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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 3, 2016Jen HooverAmber CampbellAriel StephensonGreensboro, North Carolina Georgia Tech - 67, Wake Forest - 65. JEN HOOVER: Super proud of this group. We came out with a game plan that they locked in on and came out and just were aggressive and attacked. Extremely disappointed. It's not a very happy locker room. This team knows and believes and deserves to be playing on, and I can't say enough about how much I just love this squad. Q. Amber, talk about that last play. You went in with the left hand and looked like you got bumped a little. Is that kind of the play you guys drew up in the time-out? AMBER CAMPBELL: Yes, it was a play called sky, where the post player would come down and set a screen for me to pop out and kind of like an iso one-on-one situation. You know, it was a little bit of time left on the clock, and I just had to try to get to the basket. Yeah, I got a little bit bumped or whatever, but it is what it is, and we just have to move on and think about what's next. Q. You guys started out, I think you made your first five three-pointers and the basket looked pretty big. Did you fall in love maybe with the three-pointer a little bit too much or do you still feel like you ran the offense after that? ARIEL STEPHENSON: I felt like I was taking my shot in the flow of the offense. I was taking what the defense gave me. Going to the basket wasn't always open and they were sagging off me, so I took what was open. Q. Ariel made a couple of really nice drives to the bucket. Did that possibly even open up passing lanes later on in the game going into Milan because it seemed like they had to cheat and kind of worry about what she was going to do? JEN HOOVER: Yeah, I think when our guards are playing as well as they are and being able to hit those open shots, we shoot 7 of 14 from the three, it's a lot harder for them to take some of those passing lanes and close them, so it does open up some -- and I thought our guards did a phenomenal job in -- I don't know if it was the third or fourth quarter -- of some really nice passes down to Milan for her to finish. It was a point of emphasis at that point. We really felt like we had to go inside and establish that again. It's a balance of playing inside, outside, and we've got the versatility to have a lot of that. Q. Ariel, I know you guys are hoping to play some more in the WNIT, but talk about the future of this team, and obviously this is Coach Hoover's best team in her four years. Talk about what's ahead of you guys? ARIEL STEPHENSON: The sky's the limit for us. We expect greatness from ourselves. That's part of the reason we're so disappointed because we understand how good we can be, and as long as we expect more from ourselves than everyone else does, we're going the right direction. Q. Ariel, fourth quarter three-pointer, did you call bank? ARIEL STEPHENSON: No, I didn't call it, but shooter's touch, shooter's touch. Q. Coach, when Georgia Tech made their last basket, was that a confusion in your defensive assignment that allowed Tilford to penetrate? JEN HOOVER: No. I haven't seen it again. I don't know how or why she got by us. I know it was a broken play for them. I'll have to look at the film. She made a great play. She got by, and then that made our center step up, which opens up Roddreka Rogers. I went to school with Roddreka's dad, Rodney, and she just -- she had a great game today. Got to give her a lot of credit. I know she loves to play against the Deacons. Q. I know this is your fourth season and you've really got all your own players now, but what does the future hold for you guys? Hopefully you want to play in the WNIT? JEN HOOVER: Yeah, this team wants to play on. They don't care what it is, they want to play basketball and they want to stay together as a group. We know we're losing Kandice Ball and Tay Taylor that are on the court, and then in Keri Fulp and Keyonna Allen. They're not ready to say goodbye to those guys, and those guys want to put that uniform back on. We've had a lot of adversity this year. Our starting point guard went down December 18th, and we've played -- Tay Taylor has been a three-year starter in the ACC. Every year she's started come ACC season. I thought this year she did a great job of running our team and understanding our system, and she took a lot of the young kids under her wing, and Amber Campbell's leadership and her maturity from her freshman year to this year, it was exponential, what she was able to do in helping Ariel and Destini Walker and some of these other young kids, Elisa Penna, who shows up in December. I think this team, like the future is really bright for us if we can just get everybody healthy and stay healthy. KK Atkinson we lose August 1st to a torn ACL, and she was one of our best creators last year. We lose Jill Brunori again in the middle of the season. But this team, there was never any quit in them, and there was never, ever a look in their eyes oh, woe is us, we're hurt, and now we don't have anybody to sub in practice. This one never gets subbed out in practice, so she might every once in a while look at me, but it was just like, okay, well, we got seven today, let's go, Coach. Let's go work out. What can we practice? What are we going to do today? No, that's not hard enough, let's do something else. They had a team practice on their own, a captain's-led practice one time. It's just this group wants -- I think what Ariel said, they expect greatness of themselves, and as a coach that's easy to coach, when they expect it of themselves. I don't have to stay on them. We don't have to poke and prod them and all that stuff. It's deep inside them, and they believe in each other and they believe in us. Q. It seemed late in the fourth quarter Ariel got kind of tangled up with someone going for a rebound, and I think I saw like a little spark and a little edge. Is that something that you see more often than I do? Is that something that works well for her? JEN HOOVER: She is one of the most competitive kids I've had the privilege to coach. I can tell some stories on her from back in the summer. This young group when they got her and they were playing pick-up in the summer, when they lost in a pick-up game, it was like the end of the world, and Kandice Ball, and I'll put her on blast for this, was like, it's just pick-up. It's never just pick-up to this kid over here. When there's a ball and it's a game, game on, and she's just like that. You know, I think that's helping Amber because Amber brings that in a quieter way to us at times, but it's -- she is, she's a really competitive kid. You can probably ask her right now and she can probably tell you what her one-on-one record was in individual workouts because three weeks in, she's like, Coach I'm 0-4. And I was like, well, what are we going to do about it, and she's in the gym working on it. She's just an ultra competitive kid, and her philosophy all that kind of stuff, if there's a tangle, I'm not letting go of the ball. I don't care, I'm not letting go until the official tells me I have to let go. Q. You played Georgia Tech the last game of the regular season, lost by, I think, 15. What are the challenges to getting your team up again when you have to play them so quickly? JEN HOOVER: Well, I think for us, it was a little bit easier because I think we were all disappointed in our showing in Atlanta. We really felt like we didn't come out with the toughness. I thought they did a great job of really attacking us hard inside right from the get-go, and I think after we adjusted to it in Atlanta, we were like, okay, we're all right, I know what this looks like now because it was the first time we'd seen Georgia Tech. So I think for that part, we were ready now. We had experienced it. You know, it's really -- I don't think it's ever easy to play anybody in the ACC, and definitely not in the tournament, but when you have a scout that -- they've not played a game since you've played them, there's no more film to watch. There's nothing else new to add to go over. Now, they may have put something in in the day that they had in between, but we had to prepare for Clemson, and we prepared full-fledged for Clemson for the one day we had, but they were familiar with it, and this team this year has been really good any time we've played somebody a second time. We beat Duke the second time, State the second time, Clemson the second time. Like we were undefeated on our second-time match-ups going into the game today, so I think our kids really believed in that and understood it and they were able to really lock in. As a young team, I can't ask for any more as a coach or a coaching staff. My assistant coaches do a phenomenal job of preparing our kids and our scouting reports. For them to be able to lock in, as much youth as we have out there on the floor on a regular basis, you know, I was really proud of them for that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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