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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 1, 2017Audra SmithNelly PerryDanielle EdwardsConway, South Carolina Clemson - 67, Virginia Tech - 66 AUDRA SMITH: Well, first I'd like to open by saying -- giving a lot of credit to Virginia Tech. They're an outstanding basketball team. They're a very difficult team to defend because they shoot the three ball so very, very well. But I'm very, very proud of my team today and how hard they played and how they fought through on the scouting report, and how they did a really good job of limiting their three-point shot opportunities. They did a much better job in the second quarter and then throughout the rest of the game. Our goal was to force them off the three-point line and make them become penetrators, and we knew that we could stay with them if we made them shoot twos rather than threes. So I'm really proud of how hard they played and how they never gave up. We got down 10 early. They got a little tense, got little tight, told them to relax. And then we came out after halftime and then we got up by as many as eight, and of course as I tell them all the time the game is in runs, and Virginia Tech is a great team, and they weren't going to fold. And so they came back, battled back. Before we knew it, the game was tied. We went back and forth for a while. But just extremely proud of these young ladies and how hard they fought, they how they played and how well they played together and how they really had each other's back tonight. Q. Danielle, what's going through your mind, 3.4 seconds left on the clock, you're at the line with a chance to win? DANIELLE EDWARDS: Oh, gosh. I wasn't really trying to think. I was just trying to relax. My teammates were telling me to relax. I shot the first one kind of quick and that one kind of went in and out. I turned and I looked at Nelly and they were telling me just relax, like she's smiling and telling me to relax and knock this one down. My teammates were really just telling me you've got this, we just need one and then we'll get a stop and then the game will be over. Really I was trying not to think, but they were keeping me really calm. Q. Danielle, your drive to the basket before getting fouled there, what was kind of going through your mind at that point? Were you thinking, let me make contact or what was the plan there to hopefully make the winning shot there? DANIELLE EDWARDS: Previously I was able to get to the basket pretty easily, so I was thinking, why settle for a jump shot when I was able to get to the basket. I kind of just went in and -- I mean, whether they called a foul or not, the worst that could happen was we go into overtime. I tried to get the contact, and luckily I got it, and then I went to the free-throw line. Q. Coach, you had a tremendous advantage in rebounding. Just talk about some of the things that had you get that success in rebounding over them. AUDRA SMITH: Well, when you have players like Kobi Thornton and Aliyah Collier who just go to the boards with reckless abandon and just get after it. They want it so they go get it. So they did a tremendous job in terms of attacking the offensive glass. And then also Jaia Alexander is another big guard that came up with two crucial offensive rebounds, Nelly had two, and then Danny was sneaky there on that free-throw line and was able to come up with a couple herself. They did a really good job. It's all about -- rebounding is all about want-to. Defense, it's all about want-to, and that's what I talk to them about on a daily basis. It's about want-to, and it's about just going and getting the ball because you want it. So I'm really proud of the way they went after it, attacked the glass. Kobi Thornton was phenomenal in terms of catching, getting those offensive rebounds, sticking them back and getting us some three-point plays. Q. Danielle and Nelly, you'll have a few minutes to celebrate this, then it's Louisville tomorrow. What are your thoughts about playing the Cardinals? NELLY PERRY: Well, we're just excited to be in this position. We take every game the same. Play hard, you can control your effort. That's the only thing. We'll play hard, have good effort, and good results. Hopefully it'll show. Q. You fell behind 10 points early in the game. What helped you guys climb back in the second quarter? And then when you were up 8 in the fourth quarter, what helped them climb back in the game late? AUDRA SMITH: They relaxed. They came out -- from the beginning I could tell they were a little tight, and then when we started to relax and when we started to attack the basket, that allowed us to get back into the game. Cardaci's big three at the end of the half really catapulted us and gave us a huge confidence boost, so we came out in the second half. We didn't score on that first possession, but we gained control by attacking the basket. We have a little play that we run, and it's our little staple play, we call it continuous, and we run it and we run it until we get what we want out of it, and they did a great job of that, and that was what enabled us to get that eight-point lead in terms of executing our offense, and then getting stops on the opposite end. And then, of course, like I said about Virginia Tech being a really good team, they weren't going to fold and they came back. We had a couple of turnovers here and there and they kind of picked their spots and they kind of made a run, and then I told the team, relax, this is what the game is about, guys, the game is in runs. We're fine. They came back, and then we were able to survive today. Q. Danielle, you've probably played Notre Dame closer than anyone this year. What do you take out of a game like this getting ready to play Louisville? DANIELLE EDWARDS: You can take the things we did well out of that game, which we defended. Louisville is a really good offensive team, and in order to stay in that game, you're going to have to defend them. So we can take definitely our defense from them, and our competitive spirit that we have that we didn't give up. They were No. 1 at the time in the conference when we were playing them, and we were able to hang in with them, and that kind of shows that as long as we're giving effort and we're playing hard that we can play with anybody. Q. Coach, you had 16 turnovers and they had 20 points off those turnovers to your three, something to be looking at for tomorrow I'm assuming? AUDRA SMITH: Definitely, and I think about where most of our turnovers came from. I think Thornton may have had three because she shuffled her feet. I think Danny had a couple because she shuffled her feet. That's where our turnovers came from. So those were just correctable errors that we can correct. And we know we're going to turn it over. And then, too, when we turn it over, we have to do a better job on the defensive end of not allowing them to capitalize on that. I tell them all the time, we can't afford to give the opposition extra possessions, and we have to do a better job of taking care of the basketball. So the turnovers that we had were unforced turnovers. They were turnovers that we created ourselves. So those are correctable. So I'm not really concerned about that. I think we'll be much more sharper tomorrow. People always ask, hey, is it good to play on that first day or is it good to play on that second day. I always think it's good to play on that first day. You don't want to be that bottom seed, but it's good to play on that first day because you get all the jitters out, you know, and I think that will be the key for us tomorrow. We won't have any jitters. We know what the floor feels like. We know how the rims are. We know if the nets will be loose, we know the officiating, how the officiating is going to go. They'll be much better tomorrow, and I feel like we will take much better care of the basketball. Q. Their starters have played a lot of minutes on Sunday at Boston College. Did you go into the game thinking I'm going to have the fresher team and let's do some things to take advantage of that maybe? AUDRA SMITH: Oh, definitely. That's why -- I think they were surprised we were off the entire weekend. We played Georgia Tech that Thursday and then were off Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and then we came in and we practiced on Monday, and then we practiced yesterday, and they were exhausted. We had a four-hour drive from Clemson down here, and on the bus and off the bus to eat and on the -- off the bus to practice and back on the bus to practice again. They were a little tired from that. But I felt like we would have fresher legs because we had that bye, and we didn't play on that Sunday. And of course I watched that Boston College game, and that was a really, really good game, and they played a lot of minutes. So I knew that it was going to come down to that he was only playing a limited number of players. I knew that fatigue might be a little bit of a factor, and I also knew that the most important thing was that we had to attack. Like we had to be in attack mode on the offensive end every single time and make them defend us. Q. What was your defensive approach, especially when they made all those threes on Sunday at Boston College? AUDRA SMITH: To run them off the three-point line, and that's why I was a little teed up with them because we allowed them to get a couple of wide-open threes to start the game, and I'm like, guys, we watched them on film, we watched the BC game, we watched ourselves against them the last time we played them. We know what they're doing. They run a dribble drive offense, they're looking to penetrate and kick out and find open shooters, they want to suck in and kick it out to open shooters and you gotta get out and guard kids like Sam Hill because she shoots it deep. You've got to guard a Regan Magarity because she shoots it very, very well, you can't have your hands down. So our plan was to make sure that if they got threes off they were contested. We did a much better job after they got loose and got a couple of open threes. We did a much better job of contesting those three-point shots. Q. Chanette Hicks is probably one of the most impressive young guards in this league. She made a run at y'all at the end. What were you trying to do to stop her if you could? AUDRA SMITH: We were just trying to keep her in front, and that was the key. I thought about saying, okay, deny her the ball and let someone else bring it up, but then I thought, no, don't do that because Sam Hill brings it up and she pulls a three and I'm like, no, no, no. So if we can just keep Hicks in front of us, just keep her in front of us, but she is phenomenal. She's fast. She shot out of that thing like a cannon going, going, going, going, and we did a phenomenal job of keeping her in front, not fouling, moving our feet, making her have to turn and then time expired before she was able to get a shot off. Q. Nelly didn't play last month, January when you last played them and lost in the regular season. How much of a difference did that make having her today? AUDRA SMITH: Oh, it was huge. Nelly is a huge part of our team. You know, not having her -- I think the one thing about it is not so much as the offensive part, but with Nelly being on the floor, the rest of the team is more relaxed. It's like that big sister. You know, you've got that big sister out there and you can look over at her, you know she's coming in the game and when she's in the game everything is going to be okay. So I think she gives the rest of the team a sense of calmness and a sense of we're going to be all right. So having her tonight, and of course she played phenomenally in terms of her scoring and her rebounding and only turned the ball over two times. So that was a huge plus to have her offense. Because there were games in our non-conference and even in conference where Nelly didn't score a lot of points but just her presence on the floor, you've got to be aware of where she is, and what that does is it opens up scoring opportunities for other people. And then there are times where she's got to take over, and she knows, we tell her all the time, I don't think she shoots enough. She had 19 shots tonight. That's good, but she can take a couple more. But Nelly is a -- she's a very unselfish player. She wants her teammates involved, and sometimes she defers more than I want her to. But having her on the floor is a huge key for us, is a huge key. Q. Nelly, what helped you guys on the glass today? NELLY PERRY: Just boxing out and just going to it pretty much. That's all I can think of. Just being aggressive. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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