SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 5, 2025

Katie Abrahamson-Henderson

Asia Avinger

Bon Secours Wellness Arena

Georgia Bulldogs

Postgame Press Conference

Georgia 79, Arkansas 74

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Georgia. We'll start with questions for Asia, then have questions for Coach.

Q. Describe what happened in the fourth quarter when you made your comeback tonight.

ASIA AVINGER: Oh, describe it? I would describe it as a gritty fourth quarter. You really have to be a dog in those moments, stay calm and stay focused. Just do or die.

I think the biggest thing is just remaining calm, trusting your teammates, just sticking together.

Q. Asia, it seems you play hard all the time. The whole team does. It does seem the close games, y'all thrive on 'em.

ASIA AVINGER: Uh-huh.

Q. This one included. People were saying c'mon. Have the practices been any different because y'all have really seemed to have come together better, not that you didn't ever play together well, but have practices been any different? What was the preparation like knowing just a week or so ago you beat Arkansas?

ASIA AVINGER: I would say practices have been a lot different. I think everybody has come with a different mindset as far as staying locked in. Everybody has really bought into what coach Abe has, what she's been instilling into us this entire year.

It's better late than never to have this, have that camaraderie within each other. Playing Arkansas last week, I know we won by, like, one point, I believe.

Q. At the buzzer, by the way.

ASIA AVINGER: Right (smiling).

But we treat every game the same. We know it's going to be a dogfight. We knew they were going to come harder. Every team can change within a week, just like us. We beat Tennessee this past week, and it's just like everybody's leveling up during this time. We just got to maintain that.

THE MODERATOR: Asia, you can be dismissed.

ASIA AVINGER: Thank you so much.

THE MODERATOR: We'll continue with questions for Coach Abe.

Q. Asia mentioned your practices have been different. You had a monumental task with Higginbottom twice.

KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: She's good.

Q. How have the practices been different?

KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Well, I don't know if they've been different. I mean, I think we're one of the best in-shape teams there is just because our practices are harder than games always. It's kind of old school, right?

But I think the biggest key is that our young kids have grown up. They're grown up through all this time. Now we're in March, so it took a while for our freshmen to grow up. Get the experience of playing all these games. They've gotten a lot better, too.

With that, being better, I always say here is, like, Asia with the biggest work ethic ever of anybody I've ever known, right? Then the freshmen came in. They had to slowly build up to get to her level in terms of work ethic, right? It was every single day in practice.

Everything starts with Asia. I have to pull Asia out of practice because she goes too hard all the time and she's going to be exhausted for the games, right? She said 'level up'. I think Trinity is starting to level up in terms of her practice, how she approaches every day.

Mia has, I think MV has. I think all of our freshmen really have.

To me that's what the difference is. We finally leveled up to a really high level. Practices have always been more intense than games.

Q. Your defense, you love the 1-2-2, playing man-to-man. In practice, I'm guessing what you said was somebody is going to have to guard Izzy?

KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Yeah, two people, and the whole team.

Q. Wasn't any one particularly, it was just different times in the game you had to switch off?

KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Yeah. First thing is I like to win. We'll play our matchup. We'll press. We won't press. We'll play man. We'll switch everything. We'll do whatever it takes to win the game, right?

Obviously in practice, 'O' was her in practice. He's unstoppable, too. We have somebody that can play her. I just think in the first half we were doing not a really good job of weak-side helping. She's unbelievable getting to the basket. I mean, she scored most of her points, 19 points in the first half, all of them were pretty much layups and the foul line. I think she only hit 1-3.

She's a phenomenal player for them. So in the second half, we started to tell them to dig, we started to switch everything. We were hedging really hard on high on balls just to give her a different look. You have to give that kid different looks. She's so talented.

I think in the second half we started really just collapsing on everything so she couldn't get to the rim as much. We told her to kick it out, make her kick it, kick it to somebody else. It worked. I think they made one three. After that, not a lot of people made shots.

Q. Don't have much practice time, Oklahoma.

KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Yep.

Q. Looking forward to playing them tomorrow?

KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Yes. It's okay, we just practiced. That was practice (smiling). That was playing on the game floor. I always say it's better to play than to wait.

We had nerves, right? Everybody has nerves the first game. You could tell we were a little unnervy not making our shots in the first quarter. It's kind of exciting to come into this SEC tournament. Now we've played on this floor. Obviously we're not going to shoot or run around or do anything.

We have a little bit of an advantage in that we've shot in this gym, we're used to this gym right now. They haven't yet. We don't get very much practice time on this court, so...

Obviously I haven't really watched a lot of film in terms of what we're going to do different against them. Obviously that's going to be tonight.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you.

KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Ready, break. Thank you.