BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 9, 2005

Jamie Carey

Jody Conradt

Tiffany Jackson

COACH CONRADT: I don't need to tell you it was hard-fought, do I? I told the team, at this time of year there's no such thing as than ugly win. You just try to do what you can do to figure out how to advance. As ragged as I thought our play was, I look at the shooting percentages, and I'll take 53% just about any game. They were tired in the first half, I think 63, but thankfully it cooled off a little bit in the second half. I thought we did a decent job defensively. We were a little flat-footed early. They're hard to guard, there's no question. You have to really be on your toes. You get locked up on them, spread out on the floor, and forget the D and help side when there's penetration. But I thought we picked up our defense. I thought we did a good job on the boards and we just tried to figure out ways to score with the lineups that we had on the floor. Obviously, this was a game in which we had rotations that hadn't been on the floor a lot, particularly first half. Was just trying to hang close. The fouls in the first half caused us to really have to adjust. The thought of losing Heather and Annissa made me sick to my stomach. I was just trying to get through the first half and hope that we could regroup in the second half.

TIFFANY JACKSON: We knew that that Leah was going to be tough coming in. She works really hard. She's a great player. The second half I just tried to basically guard her and I let her get the ball. Once Leah get the ball, she's such a great player, we know pretty much she's going to score. The key to a player like that is pretty much not letting them catch the ball.

TIFFANY JACKSON: I think so. I think every game here on out is very urgent. Coach said, we have a one-game mentality, we have to win. We know if we lose, we're going home.

JAMIE CAREY: I think early in the first half, we had a lot of miscommunication. People would switch, but they wouldn't meet and separate. I think OU slipped on us a couple times. So we just knew we had to be a little bit more solid. People on the backside had to show a little bit more help and make the floor look a little bit smaller.

JAMIE CAREY: I've been playing Erin for quite a few years now. She has a quick release. She knows how to use her screens very well. She's tough to defend. She's a player that you can't forget about for one second. You just have to stay in her hip on every screen that she goes through. But my teammates did a really good job of calling screens today, so I knew they were coming and was able to get through them.

JAMIE CAREY: There wasn't a lot of flow to the game, period, I don't think on either end. Just one of those rough games that you just have to, you know, get down and play it. It's a little rough and tumble. You just kind of got to go with it. So I don't think there was a lot of flow on either end.

JAMIE CAREY: Well, offensively I wouldn't want to guard her if I was a coach. She's very tough. I think the thing that makes her really special is she's so competitive and she works really hard. Last year she wouldn't be hitting the 10-footers, 15-footers that she's hitting this year. I mean, that's key. That's going to make her more difficult to guard. I mean, she's just a huge attribute to our team. It was fun to see a lot of emotion tonight. I like that. So, you know, it's a very calming, soothing feeling to know you have her on our side.

TIFFANY JACKSON: Nina's a great player. It's hard to have to play without her. The emphasis that we were talking about is just running the ball. We feel that Nina is one of the quickest point guards in the ball in the country. Everybody just has to chip in. Sometimes I have to bring the ball down court. Sometimes Heather has to bring the ball down court. We just have to come together as a team and handle the ball.

TIFFANY JACKSON: Yeah, I think so. She asked me at timeout how I was feeling. But the timeouts, I was just trying to get my rest and get some water in.

COACH CONRADT: Not really. You know, we faced a lot of zones. When Heather goes off the floor, we have seen that quite a bit because Jamie is our only real perimeter threat when Heather is not there. Daria has been doing a good job. We've been getting her a little more playing time. Against the zone, you need to penetrate. It was obvious that we couldn't and didn't and wouldn't and all of those things. We were pretty stagnant on the offensive end, didn't have a lot of movement. Even though against a zone it appears that you want to take the outside shot, it still needed to go inside. We still needed somebody to penetrate and kick. That was hard for us tonight. Thankfully we've been seeing some zones. We've worked in practice anticipating that we might. Tiffany is pretty hard to guard one-on-one. I think that's forced some people to play us zones, as well. It wasn't a surprise. I thought we were really choppy on the offensive end and didn't, as you mentioned, have flow. But we got it done.

COACH CONRADT: Well, I think we did pick up our defense. We talked about that. We weren't very good defensively early. It's the five-person deal. Everybody's got to take care of their business. Most times we would play for three or four passes and then we'd have a breakdown in the first half. We gave them some really good looks. Jamie was the only person that consistently did what she was supposed to do on defense. She has incredible tenacity and endurance. That's two games against Oklahoma that she hasn't given up a three to Higgins, right? She didn't today, did she? And that's just not letting her shoot. We feel like they will have a hard time beating us if Higgins doesn't get her points. So that was a key. But in doing that, we gave up some other things. I thought the second half we really picked up our defense. We started to give some off-side help. We started to contest on a lot more shots than we did in the first half. Probably made it a little harder for them to get some of the looks they got early. I mean, they're a chore to guard. You've got to really work at it, you have to chase them all over the county. If you relax for a minute, then they're going to make the extra pass and score.

COACH CONRADT: Heather normally guards Leah. She's done a really good job on her. But with the foul problems, I couldn't allow that to happen. Tiffany went to her. Tiffany gave up some looks early in the second half, then we challenged Tiffany to stop letting her catch the ball. Do your work early and make it hard for her to get the ball, which is the adjustment Tiffany made on her own. She was letting her catch the ball. And, yes, Leah can score in lots of different ways when that happens. I think the thing that Tiffany that was just pick it up and work harder to keep her from getting her hands on the ball.

COACH CONRADT: Well, we switched a lot of things. She wasn't ever assigned Dionnah that I remember. But because they set so many screens, that's one of the things we can do on defense, because we can screen like players. The only person that wasn't going to be involved in a switch was Jamie, and everybody else was instructed to switch. We had Kala on Rush at times. If you looked, you'd see everybody guard everyone on their team because their screens are hard to defend and we just started to switch a lot of things.

COACH CONRADT: Well, we're not exactly really fresh right now either. That was a hard ballgame. We had to run lots of steps. But typically when you're fatigued, you get front iron or you shoot short. They did miss a lot of shots in the second half that they had made probably in the first. That's one of the reasons you play pressure defense. You hope that it gives you an advantage as you wear your opponent down and make it difficult for them to score.

COACH CONRADT: She wants to play, wanted to play today. I have my doubts whether she could have been effective. I think you will understand if I tell you that I'm not taking any chances. She will be able to play eventually. It might be tomorrow, it might be the next day, it might not be till next week. But I don't see any reason to push her out there right now. It's sore; it's tender. I would suspect we need to let that settle down a little bit before we push her. I don't think there's any question about what impact it has when we don't have her. Do we have another penetrator? No. Do we have anybody that can push the ball? No. Do we have anybody that can spell Jamie? No. Do we have anybody that really has the kind of quickness to guard somebody else's opposing guard? No. There's some holes to be filled. I think Coco stepped up, did the things we needed her to do. I thought Erneisha Bailey gave us a few good minutes. If she would play like that all the time, we'd see her really emerge as a really good player. But as most freshmen, there's some inconsistency there. I don't know who's going to have to play the next game. Tamra Cobbins may have to play if Nina doesn't. It's just a scramble at this point.

COACH CONRADT: I've been so fortunate to have several special players. Tiffany is there. What you want -- I mean, Tiffany is so competitive, and I don't think anybody really can understand how hard she plays and what her work ethic is like unless you come to practice, because she plays just like that in practice every time she takes the floor. What impressed me the most about Tiffany is the progress she made over the summer. She was embarrassed because in our final loss last year, LSU refused to guard her at the free-throw line. Being competitive, she shot it anyway. I think she left that game knowing she was going to add that to her repertoire. She has a lot of pride. I didn't see her in the gym practicing it, but I knew the moment we came back to the floor in the fall that she had practiced it. I think that says volumes about the kind of player she is, how competitive she is, and what's her limitations. It's up there. The other thing about Tiffany, she came not saying, "I don't want to play the five, I don't want to get down in a block, I don't want to be just down there." So I started to start trying to figure out what I could call that position and hoped that we would not have to limit her to playing inside as much as we do. But I think she's seen that our team needs her there, and I think she has figured out she can be effective there. She's shown a very unselfish attitude to do what her team needs. The other area where she's improved tremendously is she's recognizing double teams and giving up the ball and working again to get it back. In the beginning, okay, you're going to guard me with two. I can still score. All right, you're going to guard me with three. I'll still try to score. And sometimes she did. But there were a lot of times where she didn't. We talked about patience, just giving up the ball, waiting till you get another opportunity.

COACH CONRADT: Well, that's where she's added something to her game. That's been something she's done all year. It just makes her harder to guard. I think she still sees it as a challenge and gets a little irritated that they don't come out and guard her there. But she's got the ultimate answer now when she can knock those down.

COACH CONRADT: Thank you.