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NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOURApril 6, 2014Jewell LoydKayla McBrideMuffet McGrawNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE Notre Dame – 87 THE MODERATOR: Joining us from Notre Dame, Coach Muffet McGraw and Kayla McBride and Jewell Loyd. We'll start with a comment from Coach McGraw and then the questions for the student‑athletes. COACH MCGRAW: We thought the game would be won on the boards. I think it was. To hold them to four offensive rebounds for the game is an amazing accomplishment. When you look at our rebounds everybody had a few. That was our game plan, everybody had to do their job. Everybody had to do one or two more than they usually do. We did a great job boxing out, limited their rebounds. I thought Kayla McBride got us off to a phenomenal start; put the team on their back, made shots early and loosened everybody up and everybody else contributed throughout the rest of the game. I was happy with the bench. I thought Markisha Wright, in particular, was amazing. THE MODERATOR:  Questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Did you feel like this was your night; things were going off the offensive end, you were in the zone that would carry this team to the championship game? KAYLA MCBRIDE: I was trying‑‑ in past games I was pressed a little bit. As a senior, I felt I had to do too much. But I let this game come to me. But it was a team effort all around. I think if you look at what she did, Jewell, Taya and Maddie. It was everybody. I think I got us out and gave us that confidence but they took care of the rest. Q. Kayla, could you talk about what you did to Alyssa offensively and defensively to take her out of the game? KAYLA MCBRIDE: It was more of an awareness. I think in the first game, we let her be loose be too comfortable with the things she wanted to do. We kept her off the glass. I think it was a team effort. I think we threw a lot of different things out her. Jewell was guarding her. Markisha. Different people. And we were trying to keep her out of her comfort zone. Q. Kayla, given your history with UConn, isn't there a part of you that really wants to see them beat Stanford and you guys end up playing the final game? KAYLA MCBRIDE: I just want to play. I'm just going to take it as being in the National Championship game, two great teams out there, it's going to be a battle. And it doesn't matter who it is. It's about this team right here. THE MODERATOR: Anything else for the student‑athletes? Right here. Q. Jewell, Coach talked about how you stepped up in the rebounding end. You destroyed them on the board. Never seen a game like that. Offensive rebounds and overall. Just talk about the effort on the glass on both ends of the floor? JEWELL LOYD: I think it's just our mentality. We wanted the ball. We wanted to box out. We've been working on that for a while. Great to see that we actually dug deep and boxed out and a lot of different people stepped up. Our point guard. Rebounding. It was great to see. Q. Kayla, you said you would cut somebody else's heart out to win. Was that the attitude you went into tonight with knowing that you were going to be ruthless and relentless out there? KAYLA MCBRIDE: I think I'm just competitive in general. I love playing for this team. I love playing for Coach McGraw. And it means so much to me. I just want to go out there, play as hard as I can as long as I'm out there. And I just take it as that. I'm just really competitive. I don't think I would necessarily cut anybody. But I would definitely do a lot of things to win. Q. All season long it's been one game at a time, one game at a time. Well, there's only one left. What does it mean to be in the National Championship again and being undefeated at this point? KAYLA MCBRIDE: It means a lot. Especially as a senior. I'm just so proud of this team. I think we've been through a lot of adversity especially after losing Ace in the Elite Eight. But I think it's this team's mentality. I think we're very fearless we have a certain toughness about us, and, I don't know, I think we're ready for anything. I think we have a great coach who is more competitive than us. It trickles down. We're going to go in look at the film and we're going to be ready for the game. THE MODERATOR: Anything else for the student‑athletes? Okay. We'll take questions for Coach McGraw. We'll start back with Richard. Q. When you headed into this game, did you make it an intentional point to try to get Kayla off early, because clearly, as you said, that really seemed to impact not only your team but really sort of the flow of the game? COACH MCGRAW: Without Ace in the game, we probably ran a few more sets than we would and tried to get the ball to her early on. When she was playing well, we continued to give it to her. She can create a lot of shots out of our entire offense. I thought she did a great job on transition, but she was great on ball screen today, too. Q. What does it mean to get back to the championship game, three times in four years now. What does it mean to be back here again one win away from something special? COACH MCGRAW: We put ourselves in a great position. I think this team had some goals early on and it's an amazing accomplishment that we're sitting here undefeated right now. I don't think any of us really thought about that or expected that to happen. I think we kind of wanted to be here, maybe expected that we could get here. But the reality of being undefeated and being in the championship game is, it's quite an accomplishment. Q. I know as a coach you always find stuff to nitpick, but how close was tonight's effort to maximizing what you guys can do as a team? COACH MCGRAW: It really was pretty close. I don't think we painted our masterpiece yet. Every game we want to go out and play well. We look at the players individually and say if everybody played well on the same night, imagine how good we would be. We were pretty darned close tonight. I thought the turnovers were probably the only exception. We had quite a few unforced errors. And if you take that away, I think we're getting there. Q. Coach, wonder if you could talk about the keys to a couple things, the big rebounding edge and also a shutting down Alyssa for the most part, what were some of the keys in both those? COACH MCGRAW: You know, the biggest keys and the thing we've worked on all week against our practice guys was boxing out, really getting a body on someone, not worrying about who was going to go get the rebound, just putting a body, especially on Thomas and making sure she didn't get the rebound. Whoever was guarding her, that was their job, to keep her off not to get any rebounds. And I thought it was such a great team effort. We really worked hard at that. You could see them. And I think our confidence grew when we saw how it was working. Q. Teams go different ways when an impactful player goes out. Was there a point either before the game, or maybe it's in the first couple of minutes, when did you know that this team was going to respond the right way to Natalie's injury? COACH MCGRAW: You know, I think I saw it at practice. I saw it the day after, when we came back Wednesday for practice, I think you could see it in their eyes. They were determined this was not going to slow them down. Q. Late in the first half, Taya Reimer had a pass to Kayla on the UCLA cut after an offensive rebound. Then the next possession she goes to the basket on a fake screen roll. Seems as if Taya has really acclimated to all the seniors and playing well. Talk about Taya's development in really playing with the seniors and with the other players; it seems to have been pretty fast. COACH MCGRAW: She really fits well in the Princeton offense. She's perfect for this offense, because she can read screens. She can move about the ball. She can read the defense. She sets great screens and she's strong and physical and she's fast. So everything she does, we had worked on the slipping the screen. We worked on that a couple of days this week and thought we could get her on some of those. But she really read it perfectly today. I think she showed a lot today coming in as a freshman in this big role and played extremely well. Q. She got off to a little bit of a rocky start; you sat her down for a second and then all of a sudden looked like she had her feet under her. What did you tell her at that moment? COACH MCGRAW: I think she just needed to breathe. It's a big moment for you, come into the game, big stage, everybody's watching you. And I think she just needed to kind of catch her breath, sit down for a minute. We thought, after she got one foul we might take her off, because we wanted her on the floor, didn't want her to get the second one. When you get the adrenalin going, you get winded a little bit earlier. I think it was good for her to just relax a minute, talk again about how we're going to front, what we're looking for defensively, and keep focusing on the defense and rebounding. Q. Did you have any idea that Markisha Wright had a 12 and 9 game within her? COACH MCGRAW: What a great day to bring it out. She really was great. I think she's been ready all year long. I think for her, this is the moment she's been looking forward to, the opportunity to get out there and play a little bit more than she has been. And she really took advantage of it. Q. Obviously the second game could go either way, but you've been around this team for a while. What would it mean to have the two undefeated essentially playing on Tuesday night for a National Championship? COACH MCGRAW: Well, better than us meeting in the semifinal. That would be much better. THE MODERATOR: Anything else? Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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