Baylor, Texas Southern Postgame Quotes
3/18/2017 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery 
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Ferrell Center (Waco, Texas)
Attendance: 4,169
BAYLOR POSTGAME QUOTES
Kim Mulkey, Baylor Head Coach
Q. Coach, you said yesterday you were hoping your team came out and played with the same fire and enthusiasm that Texas Southern was going to have. Are you pleased with what you saw from your kids today?
Kim Mulkey: Without a doubt. I thought the group that started the game was as intense as they've been probably all year. I thought their intensity, I thought their focus was just so much better than the last game, and then the group that went in the game, all of them that went in the game, understood you'll come out of the game if you don't get in passing lanes. You're going to come out of the game if you allow people to go to the offensive boards, and I just felt sitting here looking at some of these stats, we shot 78 percent in the third quarter. I don't know if I've ever coached a team at Baylor that we haven't been in quarters many years, but that's pretty remarkable.
We did score a lot of points, but the thing I'm most proud of is how few points we gave up, and I just thought that -- we had to foul on the three-point shot, we fouled a couple jump shooters. You can't do that against teams when it's a close game. But I just thought our defense was just so much better, particularly help side.
Q. Did you think going into the game that it would be this one-sided?
Kim Mulkey: No. I don't ever think that. I know when I'm watching the film, I have a tendency to think, okay, we can do certain things against a team that we're getting ready to play, and I just thought that we did well with our high-low stuff, and we've been emphasizing that a lot lately. I think the misleading thing about this team is those three that were up here are pretty big, and they're two sophomores and a freshman. They've got a lot of basketball left in them. But guys, we're leading the country in three-point field goal percentage. I don't even know that I knew that until it was said at the press conference the other day. 40.6 percent from the three, so we've got kids that can shoot it out there, and we don't shoot as much as others in the country because if we do, I'm not a very good coach when you've got this kind of size inside. But we've got a lot of balance.
It was good to have Jones back today. I think she gave us valuable minutes, and I wanted to get her off the floor, and I thought it really showed when she had the ball in her hands how quickly she can get it down the floor.
Q. Going back to your size for a second, I went back and looked at the 2012 team National Championship team. You had four players 6'2" or bigger. You've got six on this team.
Kim Mulkey: Uh-huh.
Q. Is this just the way the game is going, just that you guys have been able to --
Kim Mulkey: No, I don't. I think the game, if you look across the country, I think it probably started with the Warriors. Everybody wants guards and everybody wants to spread the floor. I was a guard. I know where my bread was buttered. I got it to the big girls. Who in the country is going to turn down size? So we run offensive things that are much different than a lot of people who don't have our size.
Now, does it make for a difficult match-up defensively? Sometimes it does. But we've got to adjust. I'm not going to turn down 6'7", 6'4", 6'4". I'm just not going to do that.
Now, the 2012 team, you did have 6'2", 6'2", but then you had Brittney, so she made up for a lot of that.
Q. Talk about the contribution of your bench today. They got a lot of minutes because of the situation. Were you happy, ecstatic, or just --
Kim Mulkey: Well, our bench has been giving us that all year. I've said it many times, I don't know that I really have a bench. I can only play five at a time. I just thought that the work we've put in since the conference championship -- tournament championship game, I think you saw it today. I think you saw post players feeding each other better than they have all year. I think you saw production from people immediately when they came in the game. It's just been an emphasis to continue to work on your defense. Your offense is fine, continue to work on your defense, and I think our help side defense gets better and better, dribble penetration is always a concern because it's just hard to guard anybody one-on-one in the game anymore, so you've got to have that second and third defender, and we've got kids that can block shots. I want them taking more charges. I just want them to play better team defense.
Q. I was fortunate to be able to see both reactions at the selection on Monday and was really pleased to see the focus for both teams. I mean, it wasn't the big hooray, yeah, we're in. It's like, now we know who we're going to play, let's go. Business as usual. Talk about that; was it the right vibe that I was getting seeing both the reactions?
Kim Mulkey: Well, I wasn't in there, honestly. I had gone to my office and was checking in on my son's baseball, and by the time I got back in there, they'd already shot us on the TV. I saw the paper the next day and saw the reaction of the seniors on the front row there, and they're happy. They're beautiful girls, and yet at the same time those seniors are missing a Final Four, and they want to get to a Final Four.
Those seniors have sacrificed a lot. You've got Prince, who is -- I don't even know how many surgeries she's been through. You've got Jones with the knee who's back, you've got KK and Nina, whose roles have changed since they got here, but are such team players and great kids that they just want to get to a Final Four.
So yes, they were excited. We never take it for granted. Fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to view it, I guess people think it's not good if you're just an Elite 8 team. But I know there are lots of schools in the country that would trade places with us.
But we set the bar here. In 2005, I said then, I'm not sure we can feed this monster. Well, we're feeding it. Sometimes the stomach is not full and sometimes it is. We're going to fight and claw until the very end, and let's hope the bitter end is in Dallas, but if it's not, I know this, if it's not, the team that beats us just had played better, and that's what I said about West Virginia. They just played better. We never gave up. We fought hard. Let's see what happens.
Q. Just talk more about Alexis being able to be back on the floor today. Were you happy with what you saw out of her output and everything?
Kim Mulkey: Absolutely. Got her off the floor. She got 12, 15 minutes, I don't remember, but that's enough. Heck, that's about all any of them got today.
But I thought her -- with the ball in her hands from one end to the other, she got down the floor quickly. Alexis has tremendous vision and can make passes a lot of girls can't make, and her shot, I don't know that she took very many. Let's see. How many did she take? Five? Two for five? That's fine. Alexis Jones, really I didn't look at her and go, oh, wow, we're going to struggle with her out there, or oh, she's not healthy. I felt good with her out there. She picked up two quick fouls, which took her out of some minutes there early, but she looked good to me.
Lauren Cox, Forward
Q. Lauren, how much fun was that, because I don't know that you've shot that many three-pointers all year.
Lauren Cox: Yeah, that was a lot of fun, just because they were falling for me and my teammates were getting the ball, and we were just really working together and sharing the ball with each other.
Q. Question regarding the pace of the game, so two-part question. The pace of the game, how did you feel about the pace of the game, and how important was it for the post players to be able to see each other, feed each other, and just celebrate this victory today?
Lauren Cox: I think that's one of the things we do really well is run the floor, especially our posts. We are told to run free-throw line to free-throw line, and when we get out there, that's what we're trying to do, and our guards push it and get us the ball.
Sorry what was the other question?
Q. Passing.
Lauren Cox: Oh, that's something we've been working on in practice. Every day we go through a drill passing it to each other.
Q. Coach Mulkey talks about staying focused, staying into the game. When you all have situations like you had today where you get off to an early break quick and the defense picks up and it all starts to roll over in waves, how do you all keep focus in a situation like that and just steadily move forward and not have a drop-off?
Lauren Cox: We just have to feed off each other. If one of us hits a shot, even if we're up a lot, we just have to get excited and feed off each other's energy.
Kalani Brown, Post
Q. Kalani, against a team that you have a serious size advantage against, how important is it to take advantage of that?
Kalani Brown: It's very important to dominate the paint, especially when you don't have a lot of height. I think that we did that, all of us did that. Everybody came out ready and everybody came out and executed, and we were all ready to play.
Q. You guys set a record, largest margin of victory in an NCAA Tournament game. Does that mean anything to you? Is it cool to have?
Kalani Brown: Definitely it's an honor. We all worked hard. It was a team effort. Everyone contributed. And I think we're excited about it. I'm excited about it. I mean, not many teams do that.
Q. Question regarding the pace of the game, so two-part question. The pace of the game, how did you feel about the pace of the game, and how important was it for the post players to be able to see each other, feed each other, and just celebrate this victory today?
Kalani Brown: Piggy-backing off what both of them said, it's something we've been working on from day one. When you have shots like we have, it's got to be dominant, and I think Coach Mulkey really focuses on that.
As far as the pace of the game, the game plan was to rebound, and I thought we did that very well today. Lauren got some transition buckets. We did everything, executed today, basically.
Q. Coach Mulkey talks about staying focused, staying into the game. When you all have situations like you had today where you get off to an early break quick and the defense picks up and it all starts to roll over in waves, how do you all keep focus in a situation like that and just steadily move forward and not have a drop-off?
Kalani Brown: And also leadership. Leadership has a tendency to keep us focused in game situations. With them leading us, we're pretty much focused the entire way.
Beatrice Mompremier, Post
Q. Beatrice, Lauren talked about the sharing of the ball. I just looked, seven players had at least four assists. You two guys in particular shared it a lot. Can you talk about the post-to-post passing?
Beatrice Mompremier: Just coming out there, and if somebody opened up they should get the ball because they worked hard to get open, so just being able to pass it to them and they had a good shot.
Q. Question regarding the pace of the game, so two-part question. The pace of the game, how did you feel about the pace of the game, and how important was it for the post players to be able to see each other, feed each other, and just celebrate this victory today?
Beatrice Mompremier: Just going out in practice every day, like just running the floor and passing the post, like we do drills for it just to perfect it, so just going out there and doing what we've been working on in practice.
Q. Coach Mulkey talks about staying focused, staying into the game. When you all have situations like you had today where you get off to an early break quick and the defense picks up and it all starts to roll over in waves, how do you all keep focus in a situation like that and just steadily move forward and not have a drop-off?
Beatrice Mompremier: Just going out and not looking at the scoreboard, and thinking that the game is just 0-0 when you go out there.
TEXAS SOUTHERN POSTGAME QUOTES
Johnetta Hayes-Perry, Texas Southern Head Coach
Q. We talked the other day about experience and teaching moments and learning from your experiences. Just talk about today, not just coming up to this point but just talk about this game today.
JOHNETTA HAYES-PERRY: This game today was extremely competitive on the end of Baylor. I want to take my hat off to them.
I told our young ladies in the locker room a moment ago that you've probably played a Final Four team for sure. Great in size, shoot the ball well, shot the ball extremely well today. Some of that was us, but a lot of it was them hitting shots early. They did.
These young ladies have worked hard. They've worked really hard for me and for our university, and today was about them growing -- they say growing, experience, building, and we'll keep using those terms as we go in to postseason play. We're kicking their butt. Remember, you want to grow, you want to build, you want to get the experience so you can be back here and get another taste of it in the future. Breasia said it with confidence twice: We'll be back. And she showed me something different in her eyes with her vocabulary, with her leadership on the court, whether things are going good or bad, indifferent with her teammates, she's found a way to keep us in it, keep us locked in, engaged, from the athlete side. So that was important for us. That's important for us to have that. So I think that they took some steps forward. Even in a loss like this, they took some steps forward as a team today.
Q. You talked the other day about being overwhelmed. It's hard not to be. Was there a little bit of that, maybe particularly early in the game, of being overwhelmed by maybe the size or whatever it was?
JOHNETTA HAYES-PERRY: I'm sure they were. You know, they don't say certain things, but I could see it in their eyes earlier on, but as the game went, they realized, okay, I can get deflections here and there, and late in the game, I saw that. I may have been when the second-string team came in, but I saw them make some plays here and there defensively. I think the tempo is different. I disagree with Breasia a little bit. The pace of the game is definitely faster. In her mind maybe it's not, but it's definitely faster. So you have to learn how to control tempo, control pace, and I had a hard time trying to get control it from where I'm standing. I think that's something we'll take back, being overwhelmed and learning how to stay composed, having better composure to get attempts and looks and not have the ball come back so fast in transition or a dunk inside so easy. So definitely a little bit of them being overwhelmed, but eventually they settled down, and they will move forward knowing what to expect, the expectation for being in the dance.
Q. As the game was flowing and kind of getting away, what was your thought process? What was your goal? Was it let's keep it under 100? Let's keep it -- let's try and close the gap to this? What were you telling the ladies?
JOHNETTA HAYES-PERRY: I wanted them to actually take away something defensively. Whether we scored or not defensively, I wanted us to be better. Clearly we weren't, but down the stretch I saw us get a few deflections here and there, which felt like they could do earlier on with some things that they worked on. If someone is going to beat you, you can't let them beat you the same way. It was just dumb down, dumb down, dumb down. Like eventually, press up against her, push her out of bounds, do something. Don't hurt her, but be more physical, be more aggressive. Use your weight room. So that was some of the things I talked to them about.
I know Nycolle Smith picked up a foul, and people probably wonder why am I cheering. I'm cheering because she was trying to do what I asked her to do, to be a little more physical. If you're a little more physical, maybe it'll wear her down a little bit more. But as you know, Baylor has about six bigs. They just run them in and out, so they're all pretty fresh, and they finish well around the rim and they do their job. But that was my biggest thing. Just sticking to the game plan and trying to take something away. If you can take something away, what will it be? Let's take away this pass. Have they beat us off the dribble from the high post yet? Nope. And I think hit one shot from the high post late in the game, but they keep dumping inside, so either take the pass away, or back up and help inside, things of that nature. And again, we're undersized, so we're playing without Shamiya Brooks, who's been here twice before today, but all in fairness, Kelena Morris probably played the most minutes she's played this season today. She averaged maybe 2.1 minutes a game, if that, Big Mo, and she had to play at least double-digit minutes today.
So overwhelmed? For a freshman who hasn't been in this situation before, and the ball is being dunked over and over again? Yeah, a little bit. So they had to adjust to her, too. Like even with our offensive sets with her being out there. But again, it was a great time for her to have that because our future is wrapped around her, so that was important.
Joyce Kennerson, Guard
Q. Joyce, as difficult as this outcome is, what do you guys take out of this that you can move forward with and the experience of this game to move forward?
JOYCE KENNERSON: Well, there's really nothing that we can take out of it. We did the best we could, which was to hold them accountable to their mistakes, which we capitalized on towards the end. But I think we should have did better.
Q. This team is young. This was an experience, a learning experience for everybody involved. What will you all take back, not just playing the game but all of it, the tournament itself, having your name called and being a part of your group, being a first?
JOYCE KENNERSON: Well, since the team is young, basically the key is growth. We have a lot more learning to do, and this is just the beginning.
Chynna Ewing, Guard
Q. Again, it was tough, but y'all played tough. What were you saying to each other on the court? How were you keeping your spirits up throughout the game?
CHYNNA EWING: Well, we were just trying to keep each other uplifted even thought we were down and just do the things that we normally do and talk to each other and talk each other through it.
Q. Obviously you're very emotional. Can you tell us what you're feeling right now?
CHYNNA EWING: Well, I feel like we were blessed to have this opportunity, but I do wish we would have played better against them, and I think that we should have -- like at the end we played very well, like defensively, and I feel like we should have did that at the very beginning, and like the game would have probably came out better.
Q. This team is young. This was an experience, a learning experience for everybody involved. What will you all take back, not just playing the game but all of it, the tournament itself, having your name called and being a part of your group, being a first?
CHYNNA EWING: And I feel like since we are young, we're going to learn stuff, and as we get older, we're going to finally figure it out and figure out what we need to do as a team in order to take the next step and to keep going and to just build as a team.
Breasia McElrath, Foward
Q. Breasia, did you feel like the game, the pace of the game, was faster than you would have expected?
BREASIA McELRATH: A little faster, but no, I didn't think it was faster than was to be expected. We've played with fast-paced teams before. It was just they outscored us. Yeah, that's it. They outscored us.
But we'll be ready next year. It won't be the last time you see Texas Southern. We took this experience, and we're going to capitalize on it and get better from it. That's basically it.
Q.This team is young. This was an experience, a learning experience for everybody involved. What will you all take back, not just playing the game but all of it, the tournament itself, having your name called and being a part of your group, being a first?
BREASIA McELRATH: For me it was tempo. I liked the passion of the game. I took the experience on, playing at a high level, and I'm going to do that every time. I'm going to give my all every time because this is where I want to be next year, and you will see us next year.
