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NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FINAL FOUR

March 30, 2018

Columbus, Ohio

Notre Dame - 91, Connecticut - 89

THE MODERATOR: Joining us on the dais from Connecticut, head coach Geno Auriemma, student-athletes Gabby Williams and Kia Nurse. We'll take a statement from Coach, and then we'll take questions for the student-athletes.

GENO AURIEMMA: Well, there's really not a whole lot that you can say in a moment like that, to have a game like that and then come up short. We knew we were playing a great team, obviously, and we knew they had a lot of players that could decide the game. They thought they had us put away a couple of times, and we kept coming back and coming back, and we just ran out of time.

Q. Kia, obviously, everybody is going to kind of focus on how it finished, but can you talk about how you guys started and how ultimately damaging that was, the way you guys got off in the first quarter.
KIA NURSE: Obviously, I think in the first quarter, they came out and made a couple of shots, got out in transition and defensively got some stops. I mean, they got up on a bit of a run. So yeah.

Q. I guess, did you sort of feel like this was just -- I'm sorry. This is for Kia. It was just trading punches and trading punches? You guys were able to make some big plays at the end of regulation, and it seemed like you took momentum into overtime, but then it was just one punch after another.
KIA NURSE: I think it was one of those games where, obviously, it was just a grind back and forth the entire game, and it was just a battle. I think, like Coach said, there were so many times they could have put us away, and we clawed and clawed and clawed our way back into it and made big play after big play. So I'm proud of my team and the way they played in that section.

THE MODERATOR: We'll dismiss them back to the locker room. We'll take questions for Coach.

Q. Geno, you come back from a 13-point deficit the first quarter, five down the last 21 seconds in regulation, last few seconds in double overtime. Two years in a row you lose on a buzzer beater in overtime, can you describe how tough this is?
GENO AURIEMMA: Some things just don't need explanations, you know. You really can't describe what goes into -- what goes into getting here and trying to win a championship. It's very, very difficult. For a long, long time, we made it look like it was easy, but it's very, very difficult, as it's played out the last two years.

As I said, for us to make the plays that we made to tie the game in regulation then have a chance to win it and to tie the game in overtime, I mean, that's kind of -- that's what Connecticut basketball is all about. But they made one more big play than we did tonight.

Q. Geno, I'm guessing that the last two years here kind of proves what you've always tried to say, that this is a lot harder than it looks.
GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah. You know, when you do something and it seems like it's so effortless, you do get numb and forget. It's difficult. It's very, very difficult. There are no bad teams. There's no bad players. You can't luck into a National Championship. You have to play great.

You know, one or two players really make the difference at this time of the year. I made this comment before that, when your team gets to the Final Four, it's not your talent, and it's not your team that's going to beat the other team. Generally, when you look back, there's one or two players that just make unbelievable plays and just dominate the game. And going in, you never know who they're going to be.

We thought, hey, we do a great job on Mabrey and Arike. And we did first period. And Jackie Young's a good player, everybody found out. So you don't get to this point because you're not good enough to win a National Championship. Obviously, Notre Dame's good enough, and they were better than us tonight.

Q. Geno, on a tough night, can you appreciate what kind of showcase this was for the women's game tonight? Two overtime games to put two teams in the title game.
GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, crazy. Two overtime games. Again, when you see the bracket come out and you see the field and you kind of project ahead, if everybody wins, the four teams that could be in the Final Four, and it played out that way.

There's not -- there's no easy games here this weekend. There's no somebody snuck in there or somebody upset three different people to get here. The four best teams in the country were here, and they played like it.

And it was. It was an amazing night of basketball for the fans here, for people watching. It was pretty impressive, I have to say.

Q. Geno, you've spoken about this time of year and specifically this game, helping to define who players are. What did Azura Stevens define herself as tonight? What did you learn about her tonight?
GENO AURIEMMA: Well, kind of what I already knew. Azura can get a lot of things done on the court that most players can't, and then she does things on the court that I can't explain.

So for her first year playing for us, I thought she was amazing all year long. She's come a long, long way. This game will help her an awful lot because she's never been in this environment before. This is her first time. And this is Crystal's first time really, where we said, hey, you're going to have to go out and help us win this game, instead of come off the bench and contribute ten minutes. So for the two of them, this was big. This was really big.

Napheesa really struggled last year in this game and played great tonight. Lou had a great game. She was a little bit worn down. Sometimes you have to be exposed to this and fail when it's all on you. It's a great learning tool. But I'm a pretty smart guy. I don't need to learn this shit two years in a row (laughter).

Q. Geno, you talked about the underclassmen for the learning experience, but it's got to be tough for the seniors to go out two games like this in consecutive years.
GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah.

Q. Just talk a little bit about that.
GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, I don't know what our final record was the last two years, but Kia and Gabby got a lot done in two years, and that's not even counting the two previous years that they had at Connecticut. Again, unfortunately, the way the game is set up, one weekend in March gets to decide your whole season if you're Connecticut.

But for our seniors, you know, they're going to remember this one and last year's for a long, long time. The two championships they won freshman and sophomore year are probably distant memories right about now. But when they look back, they're going to look at what an amazing career they both had and what a great impact they had on Connecticut basketball and the people that they've come in contact with up at Connecticut.

So, yeah, that's the unfortunate thing about being a senior in college. Very, very few kids have their senior season end with a National Championship, and it's happened to a lot of kids at Connecticut, but it wasn't meant to be for these two.

Q. Geno, first, will you talk about that first quarter and how much ultimately you think it impacted the tone of the game for you guys. And, actually, I forgot the second one because it's late.
GENO AURIEMMA: Well, we came out thinking that there's a couple things that we're going to have to do defensively, and we got those things done. Unfortunately, on the offensive end, shots that we normally make, we didn't make, and we started to struggle a little bit finding any kind of rhythm on offense at the beginning. I thought we became a little bit tentative.

And then once the second quarter started and we found ourselves, then the game obviously turned. It was a lot like last year's game as well, where the similar scenario happened.

But games like this, this time of the year, generally speaking, they're never won or lost in the first quarter. You can't win or lose a game in the first quarter. But I think the ability for Notre Dame to get to the free-throw line and how physical they were inside, I thought, going into the game, we said there's no way that -- Notre Dame does two things really, really well. They shoot the ball well; and when they miss, they go get it. So those are two things that are difficult to deal with, and tonight they did both of those things really well.

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