Final Four locker room video interview with Sydney Colson

Opening comments…
“Whether it’s on defense or helping out on offense by setting screens, moving around with the ball or things of that nature, we were able to do them today. I’m so proud of the effort we gave – we could’ve laid down and folded near the end of the game when we were down ten. We came into the timeout and were like ‘this is not the time to give in.’ People were saying we were tired in the huddle, but we’ve been more tired in the long practices that we’ve had – we still have conditioning left and you need to find a way to fight through it. You find a way to get it done and today something huge was on the line. For us to be at this point – making it to the Final Four for the first time in our program’s history and in the same year making it to the National Championship game is something that our team will be remembered by for a long time to come.”

On why Stanford could never pull away from A&M…
“In the last stretch after the last media timeout – I think there was about 3:58 left or so – we really upped the pressure and we got in our full court defense and we’re pressing them hard. We got some five-second calls, made them call some timeouts, and forced some turnovers. Adaora, on that last play – I was taking away their point guard – and Adaora was turning the girl. There’s this drill that we do defensively every time we start the defensive part of practice and we dread it because we zig-zag down the court back and forth. Our posts don’t like to do that – they say ‘Why do we need to do this? We’re never going to use it to guard a post for the full length of the court.’ But today it came to fruition that it was actually going to have to happen and Adaora did a heck of a job turning that girl for about 20-something seconds. Our defense is what’s gotten us to this point and we talked about it before the game – don’t do anything different. Everything that we’ve done thus far this season has gotten us to this point – keep doing it and we’ll be in a really good spot. Luckily, we are. Not luckily, we worked for it.”

On her emotions at the moment…
“Well, I didn’t really want to play in the National Championship (smiles). Physically, we’re tired of course but like I said when something huge is on the line we’re going to find a way to rest up, get into the carpool, get some food in our body. We don’t play to make excuses – we’ve never been a team of excuses. When something’s our fault we take the blame for that and get better in practices. In this game there were times we could’ve folded…with this team the word I always use is ‘resilient.’ We work hard and…now we get to go to the National Championship game. It’s kind of a big deal.”

On the final game…
“Only two teams are always left at the end of the season who get to play the last game of the season and we’re one of them. I always hoped that this would happen, but it’s so surreal right now and so weird that it’s actually here. We get to play in that game Tuesday night and I’m so proud of the way that my girls played not just today but all throughout this tournament and all throughout the year. There are many times when people doubted us – nobody expected us to go beat number one Baylor. People were doubting us other than Aggie Nation, I’m sure. People definitely weren’t expecting us to win this game and I’m glad we could put all of that to the side and just play for one another and get the job done. I’m beyond thrilled.”

On the key to the lack of nerves…
“The key was definitely our defense. We really upped the pressure when we got into the one defense, which is our full-court defense – we were taking away passes, forcing them to call timeouts, getting five-second calls which was giving us more possessions and luckily we were scoring on possessions through the end of the game. Danielle and Tyra got some huge and-ones at the end of the game. Danielle’s free throw cut it to two I think and from that point on it seemed like we were just really in a groove and our fight helped us take this game for sure.”