March 21, 2010
NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament
Austin, TX
#11 San Diego State 74, #6 Texas 63
SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY AZTECS
OPENING STATEMENT
COACH BURNS: Just a great, great experience to come in here. You know, we've had a really long layoff. We're in kind of conference mode where it's game, game, game, and we really tried hard to figure out the best way to both rest our team, yet have us stay sharp at the same time. We shot a lot, we stretched a lot. We went hard in the middle of the week with some Texas stuff with our practice guys.
I'm so proud of how our team responded. Texas is a great basketball program. We gave up pounds and inches, but we tried to make speed counter that a little bit. We shot the ball so well in the first half, I think to be able to keep the crowd relatively quiet was helpful, and we were able to keep the separation that eventually ... I mean, they took...it was a prize fight.
It wasn't probably a pretty game to watch because they kept making huge runs at us. But just about every run, somebody made a huge shot or got a huge stop. We were concerned about our size and strength and our ability to keep them off the glass. So to out rebound them overall was just huge.
Q. First Jené. The first time, obviously, you guys get a three, you're going to take it, but to make 8 of 10, you've never done that in an NCAA Tournament game. What was it that was working for you guys?
Jené Morris: I think we came in confident. When you play a program as great as Texas, that's what you have to do. Come in and play confident. The key was finding an open man as well. We saw an open man, would give them the ball. So confidence and working together was the key to that.
Q. Jené, every time Texas started to make a run and cut into your lead, you would do something to quiet it. How did you approach that?
Jené Morris: I think as a team the last couple of games, we've gotten comfortable playing uncomfortable. They're a great team; so we knew they were going to make runs. The key to winning was you were comfortable with that. We would know they were going to make runs and keep playing hard and fighting through it. That's the growth of our team. We've come a long way since regular season, and that was the key to that.
Q. Can you talk a little bit about trying to force turnovers earlier. Coach G had told us that was going to be important for them to be successful. Talk about it from your side, how important it was early on to get turnovers from them and be able to have that work for you.
Quenese Davis: We knew they're kind of an emotional team. If we got them going and had our pressure going great, we would eventually make them get back on their heels, and we'd be able to attack them a little bit more from an offensive standpoint. And then early on, I think we just really did a good job using our length and pressuring it.
Q. When the second half started, the free throws, obviously, you had to rely on those because the threes weren't coming as easily. How were you able to keep ahead of Texas even though they were stooping you?
Jené Morris: Like I said, we've gotten comfortable with playing when they make runs. I think we kind of expected our shots wouldn't fall as much as the first half. The fact we shot so well in the first half, we knew we'd go through a dry spell. Just staying aggressive and everybody working together helped us keep that. They're a great team. We knew the runs were going to come eventually. The fact we stayed together and stayed confident helped us.
Q. Jené, it's been a while since I've seen anybody play that kind of a game. How often did you get that feeling this season?
Jené Morris: Not very often. My teammates found me when I was open and just coming in with confidence. You know, going into the game, this could have been the last time we put on an as tech uniform. So I know Quenese and I and Kimberly Spinardi, we wanted to play well and play with Aztec pride and go out with a fight.
Q. Was there ever a time in the second half when you guys thought maybe you were running out of gas? Just from the naked eye, it looked like maybe there was some tiring going on. Your team wasn't making the shots the same.
Quenese Davis: I don't think so. Our coach, she teaches us all about toughness. If you think you're going to get tired, you get tired. I think we knew, if we go four minutes at a time, we'd get a media time out for at least a minute. Sit down and get your break, and you'll be good.
Q. There were a lot of fouls in this game. A lot of you guys got in foul trouble a little bit earlier than usual. How tough was it to keep the flow, keep the momentum with the rotation as much as it was?
Jené Morris: Confidence and having trust in each other and working together. Like I said, we built a lot of trust in each other the last couple of games, and coming off with confidence after winning the conference tournament. Anybody on the court we trusted and knew we had to work together and stick together to get the win.
Q. This program was winning last year. This year winning once again, what does that mean to the program to you as seniors and as players?
Quenese Davis: It means a lot. Last year we weren't expected to even win a game. Flying under the radar, we were kind of the team to not win. We're always not favored. This year people are going to come at us as hard as we're going to try to go at them, and our experience is going to play into that as well.
Jené Morris: And I think it's cool, just to be a successful program, you have to have consistency and winning over the years. This is the first step. We made two tournaments in a row. We've won two first round games in a row. Now we're hoping to win the second one and move on to the Sweet 16. That's the point of being a good program is consistency over the years.
Q. Coach, obviously you watched the team over the last two seasons play in a tough conference, playing out on the road, the way the conference is spread out. Making a trip here, was it just another night?
COACH BURNS: No, it was better because we had oxygen. We love sea level. We are all about sea level. That's what, I think, people don't understand, especially east of the Mississippi, about our conference is that, you know, we play a style we love our style. We're not going to trade it. We recruit to that style. But until you have competitive depth, it gets more difficult.
So I think the familiarity with an opponent, the tradition of the university and the institution of Texas in itself had us mentally ready and excited. I have great experienced senior guards, and they were going to play confidently, and that we knew. And I knew that we'd probably get in some foul trouble because they're so big and strong on the interior. But I think most of all we were comfortable with the environment. We embrace the uncomfortable. It's fun. It's much more fun to play in a full venue than one that's not.
Q. Can you just expand on how big this is for you.
COACH BURNS: Well, real big. You know, first round games are really difficult for both teams. We both had long layoffs. I've been telling my team for eight days pressure's on them. Pressure's on them, get a good start.
Really, we wore this same shoe. And even though Q, if you heard Q, was right, we were always the gutty little Aztecs. People didn't give us a lot of credit. But when you're playing at home, there's just a whole different dynamic about survive and advance that I thought, if we could get to a good start and get a tempo, that it would really help us. And then you're just thankful when shots drop, confidence grows, and we went from there.
Boy, they gave us body blows. That was a great back and forth, great runs. We needed every inch of that separation.
Q. You mentioned that part of your game play was to counter Texas' size and speed, but the game seemed to get pretty physical, and you seemed to play pretty physically back.
COACH BURNS: No, no, no. I appreciate a lot what Q said. I mean, we're all about toughness. You got to be tough. But toughness is relative if somebody is 6'5" and 6'6", and you're 6'1". I could talk a good game, but they're still five or six inches bigger. They're the best shooting team in the Big 12 conference. So it's not a team I'm comfortable coming down and saying, hey, we'll double Cokie Reed. So we'll double Cokie Reed and watch Nash light it up.
I thought it was important to keep the crowd crowds are quieter usually if you don't let threes happen. We want to pressure, and we might give up a two here or there on the interior, but make perimeter shots really difficult. We just tried to play to our strengths and do the best that we could.
You could see by all the fouls we fouled. I'm not up here complaining, but I didn't think they were bad fouls. I thought they were toughness fouls.
Q. You shoot 33% for the year on threes, and you open up the game
COACH BURNS: We were saving it. I think it's important. Timing is everything with that.
Q. I was wondering, one, were you saving it just for this game? And, two, do you think maybe you caught Texas by surprise, caught them off guard? They were expecting penetration through the middle, and all of a sudden the ball's out here?
COACH BURNS: I think one of the biggest misconceptions about Jene Morris, people think she's a great defender, which she is. She has great speed, which she does. But she's the best offensive player midrange, rim, three point line that I've ever coached and that many of us have ever seen. Might be the best that's ever been in the Mountain West conference.
So there's no we need to get her to be more aggressive to try to get people in foul trouble. We're not aggressive enough. Quenese Davis has come from a skinny freshman who couldn't shoot straight to hours and hours and hours and hours. If you look at it, Q was the MVP of our conference tournament shooting the ball.
Coco, again, people who can only slash don't get guarded, and then they grow up and learn and put time in. Then she's a great three point shooter. It's who's taking the shots. We're quite comfortable, I think because we're so good off the bounce, that we can find people and get uncontested threes. If our feet are set, we're pretty good.
Q. Do you think that Texas was surprised?
COACH BURNS: I never answer questions. That's a weakness of mine. I'm sorry you did ask me that.
I don't think so. We came into this game with great respect for one another because of the game that we had a year ago. We're a different team. We have different parts, but I wouldn't say I think they're surprised. You know, that's only my perspective.
Q. With about three minutes left, there was a time out. They cut it very, very close. Obviously, they were going to be trapping and defending and only letting you take free throws. Tell me what you were telling the girls during those time outs and what your strategy was to try and counter what they were planning.
COACH BURNS: We don't get pressed a lot, so we make a point to work on it a lot because we don't get a lot of game action. We work on it with our guys a lot. If there's one thing we did every day this week, it was working on that because it's not a matter of what you do when you put the length of Gayle, the length of Raven, the speed and space that they have.
We pretty much put in three, four, five, six different ways to get the ball in so they couldn't get a beat on us because I thought they were good enough they could trap us up. We had done some tweaking this week, and it wasn't a lot of stuff we'd used in games before.
Q. And I know it wasn't ideal to have to move the rotation with the fouls. Talk about how you were able to keep it limited.
COACH BURNS: That's where what was wonderful was hearing Jene talk to Ashley Duffy. She's a freshman. I just talked to her in the locker room. Yes, you can. You can play. You can do this. And I think that that's what teams are. Teams are somebody gets in foul trouble
Again, Allison Duffy's versatility by being able to play a lot of three last year and to practice at that was huge tonight, and she does have a bad back. I don't want people to think she's trying to get attention. She could barely get out of bed this morning. She has a bad back, and when it seizes up, it seizes up. Her versatility really helped us, but it made it hard. I would agree it made the flow that much more remarkable.
Jene made some huge shots, and that's because she's a great player. I mean, when there's a great moment, great players make shots.
Q. You talked about the respect that you have for Texas from the last meeting. And now you see comments on the Internet
COACH BURNS: I don't do that. That's probably a smart thing on my part.
Q. Looking at the comments, now you're going to have more attention targeted at you. How are you going to keep your players focused?
COACH BURNS: We talked about that in the locker room. We talked about that where what's our purpose? First thing I said was why did we come here? And their answer was to get to the Sweet 16. I said, well for that to happen, we have to have ten more minutes of atta girls and then leave your devices alone for the next 48 hours because everybody around you is going to tell you you're wonderful. There's two good teams right now that are competing that are going to match up, and they want it just as bad as you do.
How are you going to? We're going to talk to them. We're going to be prepared. We're going to rely on that. I have senior guards that really want something to happen. That's all you can do. But by the same token, you've got to enjoy your journey. And they have to I can't lock them into this is what West Virginia does, this is what Lamar does. I want them to just sit there tonight and feel like winners.
And then coaches will make a pot of coffee, and they'll sleep in. Tomorrow morning they'll get the plan. I don't know. If I had the answer to that, I'd probably be a lot smarter because it's tough.