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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 9, 2010Kathy OlivierJamie SmithMarkiell StylesLAS VEGAS, NEVADA Wyoming – 60 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by UNLV coach Olivier and student-athletes. Coach, if we could start with some general comments about tonight's game. COACH OLIVIER: All right. Uhm, well, first of all, I want to say Wyoming played a great basketball game. We just got through playing them the end of conference. They had to play really, really well at their place to beat us. And then we opened up against them. I thought they played a tremendous, tremendous basketball game. I'm a little disappointed just because I'm disappointed that it's over. I really enjoy coaching this team. My staff has done a great job. I think the team has done a great job. We're young. We have good energy. We fought the whole game. I'm just bummed that it's over because this is the time where it's fun. I think as a coach, I have to do a better job earlier in the season to make sure we were ready like we were now. I felt like we were very, very ready to play this game. Like I said, our team never gave up. So I'm very, very proud of our basketball team. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for the student-athletes. Q. If you got the lead down the stretch, do you think maybe that would have carried you on to victory? JAMIE SMITH: I think that probably would have done so. I mean, we were getting on a roll in the end. Once we got on that roll, you couldn't stop us. I think we started to play together like in the end. But we need to do that early on. I think if we would have got that lead a little later on in the second half, it would have kind of continued. It kind of didn't go our way with some calls and shots we took, but it was fine. MARKIELL STYLES: If we would have stayed on the road we were on, I think it would have led us to victory. Like Jamie said, we got some calls that didn't go our way and didn't get some stops. That's what led us to lose. Q. The rebounding, you out-rebounded them. What did you feel was the key to doing that? Down the stretch, did you feel like they were finally starting to get up against you during the rebounding battle? MARKIELL STYLES: I felt that we emphasized rebounding through practice leading up to this game. We knew we had to box players out to get them from getting second shots and that's how we were going to win the game. So that's what we focused on. JAMIE SMITH: I would just say that rebounding is like hustle. I think our team definitely had that hustle. We fought till the end. The game just didn't fall in our pocket, I guess. But just the out-rebounding them by however much you said, it shows we're a team that can fight and we're ready to come back next year. Q. To out-rebound them like you did, for them to shoot free throws poorly, do you feel this is a game that got away from you? MARKIELL STYLES: It was a tough loss. But we're gonna come back and not let this bring us down. We're going to work hard in the off-season. We're about the future. JAMIE SMITH: We lose two really good players. But we basically have the same team next year. You know, just showing in the tournament that we can rebound like we did, we can hit free throws in the end. It's something that we can take on to the next season, motivation that we got kicked out so early on and also motivation that we did do some good things in the tournament, as well. Q. Jamie, compared to last year, what did you try to take into this game and this tournament that you learned from last year's tournament? JAMIE SMITH: Well, uhm, last year's tournament, you know, we came and we fought hard. Coming into this tournament, you know, it's a completely different team, a younger team. I knew we couldn't relax and think the same thing was going to happen last year happen this year. It was a different mentality. We have a really young team. Actually, three of our starters have never played in this type of, you know, situation and stuff. All I can say is that we're just a really young team and we have some big things to do in the future. Q. Jamie, I know it's not much consolation, but you set a conference tournament record with 18 rebounds. What does that mean to you down the road? JAMIE SMITH: I'm just gonna keep on doing what I'm doing. I know that my role on this team is to get rebounds, try to be a lead on the floor. I'm just going to kind of continue to do that. I don't really care about the records. I really care about the wins. So going into next year, I just want to hopefully -- hopefully those rebounds will just help us win. That's all I can say. THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll dismiss the student-athletes. We'll open it up for questions for the coach. Q. It seemed like you were much quicker than Wyoming, especially off the dribble. Towards the end it seems like the guards finally started taking advantage of that. How important do you think it was that the guards would get so deep into the paint after taking somebody off the dribble and choose to kick it out instead of going for the layup until the last three minutes of the game? COACH OLIVIER: Wyoming does a great job defensively. Their positioning is very, very good. 41, Carlson, has great defensive position. When we were taking it early in the game, we were getting everything blocked. We have great quickness, like you said. But, again, their positioning is tremendous. We started penetrating, making that extra pass to our post player. Markiell did a great job with that extra pass. We did that because of their defensive positioning. When we played them at their place, they did the same thing, got so deep, they blocked shots. We talked about making that extra pass, that extra-extra pass. When we did that, we couldn't hit our outside shots. That hurt us. That allowed them to really clog up the paint. I look at the stats and I kick myself. I say we beat 'em in every area, every category. We got to the free throw, made our free throws, shot over 80%; we out-rebounded them by 19 rebounds. We beat 'em in every category except for the threes, and that really hurt us. Q. Looking towards the future, how important would getting the guards to establish their midrange game, free-throw line, so when they face those obstacles they can pull up? COACH OLIVIER: Right. We were definitely talking about that as a staff. It's something we're going to focus on on the offseason. It's more individual work. Again, the game at Wyoming, we had a lot of midrange shots. I mean, Erica was excellent, Erica Helms did a great job at Wyoming; 10-, 15-foot range did a great job. Kelli, I think, can be awesome at that. She can shoot the three, penetrate. And Mia Bell. I think those three are tremendous at that. And then India. India pulls up a lot and can shoot a little 10-, 15-footer. That's her shot. Those are things we'll definitely work on in the off-season and something definitely we can get better at. Q. You beat them at home this year. They beat you at their place. I thought you might have an advantage with the home court. Was it their fans that made that big of a difference tonight? COACH OLIVIER: Well, you know, I was thinking like you were thinking, our staff was thinking like that. A split game. They beat us at home. They had to beat us really, really well to beat us in Wyoming. I was feeling good about this game. I thought their fans were great. They had a lot of support. I thought, you know, again, I love playing at home. I love playing at Thomas & Mack. I'm not going to sit here and tell you we have 5,000 fans because we're not there yet. We're a staff that's rebuilding. We just need to continue to take care of our business and people will come. I thought the band was awesome. The band was loud. They were awesome. That's really not our focus. I hear what you're saying. I would love to see more people out for our games because our players play hard. They're young, exciting. We have quickness on the perimeter. We talked about that. I just think we have a bright, bright future. I know that people will come out. When I was a player here, we were successful, people came out. So we got to take care of our end and I know people will come and support us. We've gotten a lot of phone calls and encouragement from the community. We need to do a better job of taking care of business early in the season. Q. When Wyoming hit key shots down the stretch, Kennedy stepped up. Did that surprise your team that it was someone like her? COACH OLIVIER: Well, she hit some big shots at Wyoming. They do a really good job of moving the ball. They play team basketball. I think Joe does a great job of coaching them to their strengths. And we talked about this as a staff. She just kind of slits that opening. We were working our butts off. I thought we had some great stops. Like you said earlier, Jamie was getting every rebound. They have had to really work the ball around and go to one of their last options, and their last option hit the shots. So you got to give it to them. I don't think we necessarily lost. I think they beat us. I don't sit here and say that very often because I'll be the first one to say there's things we could have done better. I thought our team played a very good basketball game. I thought we could have had a little more defensive energy in the first half. Otherwise, they went to their second and third option. Kennedy stepped up and hit those shots down the stretch. Q. With all the younger players with only two seniors on your team, what did you think of how the younger players performed during the game tonight and what do you think they learned in these close losses they can take with them next season? COACH OLIVIER: We don't consider them younger players anymore. I hear you. I know they're freshmen. It's their first tournament experience. We put together a great Christmas tournament that was against top, top teams in the country. We put together a great Thanksgiving tournament that we had top teams in the country. Our non-conference schedule I truly believe prepared us for this conference. This conference is good. I think, if anything, we learned we have to come out and play and give that hundred percent intensity, that hundred percent focus every game. The conference is too good. There's too many good teams. But I think Mia Bell plays with so much passion and she plays with a lot of experience. She made great decisions down the stretch. She played with great energy. She was the leader. I'm not considering Mia Bell a freshman anymore. She was excellent. I thought Kelli Thompson, another freshman, was outstanding, did some great things. Super active defensively. She's been coming up with rebounds for us. She hit huge threes, got to the basket, you know, made her free throws down the stretch. Those girls are playing like with much more experience than any freshmen. Again, we have another non-conference schedule that's going to prepare us. We just have to do a better job early. Our staff and me, I have to do a better job of preparing them early for this. We cannot wait to have this kind of intensity and enthusiasm at practice to be ready to go like we were today. Because we were ready to go. If we play like we did today, we're going to beat a lot of teams in the country. Again, this team has a great future. Our team's going to continue to battle and work hard in the summer and improve. That's going to be our focus. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. End of FastScripts |
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