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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 11, 2014Mia BellKathy OlivierRejane VerinLAS VEGAS, NEVADA Fresno State – 80 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by UNLV. Coach, just some general thoughts on tonight's game. COACH OLIVIER: Well, I thought we battled. It was just difficult to give up as many points as we did at the beginning. They were really hot. Fresno was hot at shooting the three ball in transition. When a team shoots like that, it's just hard to, you know, come back. Like we were constantly fighting to try to come back and stay in the game. We made a really good run in the first half, the end of the first half. We made a great run. And then the second half we kind of sputtered a little bit at the beginning. But Fresno's a good team. They have a lot of players that can shoot the ball well. They have good size inside. They have a really good floor general in Taylor Thompson. They got a lot of different weapons and they did a really good job tonight. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Mia, when you came out of the game, what was that emotion like for you? MIA BELL: I don't know, it's hard to explain. I can't really talk about it. It's something‑‑ it was just hard. I can't really explain the emotion, it's hard (tearing up). Q. What memories do you think you'll take away from your time here? MIA BELL: Everything. I've had five years, so I have a lot of memories: good and not so good. All of them will help me in the future. I'll use my experience this year to help me be successful later on in life. I know that will happen, so... Q. The way the season just ended, do you think that gives you strong motivation going into the off‑season as far as trying to make up for how the season went? Sum of what kind of team you think will come back next season. RÉJANE VÉRIN: Yes, it's definitely a motivation for next year. We will lose key players like Mia. But I hope we will, you know, be successful next year and be able to win and come back strong. Q. Do you feel pretty good about the team coming back? RÉJANE VÉRIN: Yeah. We still have like key players like Dani, Alana, Aley and everybody else on the bench. We have some good freshmen coming up, too. I think we'll be all right. Not all right, I think we'll be great. THE MODERATOR: We'll continue with questions for coach. Q. That first stretch early on, how difficult was that for your team to keep up with the pace, the performance they were putting out those first five minutes? COACH OLIVIER: The pace, I mean, we've seen that before. It's more they stretch you out. That's kind of one of our weaknesses. We're not great in transition D. Fresno does a really good job of stretching you out. They have a lot of weapons from the three range. That hurt us in yesterday's game, and it hurt us again today. I was surprised to see Fresno be on fire as much as they were for their first tournament game. I thought it would take them a second, but clearly it did not. If you don't get out and contest... I thought we did a much better job in the middle and towards the end of the first half matching up with them and contesting more their threes. When you contest them, they struggle a little bit more. Wide‑open threes, they're going to hit those. I mean, that's what they do. That's what they love. It's very obvious they run rhythm. Q. How do you go into this off‑season? Do you think you need to change things up? Do you feel good coming back? COACH OLIVIER: You know, this year was hard from the get‑go. Mia went down. She missed four pre‑season games with a high ankle sprain. She's just such a good leader. She's always been a really good leader for us. We lose Rmanii, Amanda and Friederike. Every year you go through that rebuilding stage. I think the players we have coming back are great. I think we have great size. They're just getting stronger and stronger. Alana had an unbelievable year. She's very consistent. Danielle Miller gives her guts and constantly improves, constantly works to improve over the summer. Aley Rohde, she sat out a year. It took her a second to get comfortable. She dislocates her arm while she was the number two or number three scorer in the Mountain West. We have her on the bench. She comes back and puts up some crazy numbers. Réjane is very capable. I thought she had a great game today. So I really like the people we have coming back. I'm missing Bri. I really like our group, our core. We have five freshmen coming in. Out of the five coming in, three of them are still playing in state championships. We have one of the best point guards coming in, Southern California. We feel really good about that. We have four others that are very talented. They're AP students. They're workers. We worked very hard, our coaches worked very hard, to get the balanced student‑athlete that we know are going to improve. We are convinced these five coming in will help us, along with the nucleus coming back. Q. Talk about replacing Mia Bell, what she meant to this program? COACH OLIVIER: She couldn't even answer you. She's obviously very upset. Mia, she's just such a good leader. She works extremely hard at practice. She is the player that's always gonna stay after, get extra threes in, get extra shots in. She had a great run. What was that, her junior year, sophomore year, because she sat out the next year, wasn't 100%. You know, had a great run with Lanita and Jamie and Sandrine and Marquelle [ph]. Great run. We win 22 games. Beat Iowa. Beat K State. Didn't do a good job in this tournament, which saddens me. People think it's a home court. It's not. We played in COX. That's the reality of it. Mia has done so much. She's constantly up in the office. She helps us with every recruit that comes on campus. She talks to the parents. She meets with the recruits. What do I need to do to make us better? We just had a senior celebration. She was talking about, you know, one thing I would tell all of you, her teammates, don't be afraid to think big. Why not us? We have everything we need. Why not us? We just have to get that mindset to think big and to go for it. Q. What did you tell them in the locker room just now? COACH OLIVIER: Well, I mean, hopefully I don't get sad talking about this. We don't like our record. That's not fun. But for the most part our team, they just had really good attitudes. They're a special group. They've worked hard. We had so many close games at the beginning of the year. We just kept telling them, Keep your heads up, things will change. Mia hadn't played for a year. Aley hasn't played for a year. It was almost getting adjusted. I said, You know, good things come to an end. We're not saying this is good, because you want to sit there and say we have over 20 wins, but the reality is they're a really special group. They represent UNLV and Lady Rebel basketball with lot of pride. We had alumni up in the stands. I had a lot of texts. We have done a very good job with this program as far as representing this university and being proud basketball Lady Rebels, so that's what I told them. THE MODERATOR: Thank you.    FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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