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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2010Jazmine ForemanJeff JudkinsCoriann WoodLAS VEGAS, NEVADA San Diego State – 77 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by BYU Coach Judkins and student-athletes. We'll start with an opening comment about the game by Coach Judkins. COACH JUDKINS: Well, I'm not real happy. This wasn't the kind of game I wanted to have our team play tonight. You got to give San Diego State a lot of credit. I think they came out very aggressive defensively, and kind of set up our offense, did a good job of getting turnovers to make easy baskets. We just didn't really execute the way we should have early in the game. We kind of downed 11 and had a three-pointer right there. If Cori could have hit that, we could have got down to single digits. I think it would have really helped us. The second half, we came out the same way. They just took it to us. They probably played the best I've seen them. But got to give them a lot of credit. Beth did a great job of preparing for the game. I'm proud of this team. We're better than this. I think they know it. But it's something we're going to learn as a team and hopefully next season, even the remainder of this season, learn from it and get better. THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll open it for questions for the student-athletes. Q. Coming into this game having a great week last week, how was your confidence level and what do you think you could have done to try to stay in this ballgame? JAZMINE FOREMAN: I think our confidence was great. I think we came, you know, knowing that we're good enough, we're talented enough to play with the best of 'em. But, uhm, you know, it seemed like we kind of got punched first and we didn't react the way we wanted to. It might have shook us up a little bit. But as far as like last week, I mean, I think we proved a lot by how we played last week. We just got to work more on being consistent. Q. San Diego State already had a game out here, then had a day off, then played you today. Is there any advantage to that as far as momentum? CORIANN WOOD: I think there's a little advantage to that. You know, they just barely played. They kind of had their rhythm and their groove. Us sitting out, we had momentum coming off those two great wins. I know we were ready to play. Like Jaz said, they punched first and we didn't react like we normally do and like we can. I think they did have a little advantage, but that wasn't it. THE MODERATOR: We'll dismiss the student-athletes at this time and continue with questions for Coach Judkins. Q. Coach, how big was it when you cut it down to 10 with 15 seconds to go in the half, they scored 5 in those final seconds? How big of a momentum killer was that for you guys? COACH JUDKINS: I think that really hurt us. I think it's kind of like climbing up a hill, you get almost to the top of the hill, you're going to grab the last ledge, you slip and fall down 10 ledges. I told them the first half, If we can cut this to 10 points or less going into halftime, we can come back. I think when Cori had that open three and then we come back and we foul 'em, give another three-pointer, you just can't do those kind of things when you're trying to fight back. You know, I think sometimes you try so hard as a team, like both mentioned, they felt like they got punched in the face early. I think that kind of bothered them and they kind of lost the mental part of the game. We made more defensive mistakes tonight guarding them than we did the two previous games we played 'em. So I think that is just mental. That's just mental not thinking what you need to do and how you need to do it. You know, San Diego State has been here. They've been in the finals now the last three years. These guys have been in this tournament. I think experience in those situations can help you be ready to play and really do that. I know tonight if San Diego would have played the way they played against Wyoming, we would have beat them. But they didn't. They came, played a lot better. Just that experience, I think, really helped them. Q. Having been on both sides of this tournament format, what is your opinion now of how it should be and how much do you feel like not playing for six days hurt your team? COACH JUDKINS: Well, I think it hurt both us and TCU. Both of us lost. So we're going to consider as coaches, see what we think is really the best for our conference. The main reason we did this is we wanted No. 1 and 2 seed to have the best opportunity to really win the tournament. I think the negative part of it is we practice 55 minutes in the arena. I mean, that's all we had, 55 minutes to shoot in that arena, which we don't play during the season, so it's not like we can come practice here during the year. I think it affects you. I don't care what anybody says. That's no excuse tonight. I mean, we shot the ball all right. We just didn't defend, no matter if we were playing on a different court, we just didn't defend like we normally do. Q. Coach, you still got a lot of young players that will come back next year. I know it's early, but what do you see as this group's future? What do you need to do going into next year? Were you pleased with the progress this year? COACH JUDKINS: Well, I think if they come back, improve as much as they improved this year for next season, we will be a contender. If we don't win the league, I think my team would be disappointed. We have everybody back. We're going to be able to go to Europe this year as a team, which will give us some experience to play some other teams. I think we've got a lot of young kids that I sat out that were redshirted that will be ready to go. Hopefully we've learned from some of these things. We've played very well this year. We've played three games where we just got outplayed completely. That's kind of what I told my team after the game. I said, You know, we can't play three games like this. A game like this should be once in your career, where you get blown out, you're not mentally into the game. We had it happen to us. We got to do a better job of that. We got to figure out what causes that. I really know these guys want to win, and they're willing to work hard this off-season. They'll work hard again to try to improve so we can have a great season next year. Q. If the opportunity comes up, would you consider going to the WNIT this year? COACH JUDKINS: Yes, yes. Yeah, this team needs to go to a post-season tournament and really feel the excitement, the joy of going to a post-season tournament. Sometimes you take a lot of things for granted as players, as coaches. I think post-season, a lot of coaches really don't appreciate that as much. This team needs that. We need to go on and play well in post-season. If we do take the NIT, go, play really well, have a chance of representing our conference, our university well. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, coach. COACH JUDKINS: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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