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MOUNTAIN WEST WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 7, 2017Jerry FinkbeinerRachel BrewsterShannon DufficyLas Vegas, Nevada UNLV - 68 Utah State - 43 COACH JERRY FINKBEINER: Well, we anticipated a very close game because we thought we should have won down here two months ago and then we won in our place. So we anticipated a close game. And I can tell the UNLV girls were ready. They had a good warmup period. The base denominator, our point guard didn't play. And our point guard handled the game in the last two games for us. We played the point guard position with our 2's and 3's all night long. We had no ball handling. They seized on it, like a good team does. They saw where our weakness was and went after our ball handlers, and we just couldn't handle the pressure. Eliza West, our low point guard, freshman player of the year, really handled the game up in Logan. She broke her hand that night, and we've been trying to cover it. And 10 minutes in the game tonight, she really hurt it. That's why she only had 10 minutes. It's a sad ending for our team. Very, very young, sophomore, freshman up here. Most years we started the youngest lineup in the country, all Division I. I'm proud of our team. We had a good year. We thought we were going to win tonight. But we were severely handicapped, we couldn't handle the ball. A good team will seize upon a weakness and exploit it. And UNLV did a very good job with the pressure on our ball handlers. Q. I notice Eliza didn't play much in the second half. Did something happen that made her hand worse? COACH JERRY FINKBEINER: It was a broken hand coming into the game, from the UNLV game. She got her hand stuck in a jersey, and got her little finger separated from her ring finger and snapped the bone right there. And tonight injured it one step further. She's a little warrior. Eliza was player of the year freshman, Shannon was all-freshman team, and Rachel was all-conference. Eliza couldn't go, bless her heart, couldn't go. We disguised her against Air Force, gave a shot tonight. Something happened, I don't know the exact situation. Something happened, she said, Coach, it rebroke or broke or I feel it snapping. It wasn't -- it was just a tough thing for our team. Eliza plays 35 to 40 minutes a game and has the ball. And I know Rachel and Shannon, their games are a lot harder to play without getting the ball, they were expecting to get the ball. I appreciate these two, what they did. Our kids, from our perspective, it was a good season, and really fought hard tonight, but we didn't have our quarterback. Just had to go to plan two, plan three, and hadn't practiced much of our plan two and plan 3's. Q. Were either one of the players -- what was plan two and plan three? What exactly was -- every timeout, what sort of things were you trying to do alternately without Eliza in the game? What were you hoping to accomplish in terms of schematics with your offense? RACHEL BREWSTER: We really just tried to keep doing what we would normally do. Just with our backup point guards. And obviously it was tough. But UNLV did a good job of exploiting our weakness, and they had pretty good defense tonight. But we really just tried to stick with our game. Q. You seemed like you guys got off to a good start, and maybe that was part of having Eliza out there. Seemed like you were hitting your shots. Was part of it just a mindset with not having her out there? RACHEL BREWSTER: No, I think UNLV did a good job of guarding me. I wasn't really getting very open very often. So, yeah, I think that's pretty much all it was. Q. Did you feel like once they got up in double digits, did the pressure or having to be able to score enough to come back, was it just a little bit too much, especially without point guard in there to help you sort of run things? SHANNON DUFFICY: To be honest, I think we really have dropped, it was hard not having Eliza, of course, but we did -- like we're used to being down. We've come back in a lot of games and won really close games. Yeah, obviously it was really hard and it was a big difference between the scores. But I think we did well with what we came back with. Q. Is there part of you that feels like maybe going through this experience will be something you can draw on later on? Obviously most of you are going to be coming back and be back for at least another two years. RACHEL BREWSTER: Yeah, definitely. The Mountain West Tournament is a great experience for everyone, and especially having so many freshmen on the team. It's a great experience for them and we have a lot to come back and work on. We all sort of know what we need to work on now. So I think that's a really good thing for us going forward. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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