone was trying so hard that it's counterproductive. We finally simmered down, settled down a little bit and things went our way. Q. Can you talk about ending this dry spell in the first game of this tournament. Do you feel more joy or relief? COACH OLIVIER: I mean, again, I say this to my family. I don't really talk about it to other people. But I just think that we have a good basketball team. I keep saying, I don't get it. I don't get it. I feel like we're 13‑18. I have to look down because I completely don't even want to look at that. I feel strongly that this team can beat anyone. I know that we just haven't played consistent. When we're all on the same page, striving for that one goal, that same goal, we're a much better team. I thought we did that the last five minutes. We were just playing together. It was Lady Rebel basketball. I don't think they're selfish. I don't think people are gunning.  It's a different kind of, I want to do this so bad, I'm trying to do it for so many reasons. It's just counterproductive. We try to kind of just, again, settle them down. When we did that, we played Lady Rebel basketball and it was much better. Q.  The officials called it really tight on both ends in the second half. Did you make the decision to take advantage of that and see if you could get to the line as much as you could? COACH OLIVIER: Well, it made me a little nervous. I mean, they've been doing that all year. It's nothing new. I think that's what the game emphasis has been all season. We've been very smart about it. We've done a good job of us attacking the basket, not allowing other teams to get to the free‑throw line. That's why I like to go zone. I don't like to get all those fouls. But we really had to pick up the tempo defensively and go man. Thank goodness we didn't file. Danielle, her offense is created by her defense. So she was getting after on the break. I just thought Mia did a good job attacking when she needed to, getting Alana open shots, Réjane, Aley open shots when she needed to. She has such a good feel for tempo. When we do a little bit of both, that's when we're a good basketball team. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, coach. COACH OLIVIER: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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