What Kim Caldwell said about Tennessee vs. Ohio State in second round of NCAA Tournament

What head coach Kim Caldwell said Saturday afternoon, ahead of No. 5 Tennessee faces No. 4 Ohio State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday (8 p.m. Eastern Time, ESPN) at Value City Arena in Columbus:

Q.  Both and you Ohio State employ presses. Can you compare and contrast the differences between your press that you bring and the press that you see from Ohio State?

KIM CALDWELL: Yeah, I think it’s very similar, very similar type of systems if you want to apply pressure and you want to play in transition. I think theirs is more of a zone look where they are matched up and ours is more of a man look.

Q.  You have players who came over from last year, how do you leverage their experience in preparing for a team like Ohio State?

KIM CALDWELL: Yeah, we always ask, that’s the first thing I’ll always do going into playing an opponent is ask what we know about that team; and listen to what they say, whether they have played them or watched them on TV.

Q.  How important is it to take momentum from that first tournament game, especially with how the regular season tournament went and the two-week layoff?

KIM CALDWELL: Yeah, I think it’s important. It was a good step for our program. We were hitting shots. It was good to see the ball go in, and hopefully we can do it again. I’m thankful for the day in between.

Q.  We noticed how loud the Ohio State crowd was. How do you keep that energy you felt last night into the crowd?

KIM CALDWELL: Yeah, we talked about that. It’s just going to be us, and we are very lucky and blessed to be part of a program that has a good fan base, a fan base that travels.

But we are definitely on the road. Making sure that we keep our bench energy up, and our huddles tight, and we stay focussed when Ohio State goes on a run. They are going to go on a run. It’s going to be streaky, and you can’t too high or too low.

When you have a fan base that’s loud and passionate you have to lock in and just look at your teammates in the eye and play through those runs.

Q.  Is there anything you saw in the team last night in the way that they were playing or interacting with each other that gave you confidence about where they are going into tomorrow’s matchup?

KIM CALDWELL: I think we had fun. I think we were sharing the ball a little bit better than we had been. We had more assists and played through mistakes a little bit better. Our next-play mentality was an improvement of what we have had probably the back half of the season.

But again, you have to see what it’s like when you’re in the middle of a run of another team and the crowd is into it and see how tough you are then.

Q.  You touched on the substitution pattern a little bit last night. Just want to ask about that. Is this something that you had developed over time in your coaching career? And I guess the first important ingredient is you have to have ten people who are capable of playing to be able to pull that off, but just your thought about how this team has taken to it, and maybe how you developed it, I guess.

KIM CALDWELL: Yeah, I’ve always done it, and you have to have 10 or 11 players that you trust, and that’s a big step for a coach is to have everyone accept their roles and lean into their roles and trust them and put them on the floor every night.

Q.  Jewel mentioned last night that the team followed the scouting report, and I know that’s a pretty obvious thing to do, but you’ve indicated this team doesn’t always do it. You had to re-present the scouting report at Florida. I assume your fifth-year seniors are perfectly capable at this point of following one, but how do you get the team all on board to do so, because it obviously makes such a big difference if all five on the floor are on the same page.

KIM CALDWELL: Yeah, you have to talk and be locked in, and it has to mean more. Again, it’s going to be to do on the road, and it’s always hard to do when you are playing 11 players. Because we scramble so much out of our press that you are not always matched up with who you should be matched up with.

So you just have to know actions and how to guard actions. We are late in the year. We have one-day prep going into this game. We’re not really going to be able to learn new habits. So you have to rely on the way we have guarded actions all year.

Q.  How have you even over the final stretch of the regular season where there were tough results, how have you seen the team come together and bond and have that result that you had last night that was a lopsided win for you all?

KIM CALDWELL: It’s great but you can’t have a win like that and see a win like that and pat yourself on the back and think it’s done. Maybe that’s a mistake we made earlier. We have to continue to work on our team chemistry. We have to continue to work hard when the shots are not falling. We have to continue to play through things. I think that’s what’s it’s going to take to be successful in March.

Yeah, we have done it once, but we have to do it again.

Q.  This team was on the upward trajectory of building, building, building and hit that stretch at the end of the season last night, looking more like where you picked up where you left off before that. How confident are you that this team is where they need to be right now and what helped them get right back to that?

KIM CALDWELL: I’m confident that our energy is better. I’m confident that our focus is better. I think that we have a better mindset coming into this game.

But again, kind of like I just said, I’m not going to be overly confident and think that I can take my foot off the gas as a coach just walking into this opponent that, okay, we are back to where we used to be. We have to continue to work through things.

Q.  I want to ask about Ohio State. They had a couple of the better players in the Big Ten this year with Cotie McMahon who has been a real good contributor for three years and Cambridge, the freshman. Your thoughts about both those players and how they like to attack opponents. You probably don’t want to give away the scouting report, but the things you need to do to keep them under wraps of the?

KIM CALDWELL: Yeah, you’ve got to keep them in front of you. It’s a stacked roster. We have to play team defense. I don’t think we are going to be able to guard one-on-one in those position.

So just making sure we all locked in and playing together and we are not letting them have easy shots. I think that’s one thing we’ve talked about is we can’t give them anything wide open, and sometimes in our defense, we’ll do that. We’ll just stand there and look and hope the other team misses, and you can’t do that at this point in the year.

Q.  Your team has done well in this season against other defensive-minded teams. Why do you think that was and will it help you tomorrow?

KIM CALDWELL: I don’t think that that necessarily applies for this game. I think the slower teams, the teams that spend the majority of their time sitting down on the halfcourt guarding don’t spend as much time on offense. I think that’s a little bit better for us. I think this team can go in transition, so it’s not necessarily a matchup that I love.

Q.  Players have talked about how they really feed energy off of the only team losing their energy, and how whenever you are seeing shots miss that they are getting more hyped up for the game, and that’s when you see the runs like second quarter last night. Ohio State is really well-conditioned, too. What do you tell the team when the other side is not getting as tired as they are expecting them to be?

KIM CALDWELL: That’s when you have to sit down and get stops. You have to play defense. You can’t just hope — that’s what I just said. You can’t look at them and hope the ball doesn’t go in. You have to actually guard now.

So that’s something we have to work on is get the stops. And I think stops for us are going to be really important, and that way maybe they are not going to be as quick as they get into their pressure. We are going to have to sit down and actually guard.

Q.  With the sitting-down-and-actually-guarding, you talked about how you worked on halfcourt defense during the two-week break. What did you like about that and what needs to change going into this game tomorrow?

KIM CALDWELL: I thought we played with a sense of urgency yesterday in the halfcourt. Even when we had a big lead, something we have done all year is just kind of stopped guarding just because we saw a 20-point win. And we continue to sit down and guard to the final minute, and that was a really big improvement for us.

Again it’s going to be very similar, a really good offensive-minded team. They run really good, as. They are a very deep roster. They have great players. So just having the discipline to sit down and guard.

Q.  I know motivation, win-or-go-home, that’s in place already. But the tip times in the tournament can be anywhere from noon to 8:00 or 9:00 PM. What’s your approach to a team in a big game like this waiting all day to play? How do you manage that? Because teams get restless sometimes.

KIM CALDWELL: I think the only thing that helps us is we just had the exact same time slot. So our game day is going to be pretty much identical to what we just did, and that’s in our favor. We watch a little more film, and we take a little more time to stretch. We try to keep them in and out of their hotel rooms and we try to keep the energy high.

But if you are not locked in and you get rest unless March, it’s probably going to be a quick March for you.

Q.  Avery had really good minutes for you last night. What did she show you over the last two weeks to earn those minutes?

KIM CALDWELL: She has consistently worked all year. She’s always in the gym extra. So she’ll hard in practice but she’ll always be in the gym extra. She’s a little spark for us runs around, plays hard. She doesn’t necessarily do anything that hurts you us. She doesn’t take bad shots. She’s a selfless player, and you can put her on the floor knowing she’s going to give it everything she has.

Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff

Q.  You are both teams that play quickly and Tennessee tries to push the tempo, shooting quick within the shot clock. How do you make the Volunteers adjust to your plan?

KEVIN McGUFF: They played great yesterday. I was really impressed watching them live. We knew we have our hands full. Obviously we have to get back in transition and guard them and try to challenge them at the three-point line. They made, what was it, 16 yesterday? That will be a huge part of the game. They are also really efficient on the offensive boards, and lastly we are going to need to take care of the ball and make good decisions at the end of the press offense.

Q.  With how closely the game was called yesterday for Ohio State, how do you balance expecting that again with also trying to press on defense and trying to slow them down on defense? What do you tell the team?

KEVIN McGUFF: We’ve got to play our game. The games, sometimes, game-to-game are called much differently. It may not be an indication of what it is going to be like tomorrow.

Q.  During the 24-0 run all your starters were hitting offensively and throughout the game, they all finished in double digits. How much of a better team is this when all the starters are —

KEVIN McGUFF: Yeah, we are at our best when we have balance in our scoring amongst our top players. I think yesterday in the second half we got to a point where we were making the extra pass, which was leading to better shots, and that will be critical tomorrow because you know, if we don’t turn it over against their press, we will be playing in advantage situations like we were yesterday in the first half.

We would drive it in and try to score around the rim over two and three people, instead of making the next pass to an open person. The way we started the second half, we did that.

So long story short, we shared the ball in the second half yesterday, and I think that’s when we are at our best.

Q.  Cotie and some of the players were talking about a text that Cotie sent to the team motivating them. Can you talk about how she’s played the leadership role, especially with the new players on the team?

KEVIN McGUFF: Yeah, I think coming into the year, I knew that was going to be one of our biggest challenges. We graduated one of the best leaders we’ve ever had in this program in Sheldon last year, and Cotie plays with such emotion and energy that people are going to naturally kind of gravitate towards her and kind of go with that flow.

So just working on her to really create positive energy out there, and I think everybody really feeds off that really well.

Q.  Cotie said that was as close as you guys have been to playing a full 40 minutes maybe all year. How satisfied were you with the performance yesterday, and what do you specifically need to improve upon against Tennessee?

KEVIN McGUFF: I thought we played a good 25 minutes. I think the first 15 minutes were very good.

I think 25 minutes won’t win tomorrow. So we’ll have to play even closer to 40 tomorrow than we did yesterday.

Q.  With Watson, how difficult of a situation to be thrust back in right in the thick of the NCAA Tournament, and what were your takeaways of how she sort of got into the flow yesterday?

KEVIN McGUFF: Yeah, it’s hard. She’s been out for a while, and to come in in an NCAA Tournament game as a freshman, especially when you have not played in a few weeks, is difficult.

Hopefully just being able to play yesterday and be on the court will help her get her rhythm back. I think she could be really instrumental tomorrow and with their style of play, we are going to interest to play a lot of people to try to stay fresh. Everybody is kind of all hands on deck. We need everybody should show up and be ready.

Q.  Is there an update an Elsa’s status, or are you hopeful?

KEVIN McGUFF: She’s day-to-day. But she looked good today so we are cautiously optimistic we’ll have her for tomorrow.

Q.  What they were able to do moving the ball and getting the ball to open shooters in that second quarter was kind of uncanny. You saw 29-9 they outscored South Florida. What do you do when they hit a couple to get that rhythm?

KEVIN McGUFF: They played great in general yesterday. The second quarter, especially, was really impressive.

So we know that we have our hands full and we have got to challenge them at the three-point line. They got a lot of open ones yesterday, and if you give them too many open threes, they are going to make a high percentage of them. So it will be a challenge for us defensively to make sure we can get there and contest them at the three-point line.

Q.  Obviously there’s some differences in the way both teams press but just going up against a team that kind of is similar, do you like having a matchup like that where it’s kind of similar?

KEVIN McGUFF: Yeah, it’s going to probably be somewhat entertaining. Their team is built for it. They have got a lot of depth and they have a lot of athleticism and they have got a lot of length, and so they are difficult from that standpoint to play against. And so we know, one, we are going to have to stay extremely organized against the press; when we do break it, make really good decisions at the back end of it.

And at the same time, we have to put some pressure on them; that they just can’t — part of the thing yesterday is they got the ball up the floor and kind of did whatever they want. Hopefully our press can have some effectiveness of not just letting them walk it up and do whatever they want.

Q.  Cooper, what stands about her and game planning for a player like her?

KEVIN McGUFF: She was trick yesterday. She played really, really well. I was impressed with her. I’ve seen her on TV but to see her live and in person she’s very impressive. She’s got long arms and she has kind of a knack for tipping balls or getting her hands on the basketball as you are trying to go by her.

So we have to be real careful with the ball around her, and also somehow, some way to have to take her out of her rhythm because she looked really comfortable shooting the three yesterday.

Q.  What do you expect from the battle on the boards?

KEVIN McGUFF: They didn’t have to be too many because she made so many shots. So hopefully we make them offensive rebound because we have to get them to miss first. That will be a big part of it, though, because they are a very efficient rebounding team when they do miss.