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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 3, 2016Erik JohnsonNicole BoudreauGreensboro, North Carolina NC State - 76, Boston College - 60 ERIK JOHNSON: I think we were honoring the NC State player with an academic award, and I mentioned to my team that we actually have sitting next to me here I think the only four-time all-academic team player in the conference right now. Again, Nicole, congratulations on an amazing career. She and Alexa Coulombe were freshmen when our coaching staff got here, and as most of you know, when you take over a program, you really need people to believe in you and listen to you and embrace the philosophies and the teachings and everything that you're doing, and again, I can't imagine better leadership and better role models and examples than Nicole and Alexa. Nicole also just became the leading three-point shooter in BC history. You broke the record just now by one. You beat Kerri Shields' record by one, so congratulations on that, as well, also. I'm blessed to have coached these guys. As we were coming up, I said, Nicole, man, I'm sorry I couldn't figure out a way to rally the troops better. She rallied them in an incredible way. Her effort, her resilience in the face of us not playing basketball very well for a large stretch of that game was really inspirational. You saw our team rally around Nicole, Nicole's fight, and be able to push back to make that a ballgame down the stretch, and I'm just proud to have coached these guys. Q. Coach, talk about how it got away from you early on and then what adjustments and what happened later on that kind of made it a little bit more of a game that you guys were in more right by the end there. ERIK JOHNSON: I don't want to oversimplify, but you look at yesterday's game for us against Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech really struggled to make shots. I listened to Dennis's press conference, and Dennis is not only a great coach but a really classy individual, and he gave a lot of credit to our team, but he also is an experienced basketball guy, and he talked about when you're missing shots and you're starting -- then you start to press, you start to struggle a little bit defensively, and it does, it affects the psyche of a team. Well, the opposite is true, as well, and NC State came out and their confidence got going right away. They're a phenomenal shooting team, but then they started playing even harder on defense, and look, Coach Moore is a great coach. They had a great game plan. Both of us watched a lot of film on each other and were ready for each other. They just were able to execute a whole lot better early. When they started making shots and feeling great, we turned the ball over a couple times, and then, bam, that game is a game of momentum. It just took us too long to be able to stem that tide and be able to get the flow going back our way. But again, to Nicole's credit, she never stopped pushing. She's never stopped fighting and her teammates rallied around her and we were able to come back and at least make a fight out of it. Q. Nicole, what were you seeing later in the game that opened you up to get those shots and start getting the ball in more of a scoring position rather than one scrambling for that same position? NICOLE BOUDREAU: Yeah, well, I think my teammates did a really great job of looking for me. At halftime I had my coach in my ear, I had my teammates in my ear telling me to shoot when I'm open. They felt like I had left a couple out there where someone backed off me and I wasn't ready to shoot, so I think I was looking more for my offense in the second half, which was a big part of it, but my teammates got me in some great situations, had some great screens. I think Alexa actually set me a great one at the top. But I can't say enough about my team, and they did it for me basically. I just had to put it in the hoop. Q. Coach put in a lot of bodies in the game. With you leaving the program, what do you see from this program going forward from those players that you finished this tournament with? NICOLE BOUDREAU: Yeah, I actually just said to them in there this has been my favorite season thus far and a huge part of that is because of my teammates. Where I started and where we are now, our team has grown significantly, and I have nothing but respect for every single one of those girls in there, that next year they'll come in, different people will step up in leadership roles. I have absolutely no doubt about that that BC is on the up come, and I can't wait to see what they do. But they still have some amazing players, even with Lex and me gone. We have great players, and they're going to step up next year. Q. With that said, Coach, people can look at records and so forth. What makes it so challenging in this league in terms of not only accumulating wins but really great performances that come out from teams top to bottom here? ERIK JOHNSON: Yeah, so we talked a little bit about it yesterday. Virginia Tech was our first ACC game, and we were coming off a non-conference schedule where we went 12-1 non-conference, and not all of those were games where we're better than our opponent. We won at Purdue in a really tough ACC-Big Ten Challenge game against a Purdue team that had just come off their only other loss was in overtime to Stanford. They'd just beaten LSU and Louisville. We beat a good Utah team by 20 plus in the Bahamas, and we knew this team could play. But the ACC offers another whole level of athleticism, and the coaches are so well-prepared that they really pick on every one of your weaknesses. Nicole will tell you, we were right there in so many games where it came down to one or two possessions, one turnover on one end and one rebound on the other end, and again, you credit the other team. Tonight Wes Moore and his team, they made us play that way. They were in passing lanes. It wasn't that we just decided to throw the ball away. It wasn't that we just decided to give them shots. They earned their shots, they drove to the basket, finished really tough shots, made open looks, as well. So look, everybody is good, and I think the tag line this year is you'd better bring your A game, and that's as true a statement as I can imagine. Q. Were you kind of shocked that NC State was able to be both that fast and efficient for 10, 12 minutes and kind of get the score too big? NICOLE BOUDREAU: I wasn't shocked. ERIK JOHNSON: Yeah, you know, I'll agree with -- Nicole and I feel the same way. You can't be shocked at how good NC State is. I was shocked that we weren't able to mitigate those things. My job as a coach is to put us in position. I felt like we made some good defensive adjustments that I thought would actually make it more difficult on them, so it was certainly -- you could say there was a bit of a shock factor that they were able to adjust to our adjustments and push right through it. But that credit needs to go to NC State. As Peter said, when the league is that good and you got two all-conference players who are playing at the highest level, and, oh, by the way, and their teammates are also making shots, they're pretty good. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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