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NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOURApril 2, 2014Muffet McGrawNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE RICK NIXON: Good afternoon, and welcome to today's Women's Final Four head coaches' media teleconference. For the next several minutes you'll have an opportunity to visit with the head coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Muffet McGraw. Notre Dame will be playing in its sixth Women's Final Four in 2014 competing for its second NCAA national championship. At this time I'll bring in Coach McGraw to provide an opening statement. MUFFET McGRAW: We're really excited to be heading back to the Final Four. At the beginning of the season, losing Skylar Diggins, I don't think anybody had us advancing this far, and certainly there were a lot question marks for us, but Kayla McBride, Jewell Loyd, Natalie Achonwa have had fantastic seasons, and we're just excited now about continuing on our journey and really thrilled that the ACC has two teams, and would have been great to have three, but nice to have two. Q. I'm curious, how do you approach this week with Taya Reimer, and also how do you kind of assess her play up to this point, her freshman season? MUFFET McGRAW: I think Taya has had a very good year. I think that she would be a starter for most other programs in the country, and she was able to come off the bench and learn a lot through Natalie Achonwa and Ariel Braker and she is ready for this opportunity. I think she's been waiting for this opportunity all season long to break into the starting lineup, and she certainly is talented enough and has a great skill set. Q. Does it provide you any solace that when you played Maryland the last time because Natalie had a lot of foul trouble that she had a relatively for her had an unproductive game and yet you were still able to beat them, and without Natalie out there, what bigger challenges does Alyssa Thomas present? MUFFET McGRAW: You know, we did look at that. We looked at the stats. We watched the game film and we noticed that Natalie's minutes in the game, I mean, she played about half the game, and so we were able to get a good look at what the team is like without her in there, and that helped us a little bit. But it does present some problems when you lose your best rebounder against a team like Maryland, who is just big and terrific on the boards, and a player like Alyssa Thomas, it creates a little bit of‑‑ a couple more problems for us. Q. I was wondering whether you thought the key was to motivating your team to perform at its highest level for as long as you need them to? What does a coach need to do? What do they need to say? What's been your method to success in getting your players to give you maximum effort? MUFFET McGRAW: Well, I think our players are very self‑motivated. Our seniors and our captains have done a great job in the locker room getting them ready for practice every day, getting them to look at the next game, and never looking ahead. I think we've trained them in that way over the years. I think it's been passed down from leader to leader. But we really don't have to do anything to motivate this group. They're competitive. They want to win, and they've been a very easy group to lead. Q. Just to follow that up, what was the‑‑ I imagine it was very difficult for them in the locker room after Natalie got hurt, just the camaraderie that they build among teammates and what she's contributed to the team. Was there a mourning period and how long did it last? MUFFET McGRAW: Natalie Achonwa sets the tone for our team in everything that we do. She's been the vocal leader for our team. When she went down on the floor and before she even left for the locker room, she bounced back up and went after the team and really gave them a very spirited talk and encouragement to finish that game. I think she set the tone right then. She came back onto the bench, she got up and cut down the nets, and she proved to them it's not about her, it's about the team. We talked about it in the locker room yesterday. There were no tears, there was no mourning. We are ready to move on, and Natalie is going to be on the sidelines doing everything she can do to help us win. Q. With this being a rematch, the fact that Maryland was able to kind of come back after you all had such a big lead and made it so close at the end, does that maybe help you as you get your team refocused on the challenges of this game on Sunday? MUFFET McGRAW: I would rather they didn't come back at all. You know, I think that they're a really good team, and they've gotten a lot better since that game. In fact, I would say that may have been the turning point of the season for Lexie Brown. I think she's really come into her own since that game. I think that really was kind of a catalyst for her to continue to improve. It's great to be able to watch the film and see how good they look because they looked really good, and Alyssa Thomas in particular looked really good in the second half of that game. Q. When did you specifically find out Natalie was lost for the postseason, and what do you remember about the exact moment you were told, and I imagine you were told by a trainer or a doctor? MUFFET McGRAW: Well, right after the game. We were still out on the court celebrating, and they said it looks like it could have been the ACL. So I think we knew almost immediately. The MRI wasn't until the next day we got the official word probably around noon the next day, and I think we were prepared for it. I think it really‑‑ it kind of took the wind out of our sails during the celebration, but we still continued to celebrate our success, and I don't think it had as big an impact the next day when we got the official word. I think we pretty much already knew by then. Q. Would that have been you or a member of the coaching staff who told Natalie directly or a medical person who told her directly? MUFFET McGRAW: You know, I don't know what happened in the locker room when she left the floor. I don't know if they told her. I don't think they did. They told me not to say anything to her. So I think in her own mind she knew that something was wrong because obviously she's had a couple of knee injuries and she knew this one was a little worse. It really wasn't until the next day that she got the official word. Right after the MRI I think she got the official word. Q. Could you talk about Ariel Braker? She's been very successful in the lineup and people don't talk about her but what a great role player for you. MUFFET McGRAW: She is kind of the unsung hero of our team, and what a great game against Baylor, ten points, six rebounds, four steals, some big plays. She's kind of a blue collar worker. She makes her way around the basket, sets screens, does the dirty work, doesn't really care if she gets any credit at all. Like you said, she doesn't get a lot because nobody talks about her, but she's so important to our team, just that experience of having her on the floor. She's great on the scouting report. She knows exactly what she's supposed to do and what everyone else is supposed to do, and I look for her to take a bigger role in the vocal leadership. I think she is somebody that is very smart and will be able to help the rest of the team really get to the right spots. Q. Coach Ivey has gone through what Natalie has gone through, and having somebody like that on the bench for Natalie and for the rest of the team to say push forward, does that help? MUFFET McGRAW: Yeah, it does. It always helps to have somebody in the same situation. We've gotten texts from other people who have gone through the same thing this year, and it's been really nice for her. Her boyfriend at Drexel tore his ACL earlier in the season, so they had a lot to talk about. It's really been great, and she's really, really doing well. Q. Just wanted to ask you, yesterday with all the buzz about Tyler Summitt being hired as Louisiana Tech's new coach at 23, I wanted to see if you could recall what you would have been like as a head coach of a Division I school at age 23. MUFFET McGRAW:  Well, I was coaching high school at age 23, and when I looked back on it years later, I thought, I don't know how I did it because I didn't know anything. When you're in that position as a young coach, there's so many things that you don't know in terms of running a program. I mean, the Xs and Os are probably the smallest part of the job sometimes. Recruiting is important, the community, the alumni. There's so many things, handling budgets and just taking care of managing a staff and doing so many things that I don't know how you do it at that age. I think that most people have been assistant coaches for a long time when they get the head coaching job. It's a very difficult transition, and I don't think I would have been prepared for that at 23. I was fortunate back then in the '80s‑‑ you know, women's basketball wasn't nearly as big as it is now, so you could start jobs a little bit earlier back then. Q. In some ways Alyssa Thomas is a taller version of Jewell Loyd. She's an unbelievable passer, she doesn't take threes as much but she's what they call a point forward, I guess. Does that mean that anybody would be inclined to try to defend her with a smaller player, or does Ariel Braker get a lot more work trying to do that? Without giving away your game plan, do you have thoughts of going smaller even though they're very big and trying to beat them with quickness? MUFFET McGRAW: I don't know that you can match up with a Alyssa Thomas with a guard because she's so good around the basket. I think her strength is really rebounding. That girl is relentless. She plays so hard, it's really, really hard to guard her because she's so active going after the ball. I think you need somebody strong to try to guard her, and we really did a poor job last time. But she's a tough match‑up because you've got to be physical and keep her off the glass, and that is not an easy task. Q. I didn't see the last game. When you started that game in the man‑to‑man situations you were in, who was guarding her? MUFFET McGRAW: Ariel Braker did guard her for a pretty good stretch with Natalie in foul trouble. Markisha Wright came in and guarded her some. I don't recall putting a guard on her. I just watched the game, but I don't remember if a guard‑‑ a little bit in transition or on a switch or something, but not for any stretches. Q. What does it take to be a good post passer in your system? Where does Reimer kind of fit in that whole paradigm? MUFFET McGRAW: You know, when we recruited Taya, I thought she was going to be great in the Princeton offense, and she is. She's very similar to Natalie in that she can put the ball on the floor, she can pass and she can shoot. I think we kind of recruit kids that can do that when we see them. We feel like she is somebody that can play well in that system. We don't have a lot of back‑to‑the‑basket players. We like the high post player who can do a lot of things from there. We do a lot of breakdown work to improve our passing. A lot of it is decision making, and that's even more important, I think, than actually making the passes, the ability to read when it's there and when it's not, and that's something that we do spend quite a bit of time on that. Q. I wonder if you have any plans to utilize a four‑guard front against Maryland, and I know you talked about Alyssa Thomas, but if you do how would you match up with the rest of their team? MUFFET McGRAW: Yeah, they're pretty big. It's a tough match‑up. It's going to depend how the game goes, whether or not we can stay out of foul trouble, how a lot of things go. We've played the four‑guard lineup before with foul trouble. It's been very successful for us last year. We haven't played it as much this year because we have so many post players. But we're kind of looking at all the options right now. Q. When you're evaluating the previous Maryland game and you said you had taken a look at that game this morning on January 27th, how do you and the coaching staff evaluate a game where such a key player played in the previous game but won't be playing in this game? That's kind of fascinating to me how you would sort of visualize what you can do while the video in front of you has such a key player in Natalie. How do you approach that? MUFFET McGRAW: You know, we really looked at so many different things. Was the zone effective? Was the man‑to‑man effective? How did we like how we guarded the ball screens? How were the match‑ups? What did we do in transition? There's so many things that are just general philosophical issues of how are we going to guard it this time and what do we want to look at; what hurt us, what didn't. There's a lot of things that I think would be the same whether Natalie was in the game or not. Q. I wonder if you could speak to the player development of Jewell Loyd. She came in as a fairly well‑ranked individual a couple years ago but seems like she might have exceeded your expectations, and to become the leading scorer this year, was that something you expected from her? MUFFET McGRAW: I think she continues to exceed our expectations. Last year National Player of the Year was a phenomenal achievement for her, and she had a great freshman year, and then to come in this year and be so much better. She was so much more aggressive. I think her mindset has changed. She is no longer the freshman who was deferring to the upperclassmen or waiting to be given the green light. She has just taken charge and knows this is my opportunity, and not in a selfish way but just in an aggressive way of here's how I can help the team if I can score in these particular areas. I think her work ethic has always been terrific. She never takes a day off. She's in the gym every day. Whether we're practicing or not, she's in there at 8:00 a.m. getting shots up. She's in watching film. She just always wants to learn and always wants to know how she can get better. I think when you have a player like that who the team loves to have around, and with the athletic ability she has, it's great, but it's her skill set with that athletic ability that makes her such a great player. Q. I wanted to ask you, you all and Stanford got to play on your home courts in your regional finals. You look at what Maryland did not only as a 4 seed but to have to go into Louisville, beat a No. 1 seed, then face Louisville on their home court. When you look at that team, you mentioned how well they kind of came back in the game against you, but right now when you look at them, how potentially dangerous could they be? MUFFET McGRAW: They're very dangerous. I think they're a great team. They're a team that has really, really kind of hit their stride lately. I think they're playing great basketball, and when you have a great player like Alyssa Thomas who just really continues to lead them in so many areas, they're a tough match‑up. To go in there in front of 10,000 or whatever the crowd was and to come away with that win, that was really something. I think that it was great to see that. To win on an opponent's home court is not an easy thing to do, and especially at that point in the season. But they were the better team yesterday. Q. I just wanted to ask, Taya Reimer, because Natalie was injured and missed the first three games earlier this year, she scored 19 and had 13 rebounds against Michigan State, also had a double‑double against some very good teams. I think maybe the expectations soared off the charts for her. Can you talk about her progress as she goes into the NCAA Tournament? MUFFET McGRAW: Yeah, I think she's so ready for this moment. I think she's been waiting all season for us to have to count on her. I think when you're a freshman you're learning the ropes, you're playing well in some games. It's a little bit inconsistent with your playing time and how things are going. I think for her she's kind of looking forward to just getting out on the court and showing us what she can do. Q. Obviously when a team is undefeated, I'm not sure how many moments there are going to be when you look back at the season, you find that there was a key moment or a moment in the season which sort of changed everything, but when you look at the season up to this point, there are a couple of key moments during your year where you really think things clicked or maybe where you really thought that this team had Final Four national championship potential? MUFFET McGRAW: You know, I think when we looked ahead back in October at the schedule and we saw that stretch where we had at Tennessee, big Monday, at Maryland, big Monday, at Duke, three in a row, and I thought that's going to determine our season right there in terms of how far can we go, how good can we be, and I think when we won those three games, I think that's when we started to think, you know, I think we can be pretty good. But we're not there yet, and we certainly have a lot of work to do. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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