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BIG EAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 7, 2020Tony BazzellaAlexis LewisLauren Park-LaneChicago, Illinois Seton Hall - 83, Butler - 57 TONY BOZZELLA: First of all, congratulations to Butler. 19 wins, certainly an NIT team. They have some tremendous seniors. I mean, obviously Kristen and the rest of their -- Shae Brey, tremendous, Strong, Katherine Strong. They're tremendous players. I knew we would have to beat them numerous times in this game for us to have a chance. And I thought our kids defensively were really locked in. They drew those charges, get her a little frustrated. It's hard. She's a great player, and I thought we did a good job on both her and Strong, and really dictated the game on the defensive end. I know we just talked about the three-pointers, but our defense won the game for us. And our kids were locked in all week. They understood the scout, they understood what we needed to do, and they executed it. I'm very proud of them. Obviously the two young ladies on my right but all the girls, from the kids who didn't play to the kids who played. I'm proud of them. I'm happy to represent Seton Hall. It's extremely important for us to represent the school in a positive manner all the time, and these young ladies have that done all year. I'm really happy for them. It's been a hard year. It's a long season, it's a hard year, and our girls earned this win today, and we're excited to be in the Final Four of the Big East, and we look forward to competing against a great team tomorrow. Q. Alexis, back a few months ago when you guys had Creighton at home, it was one of the first games you really kind of lit it up. And Coach told us that you came to him and said, listen, this is on me. You took accountability. What have you changed since then that has allowed you to progress? ALEXIS LEWIS: I mean, honestly, I don't really think I've really changed anything. I think I kind of just realized I'm a senior. You know, I think it started to kick in, I'm a senior, this is all I have, this is it for me. So from then on, like I told him, I had his back. So I got in the gym extra, got shots up. Make sure I focused in practice and did what I had to do to get us to this point, to get us to the semifinals. Q. Lauren, this is your first Big East Tournament game yet you looked like you've played a bunch of these. What was your mindset that gave you so much success in this game? LAUREN PARK-LANE: Well, I love playoff games, and I just told myself to play with a lot of confidence. That's what Coach B tells me to do, and play my game, and that's what I came out and tried to do today, and it worked, and we got the win. Q. Alexis, what can you say about a freshman point guard doing what she did in this game? ALEXIS LEWIS: At this point she's not even a freshman anymore. It's not about that. She's a Division I basketball player at Seton Hall, and that's how she played today. Q. Through this season, you won't be a freshman anymore, but being as though you were, what have you learned from the seniors and the upperclassmen to get you here? LAUREN PARK-LANE: Really, I've learned from them like work hard and really to just be myself. You know, our seniors, they do a really good job with playing their game and getting everyone else involved, so we don't feel like freshmen or like newcomers out there. We feel like a part of the team -- we felt like a part of the team from the beginning. So I felt like our seniors did a really good job of that. We all have a really good relationship with each other, so I feel like it showed today. Q. What will be the keys for you guys versus DePaul tomorrow? TONY BOZZELLA: Well, if we make 16 threes tomorrow, you know DePaul is going to make 10 to 20 threes. It's going to be a lot of threes. We've just got to understand it's a new day, a new game. We have to defend them. And be strong in our convictions of what we want to do. DePaul takes away everything that you want to do, or tries to at least, and we can't allow that. They beat us twice this year in two very competitive games. Obviously they're playing at a high level like they always do, and we know it's going to be a tremendous, tremendous battle. But we've got to be able to defend them. We just can't give up easy baskets. They're going to make hard shots, they're going to make some difficult shots, and we can't get discouraged by that. That's why they're a great team. But we've got to share the ball on offense, as well, make the extra pass; they're going to double us in the post like they do all the time. We've got to either go up strong or pass the ball out and then make the next pass, and I think if they try and double us in the post, we're going to get a lot of wide-open shots. And I know our girls are shooting the ball with a lot of confidence, so they'll make those wide-open shots. Q. You said before the season that this freshman class was beyond their years. Alexis just alluded to it. What makes them such? TONY BOZZELLA: I think they play with confidence. Those two young ladies in our back court, obviously Mya played well today, too. But Lauren, she is a confident young woman. She walks on the court and people are like, oh, look at her, she's so tiny and everything, and she plays with tremendous heart. They couldn't even press us when she was in the game. She scored 17 points; that was irrelevant to the point. She walked on the floor and she was confident, and when your leader is confident, you're going to play confident. And that's what she did. That's what she's done all year. That's what she does. She's a freshman. She doesn't miss practice, she doesn't miss a game, she didn't ask to come out. That's who she is. She was the starting point guard on the No. 1 team in the country in AAU, all she did pass the ball. She was the starting point guard on the team that won a state championship in Delaware and hit the winning shot. So she does what she needs to do because she's a confident young woman because she works hard for it. She was raised the right way. She's pushed all the time at home. That's why when she's pushed here, she can handle it. Q. I'm curious about this past week, having just played Butler a week ago and that game being a lot closer than this one. Just take us through what your game plan was getting into this one. TONY BOZZELLA: You know, when you get to my age, you have a lot of experiences in life, and we had a very difficult experience last year when we played St. John's here. We had just beaten them on that Saturday and had swept them in the regular season, and we came in and we had okay practices that week - wasn't great, wasn't bad, but we didn't prepare for any changes or anything. And I said to myself, I'm going to learn a valuable lesson if that ever happens again. We prepared in every single way for whatever Butler was ready to show us. So our girls were locked in, understanding that again, we have to play way better than what we just played, and from the first -- that Sunday night after we beat them to every single day that we've met, talked, emailed, texted and everything, we've talked about what Butler might do or will do, and I said we'll never make that mistake again. And last year Coach Tartamella gave me a great lesson and I learned from that lesson, because our kids, we were going to make sure they were prepared, and Lauren, José, Marissa and the entire staff did a great job of getting these kids ready and prepared and showing them what we needed to show them, and I made sure that they understood that this was never going to happen again, and to their credit, they came out and they were locked in. I mean, I thought Desiree played fantastic. She drew three, four charges. She was emotional, she was into the game, she made some great passes. Obviously Shadeen tonight, what she did, and it was fun to watch them play today. It really was. Q. You kind of grabbed Kristen and a couple other players. What were you saying to them? TONY BOZZELLA: I have a lot of respect for Butler. Kurt does a great job. It's hard. It's hard to win the Big East, to win 19 games. He had a great team last year. It really, in my opinion, was an NCAA team. He lost two great players, and they still came out and won 19 games. And I told Kristen, I said, here's a young lady that wasn't super highly recruited, played as a third or fourth wheel, tore her ACL, rehabbed it, came back and scored over 500 points and was a first-team all-conference player. That's fantastic. I'm so -- she's not my kid, but I'm proud of her. I really am. Katherine Strong, really showed a lot of toughness and really was a big part of their defensive mindset, tears her ACL last year, as they're going to go to the NCAA Tournament. Comes back in less than a year and plays her heart out and plays so strong and so hard. And Shae Brey is so underappreciated because she doesn't score 20 points a game, but she passes the ball, she defends, she talks, she tries hard, and I have to give those kids credit. I have a lot of respect for Butler. It's hard to play in the Big East, and it's a tough league, and I just shared that with them. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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