NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 30, 2000

Tasha Pointer

Shawnetta Stewart

C. Vivian Stringer

Q. You guys, a lot has been made about the schedule, the tough schedule that you guys have been through in the last week, but I wonder if you can tell us how you keep up in terms of what it means with your classes and how you -- how you keep up with assignments during this period, this whole period, this three-week period?

TASHA POINTER: Me personally, I have my book in the locker room. So I might get five minutes to read something. Right now, I don't have any mid-terms because I took a couple before we left, before the NCAA thing started. I don't know, I think as much as possible you try and squeeze in homework, whether it's reading for five minutes, ten minutes. Hopefully you retain some of the information you read, the information that you read, but I think you only have this opportunity once in a lifetime, and right now I need to focus on this. But as soon as all this is over, as far as basketball, I know that I'm a student first and athlete second.

SHAWNETTA STEWART: Our focus is to stay together and not let, you know, all these people be a distraction to us. Right now, we are just having fun, but I thought it was great for it to be an open practice, and that was really the first time for us. So we're just enjoying it all.

TASHA POINTER: I think we have improved on it, just because each year, you learn a little bit more as far as experience-wise, I think that you can honestly tell, even though at the beginning of the year we were having problems with just, I don't know, I think it was more where we were as each individual and things like that. So I think now we are working to our strengths and not like before, we weren't trying to, but at the same time you just don't know who is comfortable in what position. For example, last year I played entirely different position and that year I was comfortable with that, but this year something different. I think it's learning the angles, being precise, and just playing to your teammates strengths, also.

TASHA POINTER: Well, the first time I played them, I don't think I knew all our plays. (Laughter) That was freshman year. I think that now I know our things, a couple of years in the game now, I can't really say -- because you are asking me how much better are we as far as are we close to them, should we beat them, I don't know. I leave that to you guys to make the predictions. Me myself, I'm just trying to play as best I can for Coach Stringer.

SHAWNETTA STEWART: I think we have a little bit more depth on the team. We are much more experienced now. Freshman year, we were just out there trying to, you know, play have fun. We are a much more poised team and you know, we are just well balanced. I think we have much more offensive status and our defense has always been there, but I think it is just -- it has improved each year and now we are stronger.

SHAWNETTA STEWART: I think it's a dream come true to come back and play your final games of your career where you started, see some of the people, some of the faces that you have not seen in a long time. I know -- our goal was to get here and I'm just glad that we achieved that goal, but we're not finished and hopefully we'll stay here a little while longer.

COACH C. VIVIAN STRINGER: I can think of no better place in the world to come back to than Philadelphia because it reminds me that -- the history of women's basketball and it's strength was really here and it's come full circle. You know, like they say -- you know, at one time I looked at, there's a lot of things that go through my mind. The coaches, one at Penn State and personally a number of other coaches across the country who have been instrumental in changing women's basketball now are in different parts of the country, but a great deal of them, a great many of them actually were coaches here in the east and basketball was a little different. It was extremely competitive and it was almost that we had Final Fours on a weekly or monthly basis. I obviously took off and went to the University of Iowa and here, 11, 12 years later, to be able to come back and enjoy this kinds of kind of success is a dream come true, because it means so much more; it's where you began. It's a first to me and it reminded me of the first time I had an opportunity to take it to the NCAA Championships, and the fact that I was coming here, my two pointguards -- a couple of the pointguards that I had over the years were in the stands and it just brought tears to my eyes and to see former players and young people that I've had an opportunity to work with and to make them happy and proud. And most importantly this team for them to experience a Final Four is something that they certainly well deserve, and to bring it so close to home where we can get some fans from New Jersey, to represent our university and make people proud here. And then, yet, we still have a great Philadelphia connection, not only because I spent 11, 12 years in and around this area, but certainly Shawnetta, having been a Philadelphia native, it's just special to bring it home to Brotherly Love. And then to see Greenberg here in the audience, and I don't mean how many of you realize that he probably was the first person -- to the point of actually having national polls and one of our great friends and founders. You see all the coaches that are here. I was one of those persons that founded our organization, but the person who was most instrumental and took on the responsibility, Betty James is going to retire here in Philly. I thought it was interesting because it all came full circle because it means so much to all of us. Renjo (ph) who was around in Westchester, Rene Portland who was up at Penn State. We all go back a long way. In fact, the first NCAA Championship, I was in was with Tennessee. So isn't this interesting. I can't even tell you, it really brings tears to my eyes and so many things go through my mind and I can just hug the young ladies that made this all possible for me, because no other Final Four could ever be as important or as significant as this one.

SHAWNETTA STEWART: My freshman year had to be the most difficult time of my life, and I couldn't play basketball. That was my dream to come and play basketball and get education. I think it was very disappointing -- I remember coming in to watch Tasha and the rest of the guys play -- excuse me, you weren't even here then. I remember coming in and watching Usha, who I was recruited with, coming to play and I would go over to the top of the arena because I didn't want to be seen. I just felt that I let my team down and my coaches down, and, you know, that had to be the time where I had the least confidence, and, you know, I just was down. I didn't really see my dream too clear at that point. But I think my coaching staff and the rest of my teammates, you know, was really pushing me. And I worked hard in the off-season to come back in the best shape that I could come back in. And I really worked hard on my academics, you know, to try to turn it around. But it felt like it was days and months and years went past before I could get back on the court again. But each year it got better and I couldn't do it without my mother's support because she had to pay my tuition. My first year. I think without her, I wouldn't have made it through, really. All my respect goes to her. She really sacrificed a lot for me even making it here today, and I just would like to thank her. But, you know, this coaching staff is great. These players are great, and I can't be happier to be anywhere else. You know, I believed in the vision that Coach Stringer told me my very first day on campus, and she told me just to never give up; it will happen. She said it wouldn't be easy, that I would have to pay a price, and, you know, I think I've paid the price and that's why we're here today.

TASHA POINTER: Why is their defense so tough? I don't know. I don't know because this is the only defense I've been taught since I came to college. I think that if I was in someone else's shoes, I guess -- because you can't get a shot off. To me, the defense is just okay.

SHAWNETTA STEWART: We play a lot of different defenses. You know, it has to be -- you know, the right angles where we force players at. We do a lot of trapping. You know, it's the little thing, you break it down to math and science if you think about it, but I'm glad we don't have to play against ourselves.

TASHA POINTER: Practice.

SHAWNETTA STEWART: Practice, but otherwise.

SHAWNETTA STEWART: Well, I'm not going to answer the part with the pointguard situation. Obviously I'm not a pointguard. I think we're trying to find our niche and find our chemistry. That's the key word; you're right. It's very important to have chemistry if you're going to succeed. You've got to try to find who plays well together and who best knows -- we've been playing with each other for three years. I know me and Tasha has, and it's just good to find chemistry with different players as you have to everything can go right.

TASHA POINTER: I think sometimes some people are very good coming off the bench and they know their role. Some people can't really function in the starting five, and I think that when you have five on the court, you just want to make sure that they compliment one another's game and continue to play the style of basketball that you'd like, and I think that's very important. At the beginning of the season. We didn't really have that. We didn't have the right chemistry. We were battling small injuries and things like that which is a key factor. But since then the end of the season, I think that we have improved and we'll just try to continue the game. We have gained a lot of confidence in one another and the chemistry is -- has picked up tremendously and we all know -- what we should do at certain times. It's just unbelievable once you're out on the court and you feel the rhythm of the game and you look at the intensity of each of our faces, and we know who should come in with a point, but Coach Stringer makes all those decisions.

COACH C. VIVIAN STRINGER: Well, the first trip was a -- it was the first NCAA Championship, and it might seem strange. I consider myself more a purist with respect to the game, and that is that I probably don't count the games that are coming up or the loss. You know, is there another game and you want to play and you keep playing. I knew they were the NCAAs, but I wasn't even in tune so much with the game that led to our being, you know, a member of the Final Four team group there. But in my situation, I was just dealing with a lot of tragedy because my daughter was in the hospital. So I was really flying from Philadelphia to Richmond to practice -- to Virginia to practice, and I didn't do any interviews. I don't think you're going to see anything that I said. All I wanted to do was work with my team, and it was a while before I actually came back to the team because my daughter was in intensive care in Children's Hospital here for about six months. That's why I look at this Philadelphia; it's interesting, ironic. Me, personally, the kind of experiences that I've had, I don't really know what it's like to be in the Final Four and to be free in terms of just being able to focus on the work at hand and not have a lot of personal hurt that I might have, hurt that I'm dealing with. And obviously it happened with me, with my husband's death that we went to the Final Four at Iowa. So I'm looking at this and thinking isn't this ironic that it could come full circle and we would come back to Philly, not more than minutes, so to speak, from the Children's Hospital, where I actually left to go to practice at the Final Four . The players, I have to be -- it's very difficult for me to compare the talents, because I can tell you that that team, it could easily stack with the Iowa team or the Rutgers team, easily. You're talking about Laney (ph), all-American, 5'11, Valerie Walker, if there was a 4-point shot range, she would have dropped it in; she was well ahead of her time. Gilford, that whole team in their youth, I wouldn't say that that team was any less than. So with regards to my talent, that was a different story. Our style was totally different, because we tended to be a lot more slow-paced. We were always a very, very good defensive team; although, it wasn't really a matchup. As you know or may know, Coach Chaney and I worked very closely and I worked very closely for is 11 years, and defense was always very key for us. But the kind of time that the athlete is putting in now, just the conditioning itself and all that is much higher level, the kinds of technical knowledge that the players have is again much more intense, sometimes I wonder about that with regards to injuries that athletes are having now. But I think that they are much more equipped on the knowledge side of things. But in terms of the athletes in general, they are quicker bigger faster, stronger more of them, there are more teams, and it's much more difficulty I think to resurrect a program or even to build a program. Now it's much more difficult because much more schools have made a commitment dollar-wise and they have made a commitment to raise expectations and you are seeing women being fired as quickly as men, and that speaks one to the seriousness of which the game is being taken. So the environment is a little different. My enthusiasm is exactly the same but I think that when I look at this press room and all the people that are here, this was nowhere near the kind of size that was there, you know, in '82, at Old Dominion, there has been a tremendous revolution that has taken place. Cynthia Cooper just speak to our players, and they love her to death, and there's a women's pro league. So the game is much more involved. We are grateful, our governor came in here, that's why I was late. He was just a very special person, the most special person that I think of to all of us that she's that role model. There's so many things that I get excited when I about, the many opportunities and the examples that have been set for the young women that were not there. It's not that women weren't doing those kinds of things but it just wasn't publicized. I'm a little tired right now, but I'm able to focus with a clear mind on what we have to do and just glad to be in Philly.

COACH C. VIVIAN STRINGER: The pointguards were Lena Dabney (ph) , who was on the NCAA Championship team from Philadelphia. I think it was William Penn High School, (ph), and Andrea Hunt, who was the other pointguard, and it was nice to see them. I wish I had time to bring them in to talk to our team and I try to keep that connection with all of my players at Cheyney and Iowa and here and so we understand, because generally at every Final Four, all of those players over the years will gather together and share experiences and try to support each other in all that they do. Nd one was Shannon Perry, but she was from the University of Iowa, so, and I know that I will see many more. Coach Chaney, I saw him when we got of the bus and it was so good. I owe everything to him, and I was saying to him, I said, "Am I your best student?" He said, "I'll give you a B." And believe it or not, I was on our case because he was saying for example, he was saying to Sutton-Brown, what are you doing, letting that girl get in front of you, and where is that Linda Miles, Linda is over there trying to hide her head; you're letting that girl drop on the baseline, you know how that is. I love the game, I really do. I wish I could just spend all my time with basketball Coach Chaney, when he was there. Now whether he's going to be at the game or not, we're still talking about that. I think he has something major that's supposed to take place at the men's Final Four, but I was telling him I couldn't imagine him not being here. We talked about this, really quite frankly at the beginning of the year, long before the Final Four came -- came about. So I don't know.

COACH C. VIVIAN STRINGER: I mean, what challenges don't they present would be the better question, and you could probably list them better than I. Tennessee, they developed a standard by which we all aspire to. They have got tremendous depth and great strength and quality. Obviously, what I consider the greatest coach, period. But what I should say is I think that we are definitely a stronger team. We have a lot more depth than we had before. We are more experienced and fortunately for us this year, our experience has paid off in several games. When we found ourselves in situations -- now I'm happy to see this. Sometimes you wonder, but when a game situation reminded us of something else that may have happened, for example in a Notre Dame game, we lost that game in the last couple seconds, ten seconds or 20 seconds maybe, someone dropped two 3s real quick and you think that it's over and it's not over. And so once again in our game against Georgia, it looks like it's over and in about ten seconds, one of the players dropped two 3s and we are able to regroup; wait a minute, it's not there. We've had those experiences. We had an experience where again an overtime situation against Notre Dame and lost it at our place. Yet, when that same situation met us again in the Big East in an overtime situation, we knew exactly -- we looked at each other faces and knew that we had been there before. Now, the key is we set a goal of coming here to Philadelphia. Now, we didn't say National Championship, did we. I think it's bit much to expect a National Championship in our minds at the time. But I can tell you that it will very definitely be in our minds and it will be our every intention to do just that, now. We have got to definitely do those things like rebounding, got to take care of the ball. They are a great defensive pressure. One of the things they did extremely well and have continued to do well, in particular, as I think about the last time that we played in the NCAAs, is they forced us much higher and further out from our offense than what we'd like; forced us to pick the ball up and as a result, the patterns were broken up. We've got to control the boards and run and attack and we've got to be able to handle their press. I think that if we're doing that and play our great defense because we believe so soundly in it, it is important that we get started right from the beginning. If they drop a couple shots, you can see what makes it different, we understand the offense, but we also understand angles and forces and what we're trying to trap. And we might look much faster than we are only because we know what we're forcing and it allows everyone to anticipate and get into position. If we're not controlling -- controlling Tennessee; that is, that they are getting shots with nobody's hands in their face or they start splitting, drawing two people on one when we're in a zone, which we're not going to be any kind of surprise. You know that Tennessee knows that's what we're going to do. If they start to split to cause two people to pick up one, we're going to be in trouble. What we did very well in Georgia is we were able to come in a balanced passion and then only one person played within a zone. Ours is so quick, like with a man, even if you think you're free for a little bit, it will close off. But it can't happen if everybody is not in sight of their next play, and if we don't come square on the pass, we've got to be able to come flat and if we come to sharp they are going to penetrate; and then when they penetrate they are going to get to our center then when they get to our center they have eaten our heart out, and that's what happened at our Purdue game. And when we lose, that's basically what happens; the attack to the inside, and you're probably right about it, but Pat knows that as well. But it's our business to make sure that they don't get to our center, and that we don't allow splits and that we can get in there and make sure that every shot is contested. And I think one biggest objectives is obviously to take care of the ball and get the shots. Whether or not they fall in the beginning -- we have shot extremely poor at times and still come out victorious, simply because we are able to do those things.

COACH C. VIVIAN STRINGER: Well, what we're trying to do is force a direction. We call it stunning. And we'll play angles, and we understand where you want to go. We'll take you away from it, shut everything else off to force skips that you might not want to get and we can anticipate those. It's like if I were to shut off my mediator -- moderator -- if I were should shut her off, she wants to go this and way- she's trying to tell me the time is up, and I know that it is, if I wanted to control her, I might play her on one side and I notice someone else is going to slide down; we do know where everyone is. We see the feet; we understand the feet; we know how we even want to come up on your shoulder. We know how close we want to come and how fast we want to approach it. Sometimes we will, so to speak, suck you in, by looking -- that you might think you have a drive; we'll overplay that drive and let you come into it and then close it off by the inside and shutting everything off, because we know that if that baseline drive is there, we close it off on the trap. We shot the baseline, front that position; the only other pass you're going to have is at the top. We know that, and we're angry, and the last thing I should say with regards to that, I should do a better job offensively and I intend to that. That's why I think we are getting a little better there. But on that side, we emphasize defense so much that the one thing that will send a player to the locker room or off my floor is that they don't work really hard. They work really hard with every defensive possession. Today you saw us clowning around, but tomorrow you'll see us on our feet and we'll look to control. And if we don't, it's just because Tennessee is doing what they need to do and that is to do what they do best, and that's move the ball. So it will be a test of whether they do it or we do it. And they are good.

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