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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 4, 2015Vanessa PanousisDennis WolffHannah YoungGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Virginia Tech – 57 COACH WOLFF: Needless to say, I'm extremely proud of how competitive our girls have been, particularly given the way the season has gone. To come in here and play a good NC State team and both teams play well and us to make one more play, which we needed to do a number of different times this year, it's very, very satisfying, and I'm very, very proud and happy for the kids. Q. Hannah, how did that game‑winning shot unfold from your point of view? And Dennis, was that kind of how the play was drawn up? HANNAH YOUNG: Yeah, it was exactly how the play was drawn up. I'm still in shock to be honest. Vanessa threw me that pass and I just shot it with confidence, and it went in, so here we are. COACH WOLFF: They did a good job, Vanessa did a very good job of keeping her dribble alive, and I thought they probably thought we were going to call time‑out again, so I just thought, it might be in our best interest to just play out of that first time‑out. Q. What have you been telling the team so far this season? Obviously a rough year wins and loss wise, but the teams fought hard consistently. What does it mean for you and the players to finally break through in this final game? COACH WOLFF: Well, you know, again, I think it negates to a certain degree a lot of the frustrations that we felt. I think that we've had for the folks that follow us, we've had a half a dozen games against some of the better teams in the league that were played like this, and unfortunately we didn't make enough plays. I thought that Spencer made a big play for them there in the end, and Hannah came back and made a huge play for us. For us, again, I've had to answer a lot of questions, this is the first win we've had in the ACC Tournament, and to do it against a good team is gratifying. Q. The game in Raleigh, State shot 6 of 3 from 10 in the first half. I think they finished 8 of 19. What did you do differently to take away their three in this game? COACH WOLFF: Again, Wes is a great coach, and I thought the first game we switched a lot of their actions, and they made us pay for it, and I thought it was in our best interest not to do that today. Everybody kind of stayed with their own man, so we didn't have mismatches in the post and everybody guarded their guys on the perimeter. Q. For the players, Tech had gone one‑and‑done in this tournament seven years in a row. What does it mean to each of you to win a game in the ACC Tournament for the first time? VANESSA PANOUSIS: It's great actually. I feel like the season that we've had, we haven't had this many wins, so to get this win is a great feeling. HANNAH YOUNG: I have to agree with her. It's unbelievable, actually. Q. Did your game plan work almost to perfection today? COACH WOLFF: You know, I don't want to‑‑ we had a game plan we thought would work for us, and our kids did what we asked them to do, and I think that some of their players‑‑ Brown is a very good player, Wilson is a good player. They had tough shooting nights. Some of it was probably our defense and some of it was that they missed some shots they normally make. Q. Vanessa, what helped you have a good game offensively today, and for the players, what do you feel your team did better in general than you have in recent weeks? VANESSA PANOUSIS: For me, I think what I wanted to focus on was what the defense gave me, so if they were stepping off me, I wanted to shoot my shot. If they were all up on me, I wanted to attack, and like the last play, pass off to my teammate, so that's what I focused on. COACH WOLFF: If I could add to that, I know you did a nice piece on Vanessa, Vanessa has had a lot of pressure on her to make a lot of plays. She and I, I've been a little bit mad at her recently for not having the swagger that she should have for as good a player as I think she is. It's a pleasure to coach her, and she responded to everything that we did since Sunday in a positive fashion and played her best game of the year today. Q. Why did you do better today than any of the nine straight losses? VANESSA PANOUSIS: I feel like we stayed with the game plan for longer periods of time and we didn't have as many lapses as we did throughout the season. I think our defense was good and we tried to limit them to just one shot. Q. Hannah, you were so wide open on that shot. Can you take us through what you were thinking mentally? You had all day to shoot it. HANNAH YOUNG: Obviously I had a rough first half and I think I came back in the second half a lot better, and I really just shot it with confidence and took my time since you did say I had a lot of space and whatever, so I just took my time, and I hit it. Q. Players, do you think the number of fouls in the game affected you in a positive or a negative way because there were 40 plus fouls together combined? VANESSA PANOUSIS: Yeah, I think it was a bit on both ends, and I think us players just need to adjust to what the referees are calling. Q. What made you believe you could win today? VANESSA PANOUSIS: I think throughout the whole season we've stuck together, and I think we made it like an emphasis. For us to stay together throughout the whole game, not just 38 minutes, 35 minutes, but throughout the whole 40 minutes. Q. Hannah, at the end of the game, are you nervous putting up that shot? Are you confident putting up that shot? What are you feeling when you realize this is it, the game is on me, the season is on me? And Dennis, you guys have been 0‑15‑‑ the school had been 0‑15 against State going into this. How do you explain this difference today? COACH WOLFF: Again, you've got amazing stats that you usually throw at me. I look at each game, as I've said to you repeatedly, I look at the next game. You know, I didn't look at what we did with NC State last year. I looked at the first game to see if there were things that I thought we could do better from our end. But again, it's up to these kids, and again, I'm the coach of the team, but I'm giving them the credit because they're the ones that had to‑‑ after obviously a rough season that didn't go the way we'd all liked it to have gone, we could have come into this tournament and just thought we were going on spring break, and the kids are to be tremendously commended for that. HANNAH YOUNG: Just I'd like to obviously thank my teammates. They had confidence in me through the whole season, and then when I finally had the opportunity to hit my final shot, it just happened for me, I think. So finally. Q. Was the mentality of the team in this ACC Tournament game any different than the last several years in the ACC Tournament? VANESSA PANOUSIS: No, not really. Like Coach said, we had gotten together and said if we wanted to have one more game, we needed to win this game. COACH WOLFF: I don't think you go into‑‑ last year in the ACC Tournament, we ended up playing a team that we had played like five days earlier. So when you're in those type of situations, this was more of a normal tournament thing where you hadn't played the team four or five days ago. Again, I just want to emphasize, again, how proud I am of the ladies on our team. Q. I just wanted to clarify an earlier answer. I think Vanessa said the last play worked exactly as it was designed. Were you supposed to be the decoy on that play and Samantha was supposed to take the shot or was it an option type of situation? COACH WOLFF: What I wanted to do was they obviously were playing such close attention to Vanessa that we tried to give her two ball screens at the top. She refused the first one, Sidney set a screen for the second one, and what I told both the kids was, Vanessa, you get in the lane and you see what you have, and if not, I'm relatively certain Hannah is going to be open on the wing and then she'll have a shot. Again, a bunch of times I've drawn stuff up and it hasn't worked, so we're fortunate this worked. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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