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BIG TEN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 4, 2010Jamie BraunJori DavisFelisha Legette-JackINDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA Illinois – 59 THE MODERATOR: We'll begin with an opening statement with Coach Jack and then we'll go to the student-athletes. COACH LEGETTE-JACK: We wanted that game so bad. We really, really wanted to win that game. I thought we had a great game plan. I thought we had the right karma. I just thought that we had the right thought process as far as what we were going to do to offset their tenacious defense. We got opening shots. Just the stars wasn't lined up. It didn't seem to fall in our court. I'll tell you what, it's 11 teams in this conference. The locker room that I'm very proud to be in is Indiana women's basketball room, because at the end of the day as a coach you really have to win. You really want the win. But more important than that, being a mother and a wife, I really want to grow young women. And I have some character kids on my team. I have some unbelievable students on my team. I have people on my team that's going to be CFOs and CEOs of organizations. They're going to be working for one of you guys. You're going to be working for one of them, I should say, one day soon because they are really honorable young women. At the end of the day basketball has to prevail and we have to continue to grow our basketball side of it. And at the end of the day I'm just really grateful that my coaches go out and bring in some unbelievable student-athletes. We'll get better. We'll continue to work hard for our Hoosier Nation. The season seems to be up and down. They seem to be all about the teaching and the moments and the learning. But we'll keep getting better. We're not going anywhere until we add to those five championships that our men put up there in that beautiful hall. Our goals are big, our dreams are high. We're going to go out there and attain them. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes, please. Q. Jori, how are you feeling after a tough game like that? JORI DAVIS: Just we really wanted the game. We really had our hopes high going into the game, and, you know, we fought hard. We left it all out there on the court. And it's even more disappointing that we have to end this season for one of our seniors that we all played for this whole season. She's finished now and that's what hurts most is that we couldn't get this win so we could keep going on further into the post-season. Q. Jamie, can you -- the first half there you guys seemed like you had about ten chances to take the lead and couldn't ever quite get over that hump. Can you kind of talk about that? JAMIE BRAUN: Illinois played really good defense. We weren't hitting some layups we should have been hitting and they weren't giving us a lot of second-chance opportunities. So they just played really tough D and we just weren't hitting some shots. So we kept it close but we obviously never got over that hump. Q. Jamie, I take it you've probably seen enough of Jenna Smith in your career now. Thoughts on her game now? JAMIE BRAUN: She's an amazing player. We all knew it. I knew it since I came to IU. She's a great player. You can only do so much to contain her. We've done it in the past. We just didn't do it today. She played great and she did what she had to do to help her team win the game. Q. What do you walk away thinking, Jamie? What do you take away from all this? Your ride? Talked about it being over, what do you take away from it? JAMIE BRAUN: Just all the learning and growing I've had in the past four years. I grew tremendously from coming out of high school and all that. Take away a lot of friends from the team, from everyone that's come on the team and left the team already. And I've taken away good friendships with the coaches. I'm only taking the positives out of this. We may not have hung up a banner or made the NCAA tournament, but we worked hard every day to do what we needed to do and just fell short. Q. Jori, down the stretch there in the second half seemed like you guys were really struggling finally that last four or five minutes something kind of clicked in. What was the difference to making that last push at the end of the game? JORI DAVIS: I don't know. The time was against us, and we really needed to take it to another level and that's basically what we did. We just continued to push through and take it to another level. Unfortunately, we didn't take it to that other level earlier in the game. But our backs were against the wall so that's the only thing I can say really made us push forward more. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies. Questions for Coach Jack. Q. Coach, you beat Illinois twice in the regular season. What was different about them or you against them this time in the Big Ten tournament? COACH LEGETTE-JACK: The shots didn't go down. We had wide open shots. We had wonderful plays. We've done the right thing. We got them to turn the ball over 25 times. We got 21 offensive rebounds against an amazing defensive team. At the end of the day, you've got to put the ball in the hole. And we just didn't do that in the first half. And then we started really pushing and trying and the wrong kids started shooting the ball, panicking, it's a young team growing up. But at the end of the day the shots just gotta go in the hole. And they just didn't fall for us today. Nothing different. Q. As you look back on this season, you have a number of sophomores and freshmen and juniors. What do you want them to take away from this season and what you learned? COACH LEGETTE-JACK: The hunger. I think the locker room today, they finally woke up and realized, wow, every possession counts. Every situation matters. And I think the light came on. And you can't let the light come on until you actually get it. We've been having a young team for so long. One senior returned last year. It was very hard to adjust to a point guard leaving in the middle of the year like that. We adjusted, and we adjusted. But I think they realized: Wait a minute, what we have is all we have and what we have should be enough. And the desire was there. I think it was suppressed. And it came out in the last four or five minutes in the game. They said let's give it and see what happens. And all we're going to do is do it from the beginning. So it's a learning curve. Learning curve. Q. What do you want to happen between now and next December when the Big Ten season starts? What's the major thing or two that you want your team to -- you need to build on or you need to improve in? COACH LEGETTE-JACK: We've got to remember this moment. We've got to remember this moment. This is the same team for two more players that beat the No. 4 team in the country. This is the same team that played West Virginia at West Virginia last year and beat the 13th best team in the country. What we have to do is believe that that's supposed to be us. Indiana has been in a situation for a long time for women's basketball where the belief has been minimum. Now we have to be consistent. We know we can do it. Now the consistency has to be there. How do you do it? Continue doing what they do. They need to continue to stay in the gym and continue to work hard and our local talent need to stay home. Our local talent stay here. We can get a lot better a lot quicker. But at the end of the day, what we have is enough. We just gotta continue to believe in ourselves and believe that we can string a couple games together. Whitney Thomas, she showed what could happen if a local decides to stay home. Our hope is more make that decision to join the Hoosier family. Q. Coach, Jamie had a big first half. And Jori had a big second half. But it looked like you struggled to get the two of them together as well as the supporting cast involved? COACH LEGETTE-JACK: I know. Can you believe that? Try standing in my position. I just think that we kept fighting. I just don't know -- I'm a firm believer. I just know that we tried to come. And they really wanted to come. And when they do come together, we are really talented. But supporting casts, they continue their support. They did what they did all season. But when Jamie and Jori is on the same page, greatness seems to happen. Not just goodness. And we really tried to make it happen. We just fell short. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. End of FastScripts |
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