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WNBA FINALS: DREAM v LYNX


October 2, 2011


Seimone Augustus

Angel McCoughtry

Lindsay Whalen


MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA: Game One

DREAM - 74

LYNX – 88

THE MODERATOR: If you could each make an opening remark and then we'll have questions. Lindsay will go first.
LINDSAY WHALEN: Well, it's Game 1. We know it's one down. You know, we thought it -- took us a little while to get going. Atlanta did a great job. They played a great game. And fourth quarter, we put a good run together. We felt like we played more aggressively in the second half. We shared the ball more in the second half.
And to Coach's credit, she got us kind of refocused on playing aggressive and sharing the ball. So we're happy with the win. And it's one down.
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: Everything was -- it was an amazing game tonight. Two competitive teams. I think we started off a little slow. We tried to get the kinks out. It's been four or five days since we played our last game.
And give all credit to Atlanta. They did an amazing job tonight at being efficient and effective throughout the game and just trying to go their go-to scorer which is Angel McCoughtry.
And Lindsey Harding did a great job. She had 22 points. She jumpstarted, kickstarted them. But overall I'll say in about the fourth quarter we started to make our turn, we started playing Lynx defense and creating some havoc and getting turnovers and converting them over into easy baskets.

Q. Lindsay, this is your home and, Seimone, you've played here a long time. Could you talk about the atmosphere here tonight?
ANGEL McCOUGHTRY: It was amazing, just to run out and to see the white pompoms waving in the air and the seats are actually field, even the upper row, upper deck was filled. It's amazing to see how the community has embraced us and they're coming out and supporting us.
From tip to the last horn, it was loud, to the point where we had to call our plays two and three times to relay to the team to make sure we got the right calls. So it was a great thing.
LINDSAY WHALEN: Just a great atmosphere, walking in to warm up, we saw all the white pompoms, like Seimone said. That was pretty cool. And everybody got into the game there. It took us a little while to get playing but once we got going, it was really loud. It was a great atmosphere and we hope for another great atmosphere on Wednesday night.

Q. How pivotal would you say the first round with San Antonio was because we saw a similar scenario tonight through the first three quarters and a 13-0 run ultimately proved the difference in this game as the Lynx won by 14?
LINDSAY WHALEN: I think early in the second quarter, I think we were down 12 or 14, something like that, we had taken a timeout. And we all just said it's a long game. Long timeouts, long game. We knew that we could make a run. We knew that we would make a run back at them. They would probably make another run.
And no time to panic or get frustrated, they were making shots. We were kind of still, we didn't shoot the ball very well in the first half. And defensively, like I said, we weren't quite close enough to shooters as we needed to be.
And we just kept saying it's a long game and, yeah, we knew from that San Antonio game just hang in there and we knew our run would come at some point.

Q. Seimone, during these playoffs you've matched up against Hammon, Terrase and now McCoughtry. Talk about what she brings to the table other than those other two guards?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: She's extremely aggressive. When you think you've got her stop, she's going to make that extra move, get that extra contact to try to get to the foul line and get free throws. And you know she can score from all over. She's going to get to the basket. She can shoot tonight. That's the less of the evils. We wanted her to take jumpers or 3-pointers, but they were going in tonight. It was a tough guard all the way around.
You have to expect that she's going to get 20, 25 points in a game. It's about maintaining and containing everybody else and making it difficult for them.

Q. Game 1 is in the books. Game 2 is on Wednesday. What do you guys need to do to make adjustments to win that game?
LINDSAY WHALEN: I think we'll take a look at video and see where some mistakes that we made, see some areas that we can improve in and we'll use the next two days to do that and get prepared for Wednesday and just off the top of my head, just defensively in the first half being a little more aggressive, I think we only turned them over once in the first half which is pretty uncharacteristic of our team. But, yeah, we'll look at the video and we'll figure it out. We know they'll do the same. So we'll just do that over the next few days.

Q. The first question relates to offense, second to defense. On offense tonight you had 22 assists on 35 makes. So I'd like you to talk about the role of the team play in this win and the second half on defense, in the first half, they're hedging on the sidelines, really seemed to bother you. In the second half you seemed to have found a way out of it, so could you talk about what you did to break that up?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: I forgot the first part.

Q. Sharing the ball, first question.
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: That was key coming into tonight. We knew that their defense isn't as disciplined as most other defenses. They're going to gamble a lot what you think may be open is not going to be open. Making the extra pass is key because that's where you're going to get the open shots. That's where you're going create closeouts for them that we possibly want to attack, try to get to the basket or have an open way for it to get to our posts. Rebekkah Brunson did an amazing job getting open and we fed her the ball to get her 26 points.
If she didn't get the ball, she was in amazing position to get offensive rebounds, to have that extra pass or teamwork created a lot of different situations for us to score or get easy offensive rebounds.
LINDSAY WHALEN: The second part was about hedging? Yeah. I think we just tried to more or less just attack. Not really worry about what they were in or -- just if you had an angle, try to get to the basket. And I know Seimone was doing that, I was doing that. And they were doing a great job on pick and roll at the start and we just make an adjustment and go play.
I think we were just kind of stuck in that the first couple of quarters, just trying to figure out what play we're in, this and that. But once we started playing and going to our strengths, things really opened up for us.

Q. Lindsay, Seimone talked about it a little bit but how big was Brunson for you especially early and the second half without their big center, seemed points in the paint were huge for you, rebounds as well?
LINDSAY WHALEN: Yeah, she was really awesome tonight. 26 and 11. She just seemed to make huge shots when we needed them all night. She was hitting the free-throw line jumper. She was running in transition. She was getting steals.
She was all over the place. She just played a huge role for us tonight, and she really carried us at times. You can't really say enough about her effort tonight.

Q. You guys seemed to be, I've watched you all year, you seem to be getting the ball back down the court fast, extremely fast, speaking of attacks. Is this a program deal or is this just happening, just speeding up the ball?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: We always want to get the ball out and run. And it's especially nice when you play a team that likes to run they don't necessarily like to get ran back on.
So we wanted to make sure that we got the rebound, secured the rebound. They always send two people to try to deflect the pass out or whatever. So once you do get that initial pass out is get it going and attack the basket and put the pressure on them, put the pressure on the ref to try to make those calls, get the easy baskets. Either way we were trying to be more aggressive.

Q. Seimone, you started 1 of 7 from the floor and the team kind of struggled. They were forced into contestant jumpers. What changed offensively for you guys?
SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: We just slowed down. I think early in the game we were just so excited and there was a lot of emotions going on and we just really didn't take our time and weren't as patient as we normally are offensively. And once we got into our groove, you could see the difference. We started to make the right cuts. We started to set gray screens. We started to get the ball where it needed to go. But early on I think it was just a lot of emotions, a lot of energy that was being used in maybe the wrong way early on in the game.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports




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