Latest / Coaches Corner / Geno Auriemma - Postgame Creighton

Transcript

Geno Auriemma - Postgame Creighton · Coaches Corner

• 0:08
  Jobs responding now you can grow up, thank you? What were you want
• 0:23
  to ask about? All were? You can tell about bit on her,
• 0:25
  But what was it like to your teams respond after that, especially the way
• 0:28
  they finished it or another play? Yeah, it was. It was our
• 0:53
  second straight game where we where we play like like we wanna play, especially
• 1:17
  in our league now. And it generally, you know, it generally starts
• 1:26
  with Aliyah and Paige. You know, when those two are are really aggressive
• 1:41
  and tonight they work it it. It makes everybody on the on the team
• 1:52
  feel pretty confident in knowing that, you know, they can just do their
• 2:04
  thing. Yeah, I D and and coming off of what happened, you
• 2:13
  know, it's just, uh, it's hard for them to you know,
• 2:21
  obviously to concentrate on it. But I D I D. I do think
• 2:25
  they were they were able to do that. You know that old fourth quarter?
• 2:36
  Do you did you see what what happened or happens to describe to you
• 2:38
  what happened to the hammer and it looks like you grabbed left me. Yeah,
• 2:50
  apparently she went to put her foot down and her foot friend then like
• 2:59
  that and it kind of kicked her her knee end and it wasn't anybody around
• 3:07
  her and wasn't any contact. There was a I mean, she was still
• 3:10
  on the floor. It wasn't like she jumped or anything. From what from
• 3:15
  a little I've been able to gather, be able to watch more and when
• 3:23
  I get back. But you know, the h team doctor for Creighton came
• 3:30
  out and uh he you know he he pretty much said that the knees very
• 3:39
  very unstable, and I guess one of them more when we when we do
• 3:47
  the tests. UH, coach, what did you think of your team's defensive
• 3:55
  performance? Side fel like cread didn't even catch up. That's when the girl
• 4:04
  m m M I. I I really believe that when you're playing and when
• 4:10
  you're playing Creyton, you probably have the toughest defensive assignment of uh, of
• 4:17
  any team in our league. They're they're experienced, you know, they've been
• 4:27
  playing together for a long time. They're really smart. They take advantage of
• 4:32
  just about every one of your mistakes, and they forced you to be on
• 4:40
  point defensively. And we knew that we were gonna have some breakdowns, and
• 4:46
  we did. But I think overall, uh, not just tonight, but
• 4:54
  also on Sunday, I thought these were two tremendous defensive games that we played.
• 5:00
  Get contributions from a lot of people, and you know, you've gotta
• 5:08
  try to be disruptive with Crayton, they're so well well drilled and you know,
• 5:14
  well coached in their in their scheme of what they wanna do, and
• 5:17
  and I just felt we worked incredibly hard and communicated incredibly well, and we
• 5:30
  talked about going into the game that even teams as good as Crayton is at
• 5:36
  at shooting threes, you know they're gonna they're gonna miss more than they make.
• 5:44
  You know, that's what every team does. Uh. I don't know
• 5:46
  that any team goes out and shoots fifty percent from the three point line for
• 5:50
  long. So we had to capitalize on all those misses to put a little
• 5:57
  more pressure on them the other way. And we did. We did,
• 6:02
  we we took advantage of of their misses and again got contributions from from a
• 6:10
  lot of people. But everything starts with Paige and and Aaliyah, and I
• 6:15
  thought they were both great, Like your moments brand, is this the kind
• 6:21
  of performance you want to see? The perfect You know, I s has
• 6:29
  a lot of talent, she has a lot of natural skills, she don't
• 6:33
  know how to use'em right now. So at the beginning, you know,
• 6:40
  it's about competing really hard. It's about you know, asserting yourself defensively,
• 6:46
  offensively, rebounding the ball, playing good d And I thought today was
• 6:51
  her best game. I thought she she gave us some great minutes and was
• 6:56
  a factor out there. So I'm hoping that this gets her going in the
• 7:00
  right direction. And that ball that was going out of bounds to the end
• 7:10
  to half was it the end of half? Okay, third quarter? Then
• 7:13
  the third quarter that she saved. She never goes after that ball in practice.
• 7:19
  She just lets the mind to just go get it. So today she
• 7:23
  actually did something that I didn't think she was capable of do'em. So
• 7:28
  I just hope just usually sol Uh, you're the players of the agels take
• 7:41
  the ring. What does the smaller end of this team is? Why is
• 7:44
  this agree? Did you never la her? You know, Alreas had to
• 7:55
  overcome a lot. You know, she had one of these in high school
• 8:01
  and she missed a year at Yukon she had needed back surgery, and it's
• 8:05
  just you you just are heartbroken for a kid when it's their last year and
• 8:16
  something like this happens. It's the basketball part is is actually when this happens,
• 8:26
  the basketball part is actually really secondary. You know, you know you
• 8:33
  if you try to say, wow, how are we going to replace her
• 8:35
  on the basketball court? And I don't think anybody thinks like that. I
• 8:41
  think it's more of you know, the rest of your teammates just knowing that
• 8:52
  you're gonna have to fight your way through this and it's not an easy one.
• 8:58
  And we were talking locker room about you know, Jamel brought it up.
• 9:03
  She said, we're in this We're in this bubble where it's all around
• 9:07
  us, all around us. Every day you pick up a paper. Every
• 9:11
  day you see a new story. Some somebody on some team has something that
• 9:18
  puts'em out for the year. Any sport, any sport. I don't
• 9:20
  know what it is, what what's going on. But right now we're we're
• 9:28
  in a we're in a a bad cycle. And I think the kids are
• 9:37
  and uh I I think they're just kind of got it out by all this.
• 9:46
  You know, anything else, f help you? What do you think
• 9:56
  of your team's all moving tonight and you just nineteen assists and the first time,
• 10:01
  but like everything on system. Well, we spent the whole month of
• 10:15
  November standing around watching each other, hoping that somebody would would make her play.
• 10:22
  And you know, Flann and I were talking about it. It's not
• 10:33
  easy when you insert somebody like Page into the lineup. She commands so much.
• 10:41
  Everybody else on the team has to change their role. I mean,
• 10:46
  not a lead, but certainly everybody else. You know, all the premier
• 10:50
  players gotta change their role because of what she shed, she adds. And
• 10:58
  it took a while, but once we figured it out. I mean,
• 11:03
  for us to score this many points, this many times against quality teams,
• 11:11
  it's all because of our ball movement. It's all because of the pace that
• 11:15
  we're playing at and how everybody sharing it. You know that there was a
• 11:22
  there was a stretch in the third quarter we could kind of reverted back to
• 11:26
  what I don't like. But for the most part, that's been the biggest
• 11:33
  change in our team. That's gotten us on this this role that we're on
• 11:41
  right now, has been how well we've moved the ball and our rotation was
• 11:46
  really set. You know, hope we would be able to come in and
• 11:50
  make us bigger, make us longer, make us quicker, help us rebounding,
• 11:54
  and you know, so we had a little bit of an answer for
• 12:00
  everything, and it just the confidence level was sky high. And when you're
• 12:07
  like that, the ball does ten. We talked a lot about it early,
• 12:11
  like about three weeks ago, four weeks ago, that everything was heavy,
• 12:16
  you know, like the ball was heavy. The ball was stuck all
• 12:18
  the time, all the time, all the time. And that's because the
• 12:24
  the the the the vibe on the team was heavy. Guys were trying to
• 12:28
  figure things out and they were struggling. And now and everything's light. Everything
• 12:37
  practices, light, shoot arounds, light, the ball's light. It just
• 12:43
  and that's that's the result. And we talked about her a lot ons on
• 12:54
  day. But you could reach the five hundred caress today was likely to see
• 12:58
  you here where you use that also, I I I I'll never forget when
• 13:05
  we were recruiting, recruiting Nika, and I remember she she said to me
• 13:11
  one time that she would much rather have an assist than than score. And
• 13:24
  a lot of kids say that and they don't really mean it, but you
• 13:28
  know, she she said something that I really hadn't thought of, you know,
• 13:33
  that idea of what when you score one person's happy you cause you scored.
• 13:39
  And when you get an assist, that kid's happy. And so were
• 13:41
  you cause you were responsible for that basket. And that's the way she lives
• 13:46
  and that's the way she plays, and so I'm not surprised that she got
• 13:52
  there, and especially this year where she's up around how many she get today?
• 13:58
  Seven? She got seven today? Uh, And with KK out there
• 14:03
  and Page out there, sh they're all trying to figure it out, you
• 14:07
  know, what to do. And uh, she's still you know, she
• 14:13
  still controls what's going on out there, she still controls the team, coach
• 14:18
  for her crowd, your uh, DJ socol and just the girl of women's
• 14:20
  sports and women's basketball. What can you say about what you doing this storm
• 14:24
  the past year? Your TIB. Yeah, it's something that's been it's it's
• 14:37
  been on its way for quite some time. Maybe there was some resistance against
• 14:46
  it for a long time, you know, but it seems like in this
• 14:52
  past year especially, there's been kind of a breakthrough and people are so much
• 15:01
  more aware, engaged. Hey, let me go see what the hoopla is.
• 15:09
  Let me go and be a part of it. And the product's been
• 15:13
  great, you know, and there's been some great performances by a lot of
• 15:18
  really terrific players. I I I I think the style of play that people
• 15:31
  play, I think is appealing if it's done right. And I think Creighton
• 15:35
  certainly has a style of play that's appealing. I was saying before the game,
• 15:41
  I said, this is a huge home court advantage. Discort, you
• 15:48
  know, you fill this place up. It's it's great. And I was
• 15:54
  really proud of the fact that that's what happened today, that they set a
• 15:58
  record, right, I said, a record type. Yeah. Somebody asked
• 16:03
  me one time, said do you think flam would play you across the street
• 16:10
  down there, you know, in a big arena, And I said why,
• 16:15
  And they said, well, you know, you might get like ten
• 16:17
  twelve thousand people there. I said, I don't really think he cares about
• 16:19
  that. I think he'd rather play us right here all the time. And
• 16:26
  I don't blame him. This is it's a great environment for women's women's basketball.
• 16:34
  Thank you, thank you. Thanks guys. You weren't how many players
• 16:38
  available set don't player? Yeah? Thank you. Oh