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BIG TEN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 1, 2007Carly BensonCheryl BurnettStephany SkrbaINDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA THE MODERATOR: We've got Michigan with us, and we'll open up with a general statement for you and we'll go to questions for the student athletes, and get ready to use the microphones. COACH CHERYL BURNETT: Anybody's preparation going into play the Wisconsin team is you have to prioritize, stopping Jolene Anderson and Janese Banks. You can see by the stats sheet that they ended up getting their shots. We thought we made them work for them. The first half, again, this is statistically nothing that you can't gain off the statistics yourself, but our turnovers and their offensive transition off their turnovers in the first half was a very big key to their lead in the first half. We battled back, had a great beginning of the second half to get back in the game, got within five, and again, off the stats sheet, their free throws and their three-point shots. While they were hitting big shots, we were missing some big shots. And then you're trying to play behind against a team that I think gained great confidence off of Jolene Anderson and the things that they can do, and again, you're playing from behind at that point. We really wanted to throughout the course of the game give the basketball to our post, especially off what we call the second side on the break, the high side of the post a little bit. We had some periods where we did that well, and the two young ladies that you see up here today, Carly Benson and Stephany Skrba really battled throughout the course of the game offensively. Both of these ladies during the course of this year have really gained some confidence. When you look, you see Wisconsin had four players in double figures and we just have two. The two things that we continue to battle with is the turnovers. First half wasn't good; second half, of course, we did much better. And then just really struggling to score in specific areas. I'm very proud of these two young ladies what they've done all year, but we've got to get -- had to get some other players scoring, and we've been challenged by that. Q. This is for Carly or Stephany. Wisconsin had a big edge on the boards and how they were able to generate a lot of points. What were they doing and how tough was it to keep them off the boards? STEPHANY SKRBA: I think they got great inside position because I guess -- I think that there were some times that our scramble calls and things like that and we weren't rotating the way that they should have been, and there was just open girls that were able to get rebounds. They were shooting quick shots sometimes or just even the lanes that they were making we weren't boxing out the second shot, things like that. Q. What adjustments were you able to make off the offensive end? STEPHANY SKRBA: Still be aggressive but not turn it over so much, still see the shots. Q. What's the biggest difference between this game and the last two you've played against Wisconsin? Both games were pretty tight, pretty good games. CARLY BENSON: I can't really tell you, but all I know is that this game our turnovers in the first half really killed us. We didn't really have momentum because of it and they were scoring off of those. I think that's what really killed us this game. STEPHANY SKRBA: We couldn't really seem to find a groove offensively, either, and I think that hurt us. Q. At one point you guys had the deficit down to five. And while you all were shooting really well to open the half, Wisconsin was, too, and their three-point shooting never really got anywhere. Were you guys not able to get off of their shooters or what was the problem there? COACH CHERYL BURNETT: Can I help? What Wisconsin was doing during the stretch is they were really trying to isolate their post players, and they were getting some dribble penetration, and as we helped on the post, they were doing a great job of finding their shooters, making the next pass and getting what we call rhythm jump shots, release and wide open shots that we weren't contesting because we weren't doing what we consider recovery. Not to steal their thunder, but.... Q. Do you think there was a point in the second half where you were out of the game mentally? CARLY BENSON: No, I don't think so. I think in the second half that's where we started to come together, be more aggressive offensively. I think we came together better in the second half than we did -- we regrouped, I think, but somewhere we just let it go. Q. Were there any adjustments that could have been made in the first half to cut down the turnovers? STEPHANY SKRBA: Well, we were doing a pretty good job of getting the ball. We got some good steals and things like that, just slowing down, not pushing all the time, just sometimes reading when it's open, reading what it's not open, taking the opportunities that we have and not forcing them. Q. Do you want to talk about maybe the energy that Krista (Clement) was able to bring when she came in? STEPHANY SKRBA: Krista is a great leader. Any time she's in the game or on the court she's always talking to everybody making sure everybody knows what they're doing, trying to give people confidence, things like that. She's an excellent passer. We have a lot of confidence when she's in the game because we know that even if things start to go bad that she's going to be there and building our confidence and saying it's okay, it's okay, we can get it back, just steady. Q. For both of you, what is the thought you're going to take heading into next year? What's the one thing you want to do? Obviously win more games, but what's your mindset going to be? STEPHANY SKRBA: Well, mine is just to work hard in the off season, to work hard and for us as a team to come together and play -- work hard on our individual games, and when we go out there on the court to bring it all together and work as one. CARLY BENSON: Yeah, definitely working on offensively just making sure that we can be more consistent, getting off more shots in the summer, playing more pickup, getting together, be able to play together, read each other, and just working on our team camaraderie, and hopefully it'll come around next year. Q. You mentioned the defense against the three-pointers later in the game. What was happening defensively when Anderson hit several early in the game to get doing? Did you lose track of her? COACH CHERYL BURNETT: The thing that I think is very special about Jolene is there's such a variety of ways that she can score. They definitely tried to do a great job of posting her up off of what we call a bump cut. She's able to come off screens and that's what was happening a little bit in the first half. They do what we call cross, enables you to switch perimeter to perimeter and then the posts went downscreen, and we have a specific way that we want to defend that. Jolene does not make it easy because she also reads her defense extremely well, can dribble penetrate and can read the three. She was getting those shots off the pass, off the down screen off of where we were going through the screen instead of -- you cannot give her three feet when she catches because she's going to make you pay for it. We needed to get some more help from our posts in that situation. Any little mistake you make, she's going to counter it. Q. Do you have anything to add about the differences between the two regular season games against Wisconsin? COACH CHERYL BURNETT: Well, you know, the unique thing is both teams are going to play just a lot of man and really try to play some pressure man. Even though we turned the ball over in the first half, taking nothing away from them, it really wasn't a situation where it was their defense creating that. I think the difference -- a little bit of the difference between the two teams' defenses is I think their recovery was much better their ours, and they made the next pass much better than we do. And that was the situation tonight. I think the games have been very similar. We were able to hit some more shots in the early games to keep it a little bit closer, and we knew coming into this game we had could keep them off the offensive boards. They've gotten 15 offensive boards. I guess that's not anything different. I think that was the same, where they got their 20 offensive rebounds. Q. You got within five. Did you run out of gas or was it something they did? COACH CHERYL BURNETT: You know, all year, and just about with every single opponent, we fought to get back in it and then we'll have three possessions that we cannot utilize and capitalize on, where another team does. You know, it happened again tonight. I hate to say that we're tired; that's not what we want to say because I looked out there and their kids played a lot more minutes than ours did, and we felt like we wanted to capitalize on the fact that they were tired at times. Definitely having that go-to kid that you gain a lot of confidence off of and being able to execute and not turn the ball over in those instances. If we could gain that quality of establishing those go-to kids -- I look at these two sophomores, Carly Benson and Stephany Skrba, and really some great minutes for us this year. They've improved a lot in a lot of areas, and looking forward in our program, I can see those two become those players that want the basketball in those critical positions and being able to execute and get the big stop. The other part, and again, I give all the credit in the world to Wisconsin, Jolene Anderson and Janese Banks, they know in critical moments they're hitting a lot of those big shots and good enough that they give up a shot or what we call a better shot and they can see the open player when they get a lot of attention. Q. Talking about having players having confidence, what kind of challenges do you think a deep rotation has towards that? COACH CHERYL BURNETT: Can you be a little more specific on what you're asking me? Q. Well, this game is pretty typical, you play pretty much everybody who is dressed. Do you think that hurts a player's confidence to take a big shot at the end? COACH CHERYL BURNETT: I think all year we've talked consistency, consistency, consistency. We needed to get consistency from players both in practice and in games, and as soon as we gain that consistency, those are players that are going to continue to be able to get those minutes and maintain those minutes. I think we finally got some late in the year, but in a tournament environment, some experience does pay off, and we try and use that experience to our advantage, especially in the first half when we had a very experienced group doing a great job of trying to get us back in the game, and then in the second half we had a different group that did a great job of trying to get us back in within five. Q. Talking about at some points in the game your shot selection was a little bit rushed. Talk about that. COACH CHERYL BURNETT: Well, the time where I saw us get a bit rushed is when you're trying to get back in the game. You know, you're trying to manufacture something defensively, and I give a lot of credit to their freshman point guard. She does a great job of handling the basketball, bringing it back out, controlling the game, and now you're controlling the game, as well, with two very good other guards where it's very hard to try to have your defense create anything, and by that time, we're running out of possessions. We might have looked a little bit better if we just said, hey, slow down offensively, but we're going to go out to win, and it doesn't matter how far we're up or how far we're down. So at that point you're right, we had to rush a few shots to try to create something for us. Q. Coming off a year like last season, how do you measure the level of success? COACH CHERYL BURNETT: It's been a challenging year, challenging in the fact that we got really close on a number of times, and I go back to the Notre Dame game. You can look at the Wisconsin game at home. Quite a few of those games we're talking about the same thing, three possessions making the difference on winning a game and staying in it or starting to lose a little bit of that confidence and to compete. It's been challenging because you want to kids to have payoff, you want them to have payoff for their effort, and of course you look for the little improvements to allow them to gain confidence. But we all know that winning makes life much easier. I continue to give a lot of credit to this team because they continue to try to come out and fight and come out the next day and practice and try to do the things that we're asking them to do. I hope that answers that question. Q. Would you consider this season a success? COACH CHERYL BURNETT: Well, you know, you ask a coach, and any coach is going to want to win every single game, and any coach that doesn't win the National Championship is thinking, well, I wish we had done better. Certainly you want to go out and win games. 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