March 12, 2010
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
LAS VEGAS -
San Diego State Quotes
COACH BURNS: Well, obviously we're really excited about the position that we're in, which is 40 minutes away from the ultimate goal, which is to play in the NCAA tournament.
You know, I think since we've been here, it feels like a very long time. The quarterfinal games and the first round games were so competitive, at first blush today was almost stunning on both sides. I think in this game it was more the experience of our team, the game was called a little bit differently, called a little bit tighter. We got into some early foul trouble in the post. They got into some early foul trouble. I think we were able to adjust to that.
Whereas when these guys were sophomores, they would have kept reaching, making faces, being mad they were blowing whistles. I think we kind of adjusted to the way the game was called.
But BYU and San Diego State like to pressure. Pressure is risk/reward. When you're making steals and everything is good, it's good. The risk is obviously either fouls or baskets. I couldn't be prouder of how I felt we kind of took a step back and really executed as well in the halfcourt as we have through the balance of the season.
THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll open it up to questions for the student athletes.
Q. Jené, the first game they win by 10, the second game you win by 2. What do you account for such a lopsided score this time around?
Jené Morris: I think hunger. You know, we came in as the third seed and we had to play more games than we did last year. We know we needed to make it to the championship. We made it two years in a row and came back empty handed. We wanted to use this time to show how good we can be. I would say that hunger definitely attributed to that.
Q. What about you personally to have the kind of game you had today?
Jené Morris: I think we prepared pretty well. You know, we prepared all day yesterday. The coaches did a very fantastic job of letting us know what to expect in the game tonight. So I think it was definitely due to our coaches, them preparing us for this game.
Q. Jené, when your coach was talking about pulling faces, how come you were pulling a face?
Jené Morris: I agreed with what she was saying. Two years ago I am pretty sure we would have been upset at the refs, making faces, stomping our feet. We've matured. A couple years ago we were the youngest team in the conference, now we're one of the oldest teams.
I agreed with what she said (smiling).
Q. Do you think it was an advantage this is the third game you played this woke?
Quenese Davis: We talked about this earlier.
COACH BURNS: This is the second game. I know I'm getting old, but I think we only played two.
Quenese Davis: It's going to be harder for the higher seeds to come in. It's their first game back. They don't have all their kinks out. We got into a rhythm playing those two games we already played, or the first game we already played, then playing this game, we were ready to go.
Q. Explain your defensive performance. Was there something you saw?
Jené Morris: No. It was attributed to our team. We're a pressure style type team. We have great bigs who are pressuring inside. We have great ball stops. The team helped me get steals. I was able to make reads off their great defensive pressure as well.
THE MODERATOR: We'll dismiss the student athletes at this time. We'll continue with questions for Coach Burns.
Q. Do you feel you had an advantage that you had a warmup game?
COACH BURNS: You know, I have no earthly idea. I was one I voted against it, you know. Coach Flanagan and I were the ones, I don't mind saying Coach Flanagan and I, because he said it to anybody that would listen, I voted against it only because I think our league is so good that I worry about our three, four, five seeds that I think are good enough to go to the tournament, and it puts them at a challenge. I don't like having to start on a Tuesday.
With that said, until we have a separate tournament, it doesn't make sense to me to have a to me the three is the best normal spot because you have an off day. You know, if we had to play on Thursday after we had to play the game we played against Wyoming on Wednesday night, without question, BYU's advantage. To be able to play a game, have an off day of preparation, play another game, is the normal, I think, rhythm of our season and it's not challenging on anybody physically.
I also think you got to be willing to change and try some new things. We wanted to protect our top seeds. I still don't think that's important. We just have to sit down in the spring and tweak it a little bit. I still think we want to protect other seeds, but I don't think anybody is real comfortable with the way things are laid out.
Q. I would think this had to be a good day to be a coach because so much of what you tried to do worked.
COACH BURNS: Yeah. Well, and I thanked Q as we came off the floor. I said, Q, I appreciate you kind of letting me take it easy today. And I think it really had to do with our level of experience coming in. I heard Jené say, If you have good preparation and you're experienced, then you can make reads, then things start going your way. I think the team that's a little bit older is advantaged. They've been in that situation before.
Q. I know you were kind of wracking your brain trying to figure out what was going wrong. Why the surge all of a sudden do you think?
COACH BURNS: Well, I think that we can't put, "we" being coaches, we can't put a sense of urgency into somebody until they kind they had to figure it out. This team had to figure it out. We've always had good parts, but they are different parts than a year ago. We're a totally different team. We have a totally different dynamic.
I think as our bench has developed, I mean, think if it was two months ago and we got in that kind of early foul trouble, our bench developed, got more comfortable, and we've developed balance. I think that's been the biggest difference.
As to the whys, if I'd have known, I would have fixed it. We had a little hiccup right in the middle. We had a tough week, the New Mexico, Wyoming week. The best news, we rebounded, are on an upswing, we're confident. The sense of urgency is you better win tomorrow to know you can go in the front door of this tournament.
Q. You have a rematch against Utah. What do you need to get done in that game tomorrow?
COACH BURNS: We were having such a good time here. We were reflecting back. You're going to make us shift to the next step (smiling).
You have a Hall of Fame coach and you have, I think, the most storied program in our league since we've been here. I think we both split. We played real well when we played them in San Diego. They played well in Utah. We both obviously played really well today. So I think the challenge is that March is about making plays. You know, we're not going to do anything different. They're not going to do anything different. They know what we're going to run. They're not going to let us get a thing in the paint. They're going to want to punch you in the mouth, slow, tempo paint points. We're going to get up and down the floor a bit. It's going to be a tempo game. I think it's going to be a great game.
Q. Do you think you have to win tomorrow to make it?
COACH BURNS: I sure do. I sure do. You know, I thought for sure we had to get to tomorrow, and then I didn't know whether from a standpoint of a loss to TCU, which is a higher RPI team, who knows what's important. Utah you could argue was the hottest team in our league coming into the tournament. I think they'd won 8 out of 10 coming in. So there's no surprise to me.
But without question, I think it's important for us to win tomorrow. Now, I'd like to think that I think this is our 20th win, the NIT format has changed a couple times since I played in it. I would like to think that is secure. I don't think there's security for Utah or San Diego State. It depends. A lot of basketball yet to be played. As long as there's no upsets. Everybody cheer for high seeds. We all cheer for 1 seeds to win their conference tournaments. I think we have a chance. Our Wake Forest win was good, our Auburn win was good. We had a loss to Las Vegas that might have hurt us.
Brigham Young Quotes
COACH JUDKINS: Well, I'm not real happy. This wasn't the kind of game I wanted to have our team play tonight. You got to give San Diego State a lot of credit. I think they came out very aggressive defensively, and kind of set up our offense, did a good job of getting turnovers to make easy baskets. We just didn't really execute the way we should have early in the game.
We kind of downed 11 and had a three pointer right there. If Cori could have hit that, we could have got down to single digits. I think it would have really helped us.
The second half, we came out the same way. They just took it to us. They probably played the best I've seen them. But got to give them a lot of credit. Beth did a great job of preparing for the game.
I'm proud of this team. We're better than this. I think they know it. But it's something we're going to learn as a team and hopefully next season, even the remainder of this season, learn from it and get better.
THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll open it for questions for the student athletes.
Q. Coming into this game having a great week last week, how was your confidence level and what do you think you could have done to try to stay in this ballgame?
JAZMINE FOREMAN: I think our confidence was great. I think we came, you know, knowing that we're good enough, we're talented enough to play with the best of 'em.
But, uhm, you know, it seemed like we kind of got punched first and we didn't react the way we wanted to. It might have shook us up a little bit.
But as far as like last week, I mean, I think we proved a lot by how we played last week. We just got to work more on being consistent.
Q. San Diego State already had a game out here, then had a day off, then played you today. Is there any advantage to that as far as momentum?
CORIANN WOOD: I think there's a little advantage to that. You know, they just barely played. They kind of had their rhythm and their groove. Us sitting out, we had momentum coming off those two great wins. I know we were ready to play. Like Jaz said, they punched first and we didn't react like we normally do and like we can. I think they did have a little advantage, but that wasn't it.
THE MODERATOR: We'll dismiss the student athletes at this time and continue with questions for Coach Judkins.
Q. Coach, how big was it when you cut it down to 10 with 15 seconds to go in the half, they scored 5 in those final seconds? How big of a momentum killer was that for you guys?
COACH JUDKINS: I think that really hurt us. I think it's kind of like climbing up a hill, you get almost to the top of the hill, you're going to grab the last ledge, you slip and fall down 10 ledges. I told them the first half, If we can cut this to 10 points or less going into halftime, we can come back.
I think when Cori had that open three and then we come back and we foul 'em, give another three pointer, you just can't do those kind of things when you're trying to fight back.
You know, I think sometimes you try so hard as a team, like both mentioned, they felt like they got punched in the face early. I think that kind of bothered them and they kind of lost the mental part of the game. We made more defensive mistakes tonight guarding them than we did the two previous games we played 'em.
So I think that is just mental. That's just mental not thinking what you need to do and how you need to do it. You know, San Diego State has been here. They've been in the finals now the last three years. These guys have been in this tournament. I think experience in those situations can help you be ready to play and really do that.
I know tonight if San Diego would have played the way they played against Wyoming, we would have beat them. But they didn't. They came, played a lot better. Just that experience, I think, really helped them.
Q. Having been on both sides of this tournament format, what is your opinion now of how it should be and how much do you feel like not playing for six days hurt your team?
COACH JUDKINS: Well, I think it hurt both us and TCU. Both of us lost. So we're going to consider as coaches, see what we think is really the best for our conference.
The main reason we did this is we wanted No. 1 and 2 seed to have the best opportunity to really win the tournament. I think the negative part of it is we practice 55 minutes in the arena. I mean, that's all we had, 55 minutes to shoot in that arena, which we don't play during the season, so it's not like we can come practice here during the year.
I think it affects you. I don't care what anybody says. That's no excuse tonight. I mean, we shot the ball all right. We just didn't defend, no matter if we were playing on a different court, we just didn't defend like we normally do.
Q. Coach, you still got a lot of young players that will come back next year. I know it's early, but what do you see as this group's future? What do you need to do going into next year? Were you pleased with the progress this year?
COACH JUDKINS: Well, I think if they come back, improve as much as they improved this year for next season, we will be a contender. If we don't win the league, I think my team would be disappointed.
We have everybody back. We're going to be able to go to Europe this year as a team, which will give us some experience to play some other teams. I think we've got a lot of young kids that I sat out that were redshirted that will be ready to go. Hopefully we've learned from some of these things. We've played very well this year. We've played three games where we just got outplayed completely. That's kind of what I told my team after the game. I said, You know, we can't play three games like this. A game like this should be once in your career, where you get blown out, you're not mentally into the game. We had it happen to us. We got to do a better job of that. We got to figure out what causes that.
I really know these guys want to win, and they're willing to work hard this off season. They'll work hard again to try to improve so we can have a great season next year.
Q. If the opportunity comes up, would you consider going to the WNIT this year?
COACH JUDKINS: Yes, yes. Yeah, this team needs to go to a post season tournament and really feel the excitement, the joy of going to a post season tournament. Sometimes you take a lot of things for granted as players, as coaches. I think post season, a lot of coaches really don't appreciate that as much.
This team needs that. We need to go on and play well in post season. If we do take the NIT, go, play really well, have a chance of representing our conference, our university well.