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BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 9, 2019

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Kansas State 72, West Virginia 59

THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by the K-State Wildcats, Head Coach Jeff Mittie and his student-athletes, Peyton Williams and Rachel Ranke. Coach, your thoughts about this afternoon's game?

JEFF MITTIE: First off, I thought as a 4-5 game it's a high-level game in this league. I thought it was a high-level game. Sloppy at times, but I think that was the effort. Both peoples were playing with such great effort and energy. This time of the year everyone talks about NCAA tournament teams and West Virginia is a NCAA tournament team. There is no doubt in my mind. I want to make that clear. You look at -- what I will say about West Virginia is that nobody in the tournament will want to play them. I can assure you.

That is a team that has taken Baylor to the wire recently. It's a team that wins 11 games in our league and anybody that's gone the double round robin you win 11 games in a league, to me it's a no-brainer that you're in the tournament. So all the bracketology, all those things that come out, I know they have a lot of criteria for that, but I can tell you if you're watching that game and you're watching the eye test, the eye test says West Virginia is an NCAA tournament team.

My thoughts about today, I thought as of a high-level game, I thought our players came to play, I thought our group played defensively. We were able to get turnovers with our defense. As the game wore on we shared the ball better we passed the ball better. We had multiple players step up and play. I thought we had big plays from Rachel Ranke down the stretch. I thought we had big plays. Laura Macke hits a big 3 on the wing. Big defensive plays. Rachel's defense has continued to get better and better and make plays. So I thought we played well today, and we knew we were going to have to play well to beat a very good West Virginia team.

Q. Rachel, to have the season you've had where you've struggled at points and put a game like this together, how does it feel?
RACHEL RANKE: It feels good. Come March you want to be playing your best basketball. So, yes, there was times where I had to overcome adversity this season. So, yeah, just right now I feel like we are at the top right now, playing pretty good basketball. So we're going to try to keep that rolling.

Q. What do you do to overcome adversity?
RACHEL RANKE: Got in the gym and shot a little bit more. Had my teammates help me out and coached helped me out during that time. Sophomore slump is what Coach called it, so I had people helping me out.

JEFF MITTIE: I told her she was a junior! (Chuckles.)

Q. Peyton, if you look at the stats you forced 25 turnovers and you had 18 steals. I thought that was the difference of the game. Your thoughts on that?
PEYTON WILLIAMS: I thought especially up front our guards played really aggressive and tried to get into the shorts of West Virginia's point guard and I think it was really successful, especially for a young point guard to have to handle that pressure is really difficult. Yeah, it was -- I didn't have to run back a lot because we had a lot of layups and that was nice for me. So I think our defensive effort helped us tremendously that game for sure.

Q. Peyton and Rachel, both of you guys had big games tonight. What was your mentality coming into this game?
RACHEL RANKE: Survive and advance. We just came out ready to play. Wet to play again tomorrow so we just came out and we had to get it done on the defensive end and we did so.

PEYTON WILLIAMS: I think the biggest mindset is, like Coach said, this is a tournament-caliber team. We knew we couldn't take anything for granted. We had to come out strong and we came in saying we have to win defensively first and we did that today.

Q. As you can see, you know, WV got back in the swing of things toward the end. What do you need to do now moving forward to stay competitive in the Big 12?
PEYTON WILLIAMS: That is a good question. I think just pay attention, especially when teams are trying to get back. They go to those players that are the trusted ones that have been the trusted ones over the course of the season. So sticking to the scout I think is going to be really important during those times. Davenport and Niblack tried to go to their drive and that was something we were expecting and we have to be prepared for that next game, too, staying to the scout and stay on top late in those games.

RACHEL RANKE: What she said.

Q. They got back within one a couple different times there. How do you shore up mentally to hold off those runs?
RACHEL RANKE: Well, every game the team -- the opposing team is going to go on a run at some point. We had to come together as a team and stop the run and we huddled up in our little huddle, I guess, and we talked about staying composed, putting in a little bit more effort on the defensively end because they're going to go on a run and we just had to stop them.

PEYTON WILLIAMS: And amp up the defense and staying poised I think were keys in those times.

Q. Peyton, what makes you the most proud of the way Rachel has handled that adversity?
PEYTON WILLIAMS: I think as a young player coming off a year of so much success, a freshman year where she contributed a lot to go through that is mentally frustrating, especially when you know that you can shoot really well, and we all knew that. I'm really proud of her, absolutely. I'm glad we as a team could rally around her and stay -- just keep telling her, hey, we believe it in you, too. Don't get down on yourself. Keep doing what you do and it paid off. She came out to play today. I love it. I love it.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies. Congratulations.

JEFF MITTIE: The biggest thing I would add to that is that you know Rachel gets four buckets inside the arc so that has given her another avenue to get points. Her all-around game is so much better, the defensive end, the whole thing. That has been a drastic improvement for her. I'm proud of the development that she has had, stay the course and players like Peyton and Kayla Goth have helped her through that because they went through it as well in their careers. So that's the advance of our leadership.

Q. Coach, you spoke to how good of a team West Virginia is, and you split the season series with them, 1-1. What was your game plan coming into today's match-up?
JEFF MITTIE: You know, Tucker, we wanted to get them off the line better. We felt like in Manhattan in our victory we didn't do things well defensively, so we need to get them off the line. I thought we did a great job on Tynice Martin and on Naomi Davenport. That was the plan to get them extended, and offensively we wanted to be aggressive. I think your players got to make plays I didn't want to call a lot of plays today. I wanted them to go make plays and our group had that mentality.

Q. As you mentioned before, WV is a very competitive team. I just want to know your thoughts, basically you guys are ranked No. 5 within the seed and they're ranked 4. Just to elaborate, does it matter about the ranking? You guys obviously took the win today.
JEFF MITTIE: We tied for 4th and the tie-breaking procedures put us at fifth. I think when you get to the quality teams that you have in our league, you're going to have to play. You're going to have to play.

We have had three very different games against them, which happens a lot when you play teams. One night the offense is great. The game in Morgantown we couldn't throw it in the ocean and they could throw it in the ocean a little bit better. Here today, this was a highly-competitive game. Justin mentioned it was a 1-point game numerous times there, and what I liked is the players had the ability to stay within themselves and make a push-back at them when West Virginia came at them. That has been an improved part of our run in the last 8 of 9, I guess, is where we're at. So that's been the improvement.

Q. So last time y'all played, Tynice had 20-plus points, but in this game she didn't reach double figures. What adjustment did you make in this game to keep her in check?
JEFF MITTIE: We wanted to get her from the catch and shoot. We did not want her to catch and shoot. We had to be very quick to her in rotation. Our group had a great awareness of where Tynice was, but it really started with the ball pressure we had on the point guard at the top of the zone. I felt like we shoved them off the line some and then we had a great awareness of her.

Kari Niblack gave us trouble in that iso stuff they run, but a lot of that was we were extended we had to give them something and what we took away was Tynice Martin getting those plays.

Q. Most of the bracketology I have seen has Baylor and Iowa State and Texas in and you just put West Virginia in. I'm going to guess you would like to see your own team in there. If so, can you state the case for Kansas State?
JEFF MITTIE: I felt like we were in before this game, Rick. One of the brackets had us as a 10 seed. You look at our RPI, 32 before the game, strength of schedule is one of the tops in the country, non-conference, I think it's in the top 40, somewhere in there. All those things are -- it's kind of funny, when I look at these brackets that are coming out, there seems to be a lack of respect. We are the third rated league in the country RPI-wise and we play everybody twice. That changes the dynamics. We have played Baylor twice. We will play the number 1 team in the country a third time tomorrow if they beat Texas Tech and that's not a given in this league. While Baylor is unbelievably talented, Texas Tech has a front line that is very good. But if we do play them we will get to them for the third time, but we feel like we have made our case, I can go on and on. We probably don't have enough time in the presser to talk about the wins we have had, but they're probably, with the exception of Baylor and the exception of Oregon and the exception of some of the teams that have won their league there is not a hotter team in the country right now than us.

Q. You guys went up 21-8 the end of the first quarter, they narrowed the gap to a 6-point differential, how were you able to keep the lead and maintain?
JEFF MITTIE: We knew they would make -- you expect a quality team like West Virginia to run back at you. I honestly thought we missed some opportunities in that run, because there were fast break opportunities where we got a little rushed. They made a nice run back at us to get it to within 5 I think at half. I felt like it was going to be a tight game the whole way. It was exactly what I expected. I just think we had good poise. We had good possessions at both ends of floor and our group has continued to be pretty solid in those areas.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much.

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