Latest / Coaches Corner / Seg 1 - WBB Show Oct 29

Transcript

Seg 1 - WBB Show Oct 29 · Coaches Corner

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The Lord. Everyone. We're at the iHeart Music Lounge, home
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of our flagship Fox Sports ninety seven to nine. We've
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: got sponsors, we've got fans. We're all here to see
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the Hall of Fame. Head coach of you Got women's basketball,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: gino Oriema, coming off their twelfth national championship last spring,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: when they knocked off UCLA in South Carolina in one
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: of the more impressive final fours that I think I've
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: ever seen. First of all, welcome to a new season.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: It's good to see you again, my friend.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, thank you. It's good to be here.
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  Speaker 3: It's good to be here, and I'm looking forward to it. Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: pretty amazing. You know what happened last season. I think
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: whenever we did the show here, I remember the exact date,
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: but I think maybe somebody asked, me, Hey, you know,
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: you have chance to win a national championship this year.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: I said, no chance, because I didn't.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: I didn't think we had it in us, you know,
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: But I also didn't think that, you know, Sarah was
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: going to be Sarah, and you know Asy was going
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: to turn into Asy, and Page obviously was Page, and
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  Speaker 3: so a lot of things went exactly the way they
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: needed to go and here we are you know.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: So yeah, And I'm gonna start with that because February seventh,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: you and I did a coaches show, not even what
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: fourteen hours after you had lost to Tennessee, and it
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: was a lot of eye opening comments from you. You
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: go out and beat Providence, you go out and beat
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  Speaker 1: Saint John's. I didn't interview you before South Carolina because
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: you're on ESPN Game Day and you mentioned before that
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: that you felt really good about your team in March,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and then we saw what you did to South Carolina
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and the thought was where has this been all year?
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: And if they play like this, they can win it all.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Come to find out, Page said the same thing in
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  Speaker 1: the locker room. What changed in that time that made
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: you believe that you could really do some damage and
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: win the whole thing?
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: I think more of I said, I think we're going
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: to be really good in March. I don't remember ever
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: saying I think we're going to win the National Championship.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: No comment.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: I just said I think I think we're going to
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: be pretty good in March. Part of that was we're
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: always good in March. We're always better in March than
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: we are in February. We're always better in March than
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: we were in January. So and we're always better in
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: January than we were in December. So you know, it
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: takes time, and you build on it and build on
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: it and build on it. And I thought, you know,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Katelyn Chen has never played that deep in the NCAA tournament.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Sarah is not playing in the NCAA tournament period, you know,
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: so you know, you just felt like, if these things
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: kind of fall the right way, then I think we're going.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: To be okay.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: After we played South Carolina at South Carolina, that's when
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: I first started to think that if we can hold
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: on to this and improve on it even a little bit,
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: that we would have a chance that we would be
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: as good as anybody in the country. Stay healthy, get
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: a little bit better. And you know, a big, a
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: big thing was going into the South Carolina game. You know,
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: I had to make some you know, adjustments, you know,
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: myself with my team. You know, you know, I'm generally
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: full of joy and positive thinking. Everybody you know knows
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: that I'm just great to be around all the time
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: I practice in any games, and how much I loved
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: my players and tell them everything's great and they're great
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: and never criticize them. So I had to make some
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: adjustments in how I communicated with my team, you know,
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: in a way that they.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Totally totally brought.
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  Speaker 3: In and understood, and it had a big effect. It
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: had a huge effect actually because we started to play
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: without worrying about last year or the year before, because
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: when you lose in the final four, sometimes that stays
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: with you a long time, you know, and you start
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  Speaker 3: to question, like can I win some of these big games?
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  Speaker 3: And I had to make up some stuff to let
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: them believe that they could.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Well, you didn't need to motivate them too much in
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: the final four, I mean that was Those two games
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  Speaker 1: against who you played were spectacular now also too, I
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  Speaker 1: think just my thought the offense was so good along
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: with the defense got better than the rebound, but the
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: offense was so good. The way you pushed the pace,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: it made it hard for the opposition. They've almost had
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: to match you and they couldn't do it.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we beat four number or every number
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  Speaker 3: one seed, right, yeah, okay, I mean who were the
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: number one seeds? South Carolina was one, UCLA was the
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: overall number one. USC was the number one. So you know,
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: in the final eight, i mean Sweet sixteen, in the
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: final eight, semis, in the finals, they were all number ones. Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: and usually you don't you don't see that many number ones,
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  Speaker 3: you know. So we had to beat really really good
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  Speaker 3: team teams, and and I thought, I thought the Oklahoma
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: game was really special in a way that we were
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  Speaker 3: We were down at halftime if I remember, and you know,
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  Speaker 3: you're down at halftime in it in the final in
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  Speaker 3: the NCAA Tournaments Sweet sixteen game, and you you know,
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  Speaker 3: and in the locker room there was no you know,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: oh my god, you know, there was no I don't
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  Speaker 3: know what we're gonna do. It was very very all right,
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  Speaker 3: so this is what they did, this is what we did,
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  Speaker 3: This is what they're gonna do, this is what we're
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  Speaker 3: going to do, and let's go. It was really that
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: that kind of conversation, just like that, no yelling, screaming,
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  Speaker 3: any of that stuff.
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  Speaker 2: You know, Oh you had looks they just didn't fall.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean yeah, yeah, you know, and I knew
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: Page was going to score forty. So that's when you know,
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: there's a saying that I believe in. I think our
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: program I've talked about it before. Our program can get
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: us to the regionals just about every year. That's what
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: we're set up to do, right, we have good players,
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: you know, we get better and knock on wood. You know,
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: we've been to the regionals how.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Many every year since ninety four?
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  Speaker 3: Every year since nineteen ninety four, I don't know how
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: many years that is, but it's a lot. Yeah, so
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: we've been to that. We've been one of the top
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: sixteen teams in the country for that many years in
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  Speaker 3: a row. However, once you get to the final eight game,
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: to go to the final four and beyond, if you
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: want to win those three games, your program isn't going
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: to win it when you need your superstars to win
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: it and if you don't have that kind of player
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  Speaker 3: or a couple of them, you're not going to win.
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  Speaker 3: And that's basically you know those nine years that we
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: didn't win for whatever reason. You know twenty seventeen, right,
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: we lose at the buzzer. We should have won that
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: game back to back years. Yeah, I screwed something up.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: The following year we lose at the buzzer right in,
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: but over time, right, so those with a chance to
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: win at the end of regulation and we didn't win it.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: And then you know, COVID and everything that led up
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  Speaker 3: to all that. You know, we just weren't good enough.
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  Speaker 3: We didn't have the kind of people that were equipped
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: to win a national championship. We could get there, we
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: could get there. Even page of sophomore year. We played
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: in the National championship game, but.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Everybody had COVID. I mean I did, all the coaches did,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: all the players did. Everybody.
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  Speaker 3: I think Acy played like thirteen minutes or something like
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: a half fifteen, like everybody was sick. And I'm pretty honest,
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  Speaker 3: you know when I speak, and I remember telling my
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: coaches before that championship game, I said, one of two
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: things is going to happen. We're gonna get blown out,
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: or we're going to win like in double overtime. I said,
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  Speaker 3: But this isn't going to be like you know, Ukon
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  Speaker 3: wins by twelve or you know, any of those things.
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  Speaker 3: It's not going to happen. So first five minutes we
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: got blown out because we just didn't have you know,
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: and we I think we used so much in the
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: Stanford game to win that Stanford game. Nobody thought we
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: were going to win the Stanford game. So last year
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: we went there with everybody healthy. This first time, page
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: went to the final four with all of the starters intact,
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: and you know.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: We we were we were, we were in great shape.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: And and then our stars played like superstars.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah they sure did. Two of them were back by
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the way. We'll get to that in a minute. Our
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: first break, we're live in the iHeart Music lound. Listen
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: to you kind of one of the basketball coach to
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: sow On Learfield back in a minute.