BIG EAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 5, 2021

Kurt Godlevske

Butler Bulldogs

Mohegan Sun Arena

Postgame Media Conference

Providence - 63, Butler - 61

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Butler head coach Kurt Godlevske.

Q. Coach, in today's game, what -- when you look at the difference maker kind of coming down the stretch because a pretty even first quarter, second quarter your team took advantage -- what was the big difference maker coming down the stretch to finish off today?

COACH GODLEVSKE: (No audio) -- and I thought that was the difference. Their kids made plays that seniors are supposed to make in big games like this. And we still have that look of uncertainty on our face.

Q. Take me through that mindset there, that final play. Obviously it was a big call, that final one there, but the decision to go for three instead of two, was that the plan?

COACH GODLEVSKE: No. It had two options out of it. And that's exactly, actually, what I was talking about, we just had a misread. We had a nice flex screen set there for Nyamer and we just missed her on the cut. She was wide open on the cut, had a wide open layup and we just made a misread.

On any of our actions we have multiple different options. And we had that mistake where we missed the cut and then Upe after she set the screen made a mistake. That just goes back to what I'm talking about, that they're kids, you can really see that they -- I don't want to say they trust in the system -- but know the system so well inside/out.

And ours are still trying to at times figure things out. And being in a situation like that is only going to help us for the future, though.

Q. We had talked earlier this year and I know it's been a challenging year for this program because of the fact that you've had injuries. You've had COVID. You went through pauses. You went through obstacles. But in this last week, you beat DePaul and you played really hard here today. I mean, what does it tell you about the fight, the culture of your program, that your kids here put this together over the course of the last week?

COACH GODLEVSKE: It's a really positive thing, because it's who we are. And it's growing, learning, being humble about yourself, coming to work every day, finding a way to get better every day. Those are really the Butler-way qualities. And we embrace that. And our players embraced it.

I think that's why we got into January and had those eight games in 17 days, and just didn't have any practice time and couldn't develop into what I thought we could be. And then all of a sudden we finally we get a little breather and we get to work on our stuff and we get our conditioning, our legs back. And our kids, tremendous amount of credit to them because they didn't give up on the process and they kept fighting. And we have a lot of positive things to build on going into this spring for next season that we're really looking forward to.

Q. How positive are you with Adika and just her continued evolution?

COACH GODLEVSKE: She's only going to get better. You know? She's got a tremendous amount of upside with her size, length, ability to put the ball on the floor. And she just needs a really good offseason with our strength and conditioning coach and with our coaches just continuing to develop her fundamental skills within our offense. She's going to be a real star, I think.

Q. So you guys did a really good job on Baskerville in the first half. She didn't score. She didn't get a rebound. What did you see in the first half that you liked about that? And then what kind of changed in the second half?

COACH GODLEVSKE: Well, we came out with our -- our game plan wasn't necessarily just to go at her, but it was to be aggressive and attack and create for others. And we just happened to get her in a couple of situations where we put a lot of pressure on her defensively guarding the ball handler, and that end of things worked out.

When she did play a tremendous amount of minutes in the second half I thought we did a great job, for the most part, bottling her up and making her make tough shots and take tough shots.

There was a player that benefited from that, though, and that was Geary. She was tremendous today and played like she was not afraid, which is huge.

But the second half, I think we got caught up in the tournament atmosphere. That's what you're here for. And the Mohegan Sun was incredible. Even though we had limited fans, I thought the energy was there for our kids, to have that experience. And we'll grow and learn from that.

But I think we just got caught up in that, to answer your question. The second half was the real difference.