Everything Michigan said after its NCAA Tournament win over Iowa State

KIM BARNES ARICO: I thought that was an unbelievable game. Just back and forth, back and forth. Had to match up with one of the best post players in the country, being undersized. I thought both Greta and Jordan did a phenomenal job.

I listened to Jordan at this podium a couple days ago say it has to be the will to win it at the end of the game, it has to be the grit, it has to be the perseverance to figure out who wants it more.

And I thought Jordan Hobbs was not going to lose that game today. She just gave everything she had, and we were able to really get going in the third and fourth quarter from outside of 3.

In the first quarter we were 1-for-10, I think, to start the game. And I think we just became more comfortable and made shots down the stretch. But it was a refuse-to-lose mentality, for sure.

Q.Jordan, since you were shooting well early and the rest of your team was not, what were you kind of doing to try to push out that confidence that you had from shooting that they were struggling with?

JORDAN HOBBS: I think just telling them if they're missing them, then the percentages are the percentages -- they're going to make the next one. I don't think anyone was really that worried in the first half. We've been in that situation so many times this year.

So, I think, it's prepared us really well to handle it. Just thinking back to like two weeks ago, playing Illinois, we were down five or six with three minutes left and ended up winning that game.

I just think everyone stayed really poised throughout that time. And it enabled us to come back really well and have the confidence in the second half.

Q.Since you are seniors, what does it mean that you know you're going to get to put that uniform on again?

GRETA KAMPSCHROEDER: It's amazing. You know how it goes throughout this tournament -- every time you put the uniform on, it could be your last. So just having that mentality going into the game, like Coach said about Jordan, refusing to lose.

I've seen the seniors on the other team. I know how they feel when the clock runs out and they know it's their last game.

It's just an extra piece of motivation. Obviously we love playing together. We want to keep this going as long as possible. And we know we have the ability to do that.

JORDAN HOBBS: I can't lie that there were some of those thoughts going through my head during that game, especially when they were up 10 in the third and things just weren't going our way.

But thinking that I get to wear Michigan again on Saturday -- Sunday is really special. I cherish every single minute that I'm in this uniform, in the practice uniform, in the gear. I can't wait, and we're going to represent it well.

Q.In the fourth quarter, you guys were going shot for shot with Iowa State, trading 3s for 2s for the most part. You guys have worked on that all season. Just how were you able to execute and stay resilient, just keep shooting even though they're still scoring?

GRETA KAMPSCHROEDER: I think we had to continue to find the holes in their defense. They did a good job at covering some of our sets that we had planned on running throughout the game. Then we started to figure out where we needed to move to.

They were playing zone a lot of time, especially when 55 was in. Once we were able to figure that out, kind of get our groove going, that was helpful.

But, yeah, we've said it all year -- if we're going to play five guards, we might have to trade 3s for 2s. But in the end we'll be successful doing it.

JORDAN HOBBS: I think I said a prayer every time a shot went up, so that probably helped.

Q.How do you feel like you guys controlled the pace throughout the game? When was it something that was a speed that you were happy with and when was it a speed you were more challenged with?

JORDAN HOBBS: I thought we played really fast all day. That was something we wanted to do. But I thought at times we got out of control, which played into their favor. Like, we were taking really quick shots.

We shot 33 3s when is really not like us. Luckily we were 36 percent so that helps.

But I think there's a good balance between taking quick shots and open shots and setting up offense. It depends on the time and situation. If they've just scored, getting a better shot than the first one.

So I think there were moments of great pace, and I thought we had good pace all day. But it's just kind of playing the game and the situation.

Q.Early on, you guys touched on this, shots weren't falling, but it seemed like offensive rebounds and steals were really keeping you in the game. Can you talk about the impact of those things?

GRETA KAMPSCHROEDER: Yeah, our guards do a good job of getting in to rebound, especially Syla Swords. And Olivia got in as well. If they're going to play a zone, then essentially they don't have anybody to box out and they can't really match up on us. We knew that was part of the game plan was to get in there and rebound. So we did a great job at establishing that.

Off the jump, we kind of got away from that a little bit; it was a little bit inconsistent. But that really set the tone at the beginning of the game.

Q.Just your freshmen, this is their first March Madness. You guys were down in the second half. Can you speak to their composure and just their performance and how they impacted the game tonight?

JORDAN HOBBS: I think for Syla, it's very familiar for her to be in big games like this. I think she's always really calm and collected. But I was really pleased to see how Mila and Liv handled themselves in that fourth quarter. They hit huge shots.

Liv hit the one to go up five at the end. That probably the most important shot in the game.

Just their ability to stay confident through missing shots early and knowing that we were going to have their back no matter what shot they were putting up, and just knowing that we have confidence in them to continue shooting it.

Q.The two of you were matched up with Audi Crooks all game. You've been guarding really successful posts all season. But what made today's match-up so challenging? And how were you able to stick with it?

GRETA KAMPSCHROEDER: Obviously we're not going to outmuscle her. She's a very strong player. And she's skilled as well. But we had to be a little bit more strategic, trying to make her work a little bit, kind of throw some different things at her every time, kind of move around her, essentially to make the passers also a little bit uncertain where they're going to get her the ball.

Obviously she's going to get her points either way. That's why she's an All-American. But also ball pressure on the passer as well. It was kind of a team effort to make sure we couldn't get the ball to her.

And we also, early in the game, we were throwing in some help. And sometimes that was effective. At other times they were hitting 3s so it wasn't super effective. But the whole game we were just trying to make them think, make them work, make her work and tire her out. I thought overall we did a good job.

JORDAN HOBBS: Credit to them, they were hitting the skip pass when we were helping and they were making the right reads all night for the most part. But, like Greta said, she's incredibly talented. She's so strong. I need an ice bath after this one.

But credit to them. They played such a good game and they fought for 40 minutes.

Q.Brooke Daniels, when she checked in the game, right away, she was pressuring their ball handler, making that entry pass really challenging. What impact did she have defensively and just all over the court tonight?

JORDAN HOBBS: I think Brooke takes so much pride in defense. And a lot of us think about scoring, and the media cares about points and whatnot, but she has so much grit and intensity behind her. And every time she checks in the game I'm pumped up because I know they're going to have some turnovers.

I know the pace is going to be picked up and she's going to get some huge O boards. So she is crucial to our team. And she's found a way to get on the court. And she's been super, super successful at what she does.

Q.Can you just talk about the will to win? You guys fought through this whole game, through this whole season. What made you be the team that came out on top?

GRETA KAMPSCHROEDER: I think we've played some tough teams this year. The Big Ten is an awesome conference to be in to kind of set you up for this. We had to play tough teams in the season. We had to take some losses in order to get better, especially being such a young team. We played some close ones where we had to fight to the very end.

Like, for example, we were talking about the Illinois game, which was our last regular-season game. It was the same situation. We were down at one point, then made a big comeback early in the fourth quarter.

So similar situation. So we've been here before. We know what to do, and we just take care of business.

Q.Olson was 1-of-9 to start off and then hit four out of six down the stretch. Tough shots. Could you talk about her ability to just be forward-focused there?

KIM BARNES ARICO: That's unbelievable. I'm glad you gave me those stats because I'm going to run inside and tell her how proud I am of her. That's something we worked with her all season.

When you're a freshman and you come in at this level -- she opened up against South Carolina and she had a similar game, and it really bothered her.

But that was the first game of the year. We said, this is college basketball. It's going to be like that. We said that's a small sample size. That's what the kids alluded to.

Keep shooting it. She's a great scorer. She's a winner. She's a competitor. And she made the biggest shot of the night with the time running out. When she gets to her spots, she's absolutely incredible.

So I'm so happy to hear that she didn't let those numbers affect her and she made her free throws down the stretch. But that's our freshmen for you. Mila didn't make many buckets in the fourth quarter. She made a couple of them. And Syla is on triple-double watch every single time.

I think they compete at such a high level and they move on to the next player even when things aren't going their way.

Q.The team as a whole, I think you were 14-of-45 at one point and then 12-of-16. What did you see happen in that stretch where you came back from nine down with about three left in the third?

KIM BARNES ARICO: I think when we talked about this at the time timeouts, we were taking quick, not great shots that we could have gotten at any point during the shot clock. We just needed to settle.

And sometimes that happens to us and they don't understand. Then we're taking a quick shot. They're going down and scoring. The lead is extending, instead of us taking the best shot.

I just really challenged them. We felt like we had some good shots. Felt like we needed to move the ball a little more.

Greta was opened a lot and she missed some that she doesn't normally miss. She's 5-for-10. I think every one of them was really uncontested, and that was probably their game plan because she doesn't shoot at that volume normally in games. But for us we know what kind of shooter she is.

I think they were just confident in what they do. And down the stretch we tried to really put Olivia, Jordan and Syla in three-player action completely on one side and then give Mila and Greta the opposite side to either try to go downhill or kick to Greta.

I think we were effective executing our stuff. And I think calling a set kind of settled them.

Sometimes we try to play fast. When we play fast, we take fast shots. That's not always the best thing. So I think once we were able to settle, we realized that we could get better shots, and we did get better shots out of our offense.

Q.Crooks was having a game. What did your interior defense do to make sure she didn't take over in that stretch down at the end?

KIM BARNES ARICO: I'm interested to see their fourth quarter stats. I only have the final stats. But just me preparing for them, in the fourth quarter it's either Crooks or Brown. And they run everything through them. Even in their game the other night, she had 12 points in the fourth quarter.

We knew that it was either going to go through her or through Brown, and everyone had to show activity.

We did a great job in the beginning of the game but they wear you down. That's what they do. They wear you down.

We flipped Jordan and Greta's match-up and Jordan went on her a little bit. I think that gave her a different type of body and a little bit more activity. Jordan was phenomenal down the stretch.

Whether it was Olivia Olson or Syla Swords that was guarding No. 24, she could never get into rhythm. I think she took five shots on the day, which is tremendous. She averages 15 shots.

So we knew, and we've known it all year long -- we played against Sienna Betts and Raegan Beers and South Carolina posts -- we knew their post was going to score. We just wanted to make sure that we limited everybody else.

Now, they scored 11 3s. That wasn't really the game plan, but we were able to make 12.

I just thought we did a great job on them down the stretch -- the fourth quarter and the first quarter, when you needed to.

Q.You got a lot of minutes out of your starters and all your points out of your starters. So was that the game plan going in that it was going to be that heavy with the first five?

KIM BARNES ARICO: Yulia Grabovskaia usually gives us some great minutes at the post spot. She picked up quick three fouls. We thought that match-up would be better for her than it was our guards. But once she picked up three quick fouls, we found that we were going to keep Greta and Jordan on them.

Syla picked up two in the first half and we took her out. But their two, Brown and Crooks, both had two in the first half and they put them back in. It was kind of a game of chess -- okay, what are we going to do here?

Our kids have played those type of minutes all season long. It's NCAA Tournament time. They know that. We needed experience in Jordan and Greta down the stretch.

And our guard play from our three freshmen is absolutely phenomenal. We went with the starting crew. The other guys that came in, like Brooke Daniels, was amazing. I thought Macy Brown gave exceptional minutes.

We tried to buy them a couple minutes here and there. Plus I told them timeouts are two times as long as they normally are so that was kind of their sub.

Q.Will you do anything specific to have them recover from a game like this. Jordan joked about the ice bath?

KIM BARNES ARICO: They're going into the ice bath now. They're staying here. It's nice to play early. You're out of the way, you're done.

Our trainer, Christina Fanning, is phenomenal. We've been stretching. We've been doing treatment. We've been doing ice baths. We do it all. But last week, week and a half ago, we were in this position in the Big Ten where we had to play three games in three days.

So our second day was our best game. That's what I'm going to throw to our team for Sunday. They are diligent about taking care of their bodies and rest and recovery. So we'll be on it for sure.

Q.I've seen a lot of people talking about your sweater. Is it a vintage sweater? People want to know if there's a story.

KIM BARNES ARICO: This sweater has gotten a ton of love. Yeah, put it in print so I can send it to all the people.

True story, my daughter is a freshman. My daughter, Emma, is a freshman on the women's lacrosse team at Michigan. There's 40 of them. And their parent group is on it. They are talking every day. I don't have time for it. I can't keep up with it.

You should see this cool hat I bought two weeks later than everybody else.

But the moms are all over everything. So they found this sweater, and I was, like, I'll take one of them. I ordered it and I wore it to the Big Ten, and the parent group chat was, like, our sweater's on TV! Our sweater's on TV!

I don't know if they all represented this sweater today back at home.

They had a great win yesterday against USC, which is my niece, who is kind of family, and lacrosse. But maybe they all wore this for me today. That's the sweater story.

Q.Your team had 12 steals today. I think there were six in the first quarter. Could you speak to the impact of your defense and their hustle on that end?

KIM BARNES ARICO: I thought our activity was phenomenal. I thought we were all over the place to start the game. Like I said before, I think they wear you out. Like, we needed to regroup and we needed to do the same thing in the fourth quarter. And that's kind of what we talked about. It's funny, in this game, though, the shots give you energy. The making of shots gives you energy to bring that defense out and that's kind of what happened to us a little bit, I think.

Once we tied the game and got that energy back, we were way more disruptive on the defensive end.

But Brooke Daniels is one of the best out there. She probably doesn't get enough credit on our team, if you didn't watch us play and just looked at the box score and what she brings to our team.

Syla had four steals today as well. We were just trying to say anticipate it, read their eyes, anticipate it, just show activity, show activity. Yeah, 12 steals is a great day for us.

Q.How would you describe the pace of the game, when was it working for your team and when was it a little out of control?

KIM BARNES ARICO: We knew that the pace was going to be important for us. They just played two days ago. They played heavy minutes. Addy Brown played 40 minutes the other day. We wanted to run, run, run as much as we could.

It's such a fine line, especially when the lights are on in the NCAA Tournament. For most of our kids it's the first time playing in this environment. What's a quick shot and what should we hold for.

So I think it took us a while to figure that out, and those quick shots weren't falling. So that's what kind of let Iowa State take that lead. And then we got more disciplined with that down the stretch.

Q.Can you just tell me the poise of your team in the fourth quarter, where that comes from? Is that just something that was built over the year? Olivia Olson is a winner. I know she's won back-to-back state titles. She makes the big shot. But Mila, Olivia, they all struggled and they came up with big shots in the fourth. Jordan was so good all day. Where does that poise come from your team?

KIM BARNES ARICO: A long time ago I learned the importance of recruiting winners. I think back to Hallie Thome's team won a state championship. Naz Hillmon's team won a state championship. Amy Dilks' team won a state championship. There's a different type of mindset when you've been in those positions and you've competed against the best for the best and not gone away.

Some people that have been in losing programs or that haven't won. When things get hard, or when things get tight, they stop. Our kids don't do that. And for freshmen, like we try to teach that in our program, but when you have freshmen that come in and have that ability to have ice in their veins, it's absolutely incredible.

Syla, she won a national championship at the high school level. She's been in the Olympics. I just think those three guys are such competitors, and they want to win at everything they do.

But then when you have someone like Jordan Hobbs leading the way, it's easy for them to feed into that.

But they're just winners, and they don't get afraid. They're not afraid of the moment. People are always, like, are they afraid. We saw that in South Carolina. I'm like, are you kidding me? I was afraid for them.

After the South Carolina game, I was like, oh, this could be something really special here because they're not afraid of the moment. They want it. They're, like, bring it. And there's not a lot of people that are like that. That's what makes them a special group.

Q.Today was such a gritty win, coming from behind in the fourth quarter. You said your team said all season, going through the tough games against all those top-10 opponents early on prepared you for what was to come later. What specific things do you think worked from past games that took you down the stretch today?

KIM BARNES ARICO: I think our defense. I think our defense has significantly improved, especially with young kids; they need to learn to play with that physicality and that pace. They always talked about at the beginning of the year, we thought we were going hard, we didn't know what that meant. Now they go back watch their high schools playing, oh, my goodness, it's a totally different level.

So I think it starts with our defense and our effort and our intensity. And then we've just gotten better. We found our flow. We know what works on the offensive end. We've got some incredibly talented, talented players, whether that's Olivia Olson or Syla Swords. They're two of the best. And they haven't been recognized at the elite level, which I'm shocked about. Maybe people haven't done that because they're freshmen.

Take away that freshman status, they're two of the best guards in the country. And add Mila Holloway into that mix, they're absolutely phenomenal. The talent is there and I think the confidence has grown with time.

And then you add Jordan, Jordan and Greta and their leadership and what they've given to these freshmen, we're continuing to improve in all ways.

Coach Justine said, before the Big Ten Tournament -- or maybe it was after our last loss, it might have been after a loss against Iowa -- she said, "The greatest thing about our team is we're still getting better every single day." Where most teams are be reaching their peak, we're not. We're not even scratching the surface. We're getting better every single day. I think these last two weeks have really given us an opportunity to continue that improvement.

Q.For Jordan to get her career high in points tonight in this game, what's the feeling with that?

KIM BARNES ARICO: I don't know. I'm not going to cry; I already said it. I spoke about her in the locker room.

I know every coach up at this podium would say that, but as a coach, you know, I think one of the greatest things in coaching and one of the things you love the most is to see kids have to overcome and to be successful.

And Jordan -- our kids don't believe what she went through. They're all babies. She didn't play a freshman year. I don't think she got into the NCAA Tournament when we went to the Elite Eight. There were a lot of games. She didn't get off the bench.

She started the bench mob. She was the greatest teammate and the energy giver when she didn't play a minute. She didn't play much her sophomore year.

Now for her to have 28 points in the NCAA Tournament as a senior, holy cow, that's special. And that's what our program has been built on.

That's what we say at Michigan: If you stay, you will be a champion, and I don't think there's any greater example than Jordan Hobbs.

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