USC Trojans Coach Lindsay Gottlieb Gives Credit To UConn Huskies After NCAA Tournament Loss

Transcript

00:00We'll open it up with a statement, a brief statement from coach, and then we'll turn it over to questions for student-athletes. Coach?

00:07Yeah, I just managed to talk to the team in the locker room without

00:12crying, but I can't promise you it's not gonna happen up here. I want to start out first by

00:17congratulating a UConn team that is really good,

00:21obviously could win the national championship, but to me, it's the way they do it.

00:25You know nothing but respect. I will just say this, on December 23rd, we were on our Christmas break

00:33and I was

00:35at a Christmas party or something, and I got a text from Gino

00:39two days after we had just beaten them, and he said, hey,

00:42I was just thinking about what a great win that was for you and your program, and I love your team, and

00:48you know, hope we meet up in Tampa. Surprisingly, he didn't say Spokane, but he said Tampa.

00:55You know, and I just think about the people who

00:57just are secure enough to be able to see it from the other side and

01:01take a moment two days later to say, you know, that was a big win for our program at their place or for me because

01:05I'm from there, and so to them, I would also say as much as this hurts for our kids,

01:10you know, how do you not have respect and root for a team that

01:14had to figure some things out too along the way and has battled injuries?

01:17And then what I said to our team in there was, you know, from the second we lost at this round last year,

01:22I said the bar's been raised, the standards have been raised, the expectations have been raised, and even though we've lost at the same

01:28point and stage, I think our team