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#9 Air Force 47, #8 Colorado State 46 2007 MWC Women's Basketball Tournament First Round
March 6, 2007
Air Force
THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Air Force academy head coach Ardie McInelly and the two student athletes, Alecia Steele and Letricia Castillo. Coach, if you would begin with some opening remarks. COACH McINELLY: First of all, I'm just very proud of these young women for what they've accomplished. It's the first time in the history of the academy that they've won a tournament game, both men and women. I just wish we had our men's record (laughter). We're very proud of what our players did tonight. I thought it was a well fought game. I think that, I'll tell you what, Sara Hunter, she's remarkable. We did something a little bit different today. We ended up putting Pam Findley on her. Pam's almost 6'. She's 5'11". We were thinking maybe if we could have a taller player guard Sara, we could keep her under her average. She's a very good player. She still ended up scoring 17 points on us. But, you know, we made the plays at the end of the game, especially Alecia Steele putting in a put back that won us the game. Very proud of these young women. We're just going to get ready for BYU tomorrow. THE MODERATOR: The next couple minutes, let's have our questions directed to the student athletes, please. Q. Alecia, can you explain the last play there, what you saw? Were you aware of how little time there was left? ALECIA STEELE: I knew that once Pam got the ball, when she was driving, people were counting down seven, six. We had seven seconds left on the clock. I knew she was more than capable of driving to the basket and creating the shot. I was just following her for the rebound. I seen it didn't go in. I was going to do whatever I had to do to grab that rebound and put it back, and that's what I did. Q. It seemed like you missed shot after shot right there in that stretch. How confident were you it was going to finally go in when you did put it up?
ALECIA STEELE: Hey, we decided that we weren't going to give up, we weren't going to stop playing till that buzzer sounded. So we were very confident. We knew we were still in it. Until the clock said zero seconds, we were going to keep playing. Q. For both you girls, it's been kind of a disappointing season I would say. How much does this make up for it, I guess, or does it? LETRICIA CASTILLO: It has been a disappointing season. But this just shows that our hard work has paid off and that we keep trying, keep perservering. It just makes us really excited for tomorrow, to prepare for tomorrow, so... ALECIA STEELE: Like Trish said, we were very frustrated with our season. But, hey, it's a clean slate in the tournament, so we're finally going to put 40 minutes together and do our best to continue to do well. Q. Alecia, did you actually see the rim when you shot the last shot, or was it just kind of a throw and hoper? ALECIA STEELE: It was just the reaction. I'm used to grabbing rebounds, so I grabbed it. There wasn't any time to try to pass it back out, so I just put it back up. Q. Either player, this was not necessarily a pretty game for either team. There were a lot of missed shots, a lot of turnovers, a lot of sloppy play. Was that just two teams that were desperate, or was there something else that caused it to be kind of that way? LETRICIA CASTILLO: I think it's more we both were trying so hard to pick it up on the defensive end. We were going to do whatever it took to stop the other team from scoring, just prevent them from doing what they normally do. So that just comes with the game, turnovers, missed shots. But it took a lot of drive and determination to finally put the last one in, so that's the one we were really excited went in. It was just mostly pressure defense that really kind of changed momentum of the game. Q. For both girls, first conference tournament victory ever in the history of the program. There will never be another first again. How does this feel? ALECIA STEELE: I just keep smiling. I keep clapping. It feels great. It feels so good to finally, you know, get that win and to know that, you know, we're more than capable of achieving a victory. So we're happy. I don't think we'll stop smiling. LETRICIA CASTILLO: I think that's it. We're both screaming and shouting. We're really excited because we knew that we were capable of winning that first ever tournament game for Air Force, men or women. We're just excited because we worked so hard and finally it paid off today. THE MODERATOR: Ladies, we'll let you two go. Thank you, congratulations. Questions for coach McInelly. Q. Kind of the same thing I asked the girls, certainly there were a lot of things, both teams looked like they were struggling in a lot of ways. You looked frustrated on the sidelines much of the game. Jen Warden looked frustrated. Was it just two teams playing really hard that are fairly similar, or were there other reasons that things just didn't seem to be going right for either team for much of the game and yet it ended up being a great finish? COACH McINELLY: I'll tell you what, I think that, as I said before, Sara Hunter is one of the best players out there. I thought that we tried to do whatever we could to stop her. I would get really frustrated when she could still make those very tough shots, you know, with someone in her face. So I have a lot of respect for the young lady. I have a lot of respect for Colorado State and some of the things that they did. I know that, you know, they're only going to continue to get better. Our frustration is probably a culmination of our record. It's nice to know that at the end of the game, our players could pull out this win. It's nice to be able to say that we're going to be able to play tomorrow night. You know, maybe the game wasn't pretty, but doesn't matter to us. We won it, and that's the most important thing. Q. Was there a team in America that needed a victory more than the Air Force women's team right at this time of the season? COACH McINELLY: Nope (laughter). I mean, it was nice. It was nice to finally get that win. You know, wish we could have gotten a lot more. But, you know, you can't look behind; you can only look ahead. So we're going to start preparing for tomorrow. Q. Not to shuttle the celebration right now, but in very short time you've got to play the best team in the league. What do you need to do to play better against them than you did the first two games? COACH McINELLY: Well, what we have to do against BYU, if my memory serves me correctly (smiling), we've got to do a better job defensively; we've got to do a better job boxing out; we've got to take care of the ball; we've got to take high personal shots. BYU is a team very similar to, I kind of want to say Utah and Wyoming, in that they don't play a pressure defense, they basically kind of gap it up. They play off you. They make you hit outside shots. We've got to do a good job of, you know, executing our offense against them. You know, we'll have some time to go back and look at some game film to see if coaches, and you know, use that hour we have tomorrow to prepare for BYU. They're a great team. You know, it's just fun because, you know, that's why we play the game. They're No. 1 and we're No. 9. All of a sudden we just moved up a spot, so you never know what can happen. If our players can keep the energy and keep a positive attitude, hopefully execute the things that we need to do, then we'll have a chance. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, coach. We'll see you tomorrow. COACH McINELLY: Thank you. Colorado StateTHE MODERATOR: Now we're joined by Colorado State University head coach Jen Warden, student athletes Sara Hunter and Marilyn Moulton. Coach, if you want to begin with some opening remarks. COACH WARDEN: Congratulations to Air Force. I thought they played very tough. They're a very tough minded team. I said at halftime that they're a tremendously well coached team. I think Ardie McInelly does a great job with her team, with her recruiting. I think they're a very formidable opponent, so congratulations to them. Good luck against BYU. I'm very proud of our players. I'm proud of our season. I'm proud of our players sitting to my left. Sara Hunter, again, I don't know if I've taken Sara out of a game since December. She's just been a terrific, terrific focal point for us. I think you could see down the stretch what she means to us because we trusted her with the ball every possession of the game, bar none. Marilyn, again, seven offensive boards, tremendous consistency, tremendous temperament. You know, it's going to be difficult to see her go from the program. But I just look forward to her donations back to the program in the future as a radiologist. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student athletes, please. Q. Sara, it seemed like your shots were not falling there a lot of times, especially the threes. They changed who guarded you. You had a much taller player guarding you. Did that have an impact or the shot wasn't there early tonight? Finally came late, I guess. SARA HUNTER: No, I mean, it didn't really some nights your shots don't fall. I just picked a bad night, I guess. That's when you got to make adjustments as an offensive player and find something that does work, go to the basket, create for your teammates. Q. Marilyn, could you recount those last seconds and what was going on out there? MARILYN MOULTON: Well, we just needed a stop at the end. I think we did pretty well. We held them off till the last second. It was a good defensive stand, but the last no board was the game winner, so... Q. Were you close to the ball? MARILYN MOULTON: Yeah. Q. Looked like you were fairly close. MARILYN MOULTON: Yeah. Q. Did you get your hands on it? MARILYN MOULTON: No, I didn't. Q. It seemed like when the shots weren't falling, you started getting a lot more aggressive, driving, got them on one possession alone I think they committed five fouls. Was that a very intentional, if we can't hit from the outside, let's get something somehow, get to the line, whatever? SARA HUNTER: Yeah. You know, every timeout that was called or media timeout, coach came to the huddle. You know, she said, We can't play finesse. If we're not hitting from the outside, we've got to create something from the inside. Everything else will fall into place. It just came too late. Ultimately, you know, it was really rebounds that killed us. Q. Do you feel if you had started doing that a little earlier in the game, because that did get you right back in, it became a fairly tight game again, maybe it could have changed the outcome? SARA HUNTER: Yeah, I think, you know, we could have gotten on a roll a little bit sooner and probably gained momentum, you know, potentially it couldn't even have been that close of a game. But like coach said, Air Force is a tough nosed team. You know, they outplayed us tonight when it mattered. THE MODERATOR: Okay, guys, we'll let you two go. Questions for Coach Warden. Q. What do you take from the season? Obviously some gnarly things happened. It was a struggle throughout. What are the positives you take from your second season here and where can you go forward from there? COACH WARDEN: Well, I think the truest test of this profession, the truest test of any program, is the test of time. I've done this before. The Boise State players that I recruited just won the WAC championship. It's not going to happen overnight. You've got to get talented freshmen in here. They've got to commit to what they're doing. They've got to believe in the future. They've got to see the players you're recruiting around them. You've got to love 'em. That's what we got to do at Colorado State. Those things are going to happen. Those things are going to take time. Okay, we had a hiccup this year. It might take a little bit more time, but not that much more. Q. How tough was it to be struggling as much as you were offensively? It looked like the things that looked like normally would go weren't going in the first half especially, yet you're still ahead by a point. What do you attribute that to? As bad as things might have been going offensively, you were still up. COACH WARDEN: I think what you do is you reach a certain point in the game, and we were down nine, and you take notes on this so you know better than I do, I believe maybe with 9:50 left. It was getting close. It was getting point per minute. The focus on the timeout, a lot of times teams start to gain energy and intensity when they hit a couple threes or their layups fall or they get a three point play, and that gets them charged. So on the bench to that moment, you know, as you said, we're coaching them. Our threes aren't going, let's get physical on drives, let's force the fouls, let's get to the free throw line. Pretty soon you got to figure out, Guess what, this ain't going to be no offensive shoot out, this is going to be a defensive game. You almost flip your paradigm at that moment, and the next timeout we had we flipped our paradigm and said, Guess what, we're not going to do it with offense, we're going to do it with defense. That's when you stick with Marilyn and you put your best, toughest, hard nosed defenders around her. You don't let Air Force score, and you make it a 47 46 ballgame. And that's what we did. I think you saw until the 1:21 mark, when we went with Nya, to get a bucket, we committed to defensive players and a defensive scheme. Every time we had to set something up, Sara Hunter was going to take the shot. Otherwise we wanted to score out of our defense and let our defense lead us and get encouragement out of stops, and not frustration out of not scoring. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, coach. COACH WARDEN: Thank you. |
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