LSU 71, Mississippi State 62
THE MODERATOR: We are ready to continue with Coach Nikki Fargas. We'll take questions.
Q. Going back to halftime, you're back in a similar situation as you were at home almost a week ago, but a much different outcome.
NIKKI FARGAS: Well, we wanted to take the mistakes that we made in our previous game and make sure it didn't happen again. We just talked about being that team that becomes that 40-minute team. We've been that team that's played 30, 32 minutes. I'm so proud of this group because they stayed focused and they stayed locked in to what we needed to do.
Q. A comment on the play of your bench starting with Ryann. 34 points today off your bench, including Sarah as well.
NIKKI FARGAS: Well, to be able to see Ryann, the path and her journey to get here, what she endured as far as the surgery and getting herself healthy, not knowing if she was going to play this year or not. She just worked herself. Kept working out, kept saying, I want to get this experience.
I'm thinking, If you can go, it's going to be more than experience, we're going to need for you to help us win.
Her energy and her bounce is so contagious. The fact that Sarah, which we've always known that Sarah can just shoot the lights out of the basketball, I just feel like her confidence is at a high right now.
She and Ryann really did a nice job of playing off of each other. They allowed us to spread the floor more, which allowed us to get some penetration, allowed us to get some more post touches.
To have players that are threats from the three-point line, our offensive execution looked a whole lot better.
Q. The time you brought Ryann in, you tried with Tiara to get you a spark. She had foul trouble. When Ryann came in, there was no dropoff. She played her best game of the year.
NIKKI FARGAS: Yeah, I mean, Tiara went in, she was really trying to be aggressive with the basket. She picked up the charge, picked up a cheap one. I'm like, T, you can't do that.
I like the fact we had players step up. To have, like you mentioned, almost half our points from our bench, 34, that's what you need during this time of the season. I mean, you're going to have to have players coming in and making plays. We had several players make big plays for us.
I thought Faustine did a great job on the boards for us. It wasn't a matter of her not having a balanced attack offensively, I thought she played a lot better. But her board play was so key for us.
Then you can't say enough about the play of Pointer. She's somebody that commands double teams or for you to stay long on your ball-screen action. She just kept playing downhill for us. To come up with four steals, three assists, I mean, that's something that she continued to fill her stat line even though she didn't shoot the ball extremely well.
Q. We were not able to be there courtside, but through the TV screen, it looked physical. At times it looked chippy. Kind of college basketball I like to watch. What did you learn from the fight from your team today?
NIKKI FARGAS: Well, I always thought our team had fight in us. It's just there was times, whether it was a quarter here or first quarter or third quarter, where we would lose our focus and kind of go off and do our own thing. I just felt like the fight of our team, we maintained it.
The bench, I can't say enough about the energy that we felt from the bench. They were into it. They were engaged. That uplifted us. That's why we were able to come away with this win, because it was about us as LSU, it was about us as a team.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much.
NIKKI FARGAS: Thank you.
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