THE MODERATOR: We're joined by the Nebraska Cornhuskers. We have student-athletes Britt Prince and Callin Hake with us.
We'll take questions.
Q. For either of you all, I assume it's been a pretty quick turnaround, but maybe you've gotten the chance to watch Baylor a little bit. What stands out about them and what might be a challenge?
CALLIN HAKE: Yeah, I think our transition defense is going to have to be on point. I just think they play with great pace. And I think also just, like, rebounding, keeping them off the boards, limiting them to one shot will be crucial for us to come out with a win.
Q. Britt, you had a great game last night, very efficient. You're at Cameron Indoor. How did you like shooting in the gym? Looked like you enjoyed it.
BRITT PRINCE: Yeah, it was pretty fun last night. Especially the second half, felt like we were flowing pretty well offensively, playing with pretty good pace, getting the ball moving around and stuff.
So, yeah, it was really fun.
Q. Britt, Coach Collen said she recruited you pretty heavily coming out of high school. What's your relationship with her? How well do you know some of the coaches on the coaching staff now that you're going against her?
BRITT PRINCE: Yes, she's a great person, great coach. It's kind of cool how the college basketball works, just being able to play against people that you've met before. Yeah, I mean, nothing but respect for her and her team.
Q. Callin, 33 offensive fouls taken this year. That's amazing. Two last night. When you came off the floor after the second one, Amy Williams threw the bones, like the black shirt defense. Did you notice that, and what did you think about that?
CALLIN HAKE: Yeah, I take so much pride in our defense and black shirt defense from Nebraska. So, yeah, the bones and get the energy going, whatever it takes to get this team going. Of course, when coach throws the bones with you, that's pretty special.
Q. I think two days ago, you all compared Richmond a lot to Creighton in terms of the style that they played. Is there any team that you face this year that Baylor reminds you of?
BRITT PRINCE: More similar to a Big Ten team, but I don't know a specific team.
CALLIN HAKE: No, I don't have one right off the top of my head.
Q. Britt, a lot of people have been talking about your offense. Obviously, I just talked about your offense. But your defense, I think, has come a long way from a year ago when you played in the NCAA Tournament in Ft. Worth. Two blocks last night. Are you hunting block shots more this year? How do you feel about your defense right now compared to a year ago?
BRITT PRINCE: I hope that it's better. I've been trying to focus on it more. I think I just need to keep the ball in front a little bit more. I kind of got lucky on those blocks. But yeah.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you both.
CALLIN HAKE: Thank you.
BRITT PRINCE: Thank you.
THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by the head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, Amy Williams. We'll have a statement by Coach, followed by questions.
Coach, the floor is yours.
AMY WILLIAMS: Okay. We're certainly excited to continue to be dancing and playing in this tournament and just feel like we've talked a lot about not really maxing out as a team. Now we're in March, and it's time to max out.
So if we can build on yesterday's game and be able to put four quarters together, we like our chances to come in and keep winning.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach.
Q. I was wondering, kind of preparation-wise ahead of the Richmond game, did you have an assistant coach who looked at Baylor, or was all the homework done within the past 12 hours?
AMY WILLIAMS: Yeah, we've had an assistant coach that's kind of been assigned to and preparing for that opportunity. So it was a lot of hours last night. Not a lot of hours of sleep, but a lot of hours of hashing through and talking. But something that one of my assistants had done a lot of legwork beforehand to kind of put us in a good position to have short turnaround for film with our team today and practice here in a little bit.
Q. A ten-point lead went down to two right before the half last night, and then the Huskers came out and went on a 17-0 run. What was in the water at halftime? Was it your speech? What happened?
AMY WILLIAMS: No, I don't think it was the speech. I did feel like that during that stretch right leading into halftime, we fouled way too much. We put them to the free-throw line. They had nine free throws in that second quarter and kind of late to get them back into the game and cut it to a two-point ball game.
So we just kind of gently reminded them about being able to defend without fouling and what we needed to do on the boards to be able to feel like we had put our best effort out there.
Q. After the game last night, how much of the focus is maybe correcting some stuff out of last night's game versus getting ready for Baylor tomorrow?
AMY WILLIAMS: That's a great question, Chris. I think that it's just a little bit of both. I told my staff today when we head to practice today, it's our first time on the court being able to kind of defend some of Baylor's actions and really look at how we want to get back in transition or guard some of their ball screen action.
But we did see some things yesterday that we'd like to clean up, and so we're going to have a little bit of time today in our practice plan to try to work on correcting some spacing, some timing, some things that we feel like are going to be important in order for us to continue to execute and play with pace.
Q. Taliah Scott is a dynamic scorer for Baylor. How do you try to slow her down? She can get them in spurts.
AMY WILLIAMS: Don't I know that. I got to watch a lot of those buckets over the last 10, 12 hours or so. She is just a really dynamic player, and it feels like once she sees a ball go in, it gets harder and harder. It can come in icing, like snaking ball screens, like being able to pull up midrange jumpers, step back behind if you go under.
If you make any type of mistake, if you give any type of separation, she's capable of making you pay for that. So that type of player, what a joy she is to coach, I'm sure. Not so joyful to try to prep for that, but I think it's the supporting cast that's around her that makes Baylor so dangerous. They have such great pieces around her that know how to get her the ball in situations where she can really be successful.
But the way they rebound offensively and just crash the glass and if she -- she can feel really confident that if I take this shot and it doesn't go in, one of my teammates is probably going to come away with it. I think just that works for this team.
Q. Amy, in terms of Callin Hake, 33 offensive fouls drawn this year. And then last night, you brought her off the floor after she took another one. I don't know, in all the time I've seen you coach, if I've ever seen that raw of an emotion. You did the Nebraska black shirt defense, throw the bones, as she came off the floor. Was that something that you just did naturally? How did you feel about Callin's play? She had four 3s offensively, but it seemed like you were fired up when she took the second foul.
AMY WILLIAMS: Yeah, I was. Coach Rhule would be pumped. All the black shirts on that Husker football team. In Nebraska, we take a lot of pride in defense, and that's all sports.
Callin has really bought into that. It's something that she wants to be able to -- it doesn't feel good to take charges, but she's willing to sacrifice her body. It doesn't just happen in the games but against our scout guys in practice. And she'll be like, ooh, that one hurt. I know the pain that goes into her willingness to sacrifice her body for our team, to have those type of energy pills and plays for us.
So pretty fun. I thought she played free. I thought she played loose. We saw her play one of her best games here in the kind of tail end of her senior season in the NCAA Tournament. So it was just really a rewarding thing for me to watch a kid that's been really loyal to our program and just has meant so much to us to be able to play like that on this stage.
Q. Other than the play of Taliah Scott, she's a great player, was there anybody else that popped off the screen when you watched Baylor last night or early this morning?
AMY WILLIAMS: Yeah. I mean, the way that they defend. They are just really -- the outstanding shot blockers, the way that they come to make plays. They are relentless, just defensively aggressive. They're capable of going for home run plays because they have people behind them that can clean it up and block shots and just erase some mistakes.
I think that and their ability to crash the offensive glass. Obviously, Littlepage-Buggs has been on the scene since her freshman year when she garnered Big 12 Freshman of the Year. But every year, she's found a way to raise her level of play. And then just to watch the double-double kid go be so sneaky to get off of box-outs, and she's just slippery. It's really, really hard to box her out.
I got to listen to one of her interviews where she said, I've just learned that if you're having a bad shooting night or if something's going wrong, nobody can stop you from crashing the glass. Go get a rebound. She plays that relentless all the time. Those are the biggest things that stand out to me.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you. We'll see you tomorrow.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports