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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: LOUISVILLE

March 22, 2019

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville 69, Robert Morris 34

ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH STEPHANIE NORMAN: Awesome. I want to start off first by congratulating Robert Morris on an amazing run for them, their team, their conference. They are extremely well-coached and have some really talented players. I think it was a pretty remarkable season for them and they should be very proud of what they were able to do.

Our team was really, really good on defense tonight. We had a game plan put together and they executed it. I thought we got good and valuable minutes from a lot of people. Our playing time was equally distributed amongst several of our players.

Once Coach Walz gets here, he's probably going to be not very happy with our turnovers tonight. We typically are a team that gets eight to ten turnovers. So we'll have to clean that up.

But beside that, I thought it was a great experience for our young kids to get involved early. I thought the crowd was phenomenal and I'm just extremely appreciative that my family was here with me today. Gets to come back here and they miss school. I sort of got them out of school. It was just a really fun experience for me, and that's what Coach Walz's the last words he told me before he left us this morning at pregame is "no matter what, to have fun."

I just really tried to keep that in mind and really tried to be relaxed. I was very confident. I was not nervous. I just was excited for our players. And when you have a great team and a great cast and an ensemble, it's very easy to be confident and not nervous or scared. It's something I've been coaching for 25 years.

I feel very well equipped for something like this, but it will be nice to have our Commander-in-Chief back on Sunday.

Q. For any of the players. Describe playing in a tournament game like this, without Jeff Walz on the sideline? More pressure? Less pressure?
THE MODERATOR: Asia first, and then Dana and then Sam.

ASIA DURR: There's no pressure at all. Obviously he's our coach, but we have to coach ourselves playing. So we have to play as a team. We can't just count on Coach Walz trying to coach us through the game.

So I think we did a great job playing as a team and just playing hard. We can't just leave everything up to the coaches. We have to take our role, too.

DANA EVANS: I think we have a great coaching staff, from Coach Norman, Coach Purcell, Coach Williams, and we just trust in the coaches and know they are going to put a game plan together for us and it's just a matter of us executing it.

SAM FUEHRING: To go along with what they said, I feel like, yeah, Coach Walz is our head coach, but Norman, Purcell, Williams, they can all be a head coach, too. They work so hard and stuff. So I mean, it was no pressure at all.

Q. In 22 minutes, you go 9 for-9, you get your only three. You get a double-double. You how does the ankle feel?
SAM FUEHRING: Great. It really does. I kind of felt it in the third quarter, I don't know how, but I kind of just shook it off and kept playing.

Q. I asked their players if your all's height bothered them. You all were quite much bigger in most positions, all but maybe one that they matched up. Did you think you intimidated a little bit with your height? The first quarter I think you all blocked at least three or four shots within a two- to three-minute stretch?
SAM FUEHRING: Yeah, height, it kind of has an effect on people, but it doesn't really matter as long as you're going hard. Yeah, there were blocked shots, but that's because we were in the position to block the shots. But other than that, I mean, height doesn't really matter when it comes to going hard.

Q. I guess for each player, you hold them to a very, very low percentage in shooting here and they end up, your defense was outstanding. What were you seeing out there to shut them down so effectively? Start with Dana and work around.
DANA EVANS: I think the coach has been emphasizing defense a lot because we have to rely on it to win games. You're not always going to make shots but you can always defend. I think us focusing on defense and rebounding was key, too, so not letting them get second-chance points. I think our defense was a lot better. I think our transition could be better but defense was a lot better this game.

ASIA DURR: Dana hit that right on the jackpot. That was great. Our defense was really good today. We pressured them. They didn't really like the pressure. I was very proud of my team. We got, you know, we got stops, and then we got that board.

So that was very, very, very important, especially going back to our conference game against Notre Dame. So I think we made that next step, and I'm very proud of them.

Q. I know it was already asked but Sam, how does it feel knowing coming off an injury, you had the kind of game that you had?
SAM FUEHRING: Yeah, I'm -- coming off an injury, I don't think sophomore year I had an injury, but it's just ex-kiting to come back because like leaving your team, it's not a good feeling. You always want the best for them and that's something that I've wanted, and I sat out like a week trying to get better as best as I could.

It's not fun, especially when you want to play the game that you love, and I know -- I was telling myself, all I wanted to get was rebounds. Like I can't wait to come back and get rebounds. Yeah, I mean, my trainer helped me to get healthy real fast.

Q. Starting roster had Mykasa in it. How soon did you decide that? Did you decide that on your own?
ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH STEPHANIE NORMAN: That would be no. I don't do anything without the approval of my boss. We had talked about it. We got -- when it happened against Notre Dame, it was like a game-time decision, so we really weren't prepared to think about it as much as we did having this whole week off.

Dana's role has been so great coming off the bench that we thought it would be better to do this and keep her accustomed to what she's doing and her strengths and change the tempo when she comes in and the dynamic of our team. So we thought off, you know, some deliberation, that this would be the best thing for our team is to start Mykasa.

Q. What was Jeff's last words to you before --
ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH STEPHANIE NORMAN: "Have fun."

Q. -- before he walked across the street?
ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH STEPHANIE NORMAN: "Have fun." That's what he told me. Those of you who have all had a chance to get to know him over the years, and he's an amazing coach to work for because he gives us so much freedom. He really instills ownership in this program.

So whether you're the first assistant, the last assistant, the manager, the guy who sweeps, our practice players, we all have an opportunity to be impactful in our program because he let's us.

To have someone like that as your boss really instills a lot of confidence and pride, and so he -- he kept like making it really easy -- well, he jokingly put pressure on but now the pressure's on him. So I did my job.

So he was giving me crap the whole week about, you know, a lot of different things, and really keeping it light. And so the last thing he said is just make sure you have fun, don't worry about anything else. Just have fun.

So I appreciated that because I mean, if you think about it, even though I have a ton of experience, your first coaching is a do-or-die situation. It's a one-and-done situation. It's not like even though I had the opportunity to do it against UT Martin, it wasn't like if we lost that we're done with the season.

So this is a different animal to have to deal with to be thrown into the fire your first time. But he made that transition really easy and really set me up for success.

Q. Do you think Coach Walz was having fun across the street? What do you think was going through his mind as he was watching this game on television?
ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH STEPHANIE NORMAN: You know, he's a really positive person. So I would imagine he's having fun. And then he was probably cussing at the TV a few times, but no, he saw how hard our kids played. I think he would be proud if he was in here, I really do.

You know, he's the patriarch of this program and I'm just really proud to be his understudy and I hope that he was really proud of our coaching staff, because although I'm sitting up here, there's two other assistant coaches who do a phenomenal jobs and we really collectively talked about -- we got together last night at the hotel and talked about how we were going to coach together, what each person's responsibility was going to be and that this was going to take a village.

So I would give as much credit to them as I would to Coach Walz, but they did a great job of keeping me confident, too, as we were going into this.

Q. With Sam coming back from injury, did you expect her to have this performance right after rehab?
ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH STEPHANIE NORMAN: I wouldn't expect anybody, not only Sam. She literally practiced not even a full -- I think she practiced a full practice, but she had limited reps, so really one practice, and it was quite a long time since our Notre Dame game.

You know, there's always an element of doubt in you when you're coming back from an injury, especially a sprain of some sort. You know, am I going to step wrong or do something.

She just played so aggressively. I was just really proud of her, because that's not an easy thing to do to really press yourself to get back as soon as you can. I mean, ideally, we would love to have another three or four days for her but she gutted it out and it was just a tremendous effort, and especially the rebounding part. I know she had 19 I think tonight. It was perfect from the field.

But it's really the rebounds, because this team is a really good rebounding team, and she just brings that confidence to our group because she's always in there doing the dirty stuff and cleaning things up for people.

So I was just -- I couldn't be more happy and proud of her to be able to come back off that injury in the first game back, have a performance like that.

Q. Obviously we don't know who Sunday's game will be, but preparations for that?
ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH STEPHANIE NORMAN: So I had to pull double duty, so I not only had this scout, which was a cumulative effort between all of us, but I had to know what was going on. So it's not typical that assistant coach would do back-to-back scouts but myself, I have Michigan and then Coach Purcell has Kansas State.

So we were kind of pulling double-duty here a little bit here. That's typically how we do it throughout the year. Each one of us assistants, and it would be a different assistant would have a certain team. So I'm very familiar with Michigan. I couldn't tell you anything except Kansas State runs a 1-3-1 because Purcell told me that but I have not taken a peek at them, so I'm anxious to go out and watch them.

This is going to be a great game. These are two really, really about teams. This is this your at this point 8-9 game in the past, and I think that's indicative of women's basketball this year. It's been extremely competitive, extremely balanced and the parity is phenomenal.

So it makes for a great fan experience. This game on Sunday is going to be really, really tough no matter who it is. So I'm not necessarily looking forward to it but we will up to the challenge at that time because these two teams are much better -- well, I mean, they are 8 and 9s. There's a reason they are 8-9, but they are really good 8-9s.

I know everybody says like our bracket is loaded but we've really tried to emphasize to our players, we're just going to play the next team on our line and not worry about everybody else in there, and then we'll approach each game with the same businesslike approach that we do with all of our teams.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: LOUISVILLE

March 22, 2019

Stephanie Norman

Dana Evans

Asia Durr

Sam Fuehring