March 5, 2006

Recap |  Box Score |  Notes

Milwaukee head coach Sandy Botham

On the game

"I give a lot of credit to Butler. Who knows, if there was another minute left on the clock it could have gone the other way. It was that kind of a game."

On coming back

"I am very proud of what our team withstood. We never gave up and that's the lesson - don't ever give up. Things weren't going as we would have liked. I thought Butler's defense really kept us off rhythm, but we found the rhythm when we needed to down the stretch and were able to pull it out."

On playing at home

"I thought our crowd was fantastic. There's the advantage of working hard in the regular season and having the opportunity to host the tournament at the end of the season, and the crowd made the difference."

On what she told her team when they were down 11

"I told them I'm fighting for you, I am fighting hard for you guys, you have to respond and fight back. They are dictating and we are reacting to everything they do, we need to flip the tables and start dictating. And that's when we put the press on and it loosened our players up a little bit. At the six minute mark, there was another time out, and I told them that we came last time we played them and we were down by 12 (actually by as many as 18), this is not as bad as it was then. If we could do it then, then we could do it now."

On playing for the championship Monday

"It's not about me, it's about us. I am so happy for these players, because I am the only one in this program who has been to a championship. I'm the only one in our program who has made it to the NCAA. To see these guys get to that next step and come that much closer to our goal is awesome. That's why we as coaches are in it - to see the young athletes hard work start to pay off. We are so excited."

Milwaukee senior Molly O'Brien

"I knew I had enough time to get a shot off, but I saw a player coming up on my side so I did a spin move and just layed it up. After the game Nichole (Drummond) and I were so happy, we said we can't stop now, we are so excited. We didn't want to go out like we have the past three years."

Butler coach Beth Couture

On the game

"I thought it was a great basketball game. It was really a game of runs, they would go up, we would go up. I'm really proud of my kids. I thought we handled a situation we weren't used to being in - a really tough crowd. We are disappointed, we wanted to come in here and win a basketball game."

On Milwaukee's game-winning basket

"Everyone was working very hard. O'Brien got a long rebound, the ball just bounced that way. If it had bounced any other way, Sandy would have had to set up a play, but the ball came right out to her on the last line. I thought (Candyce) Brown did a good job, she turned her and O'Brien had to make a big play. I thought we were right there in her face, it was just transition defense. I think we did all that we could with the way the ball bounced of the rim."

Butler freshman Lade Akande

On limiting UWM's Traci Edwards to just six points

"I think the last two times we played Milwaukee, I've left the game knowing I could have done a better job on Edwards defensively. So I really wanted to make a point tonight of doing that. I knew this was it, there was no tomorrow. We have to go out and do everything we can to win this game. I felt it all week I was ready to go."