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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 1, 2017MaChelle JosephKaylan PughConway, South Carolina Georgia Tech - 71, Boston College - 67 MACHELLE JOSEPH: First of all, I'm just really proud of our team. We have a lot of young players. Four of our top eight players are first year to the ACC, first year playing at this level, and it's been a very interesting year for this team, and we've been in this situation that we were in today seven other times this year, and so to come out with the win just says a lot about the growth of this team over the course of the season. I was just really pleased with the play of Kaylan Pugh. She struggled a little bit in the first half and really came out in the second half and I thought got aggressive and attacked the basket and made plays for us. Q. Coach, this is a game where turnovers that you all forced them into and points off turnovers seemed to be maybe the two main factors in your victory. MACHELLE JOSEPH: Well, I give Boston College a lot of credit because they execute so well in the half court. You can tell with Fasoula, she's the best post player in the ACC. She's hard to guard, she's hard to defend, she makes tough shots. One of the things we knew going into the game is we could not get into a half court game with them. We had to keep this game going up-and-down, we had to try to control tempo, we had to get some deflections, some steals, run-outs, things like that, to be able to come away with a win. Q. Also a decided rebound advantage for you all, especially in the first half. What were you seeing there to get you on the boards so easily? MACHELLE JOSEPH: It's one of our core values we talk about. We built this program on defense and rebounding, and one of the things we want to do is out work people and I thought today we got a lot of hustle points, we chased down a lot of loose balls, and we finished the season leading the ACC in offensive rebounds, and that just says a lot about our heart and our hustle. I thought today that we've been able to control the boards several games and not come away with a win, but I thought today we made plays when we needed to down the stretch. Q. Kaylan, second half of the game you really took off, you had 14 points in that second half. What were you seeing differently in the second half that allowed you to do that? KAYLAN PUGH: It was really my teammates giving me the ball and Coach Joe telling us keep going, because in the second half, just like in the summer we put in all the work, so that's when you really just need to just turn it up. Q. You get to advance to Miami in the next game, a team that you played very, very close early in the season. Your thoughts about facing them again? MACHELLE JOSEPH: Well, I know that the players as soon as the game ended in Miami we found out that we were going to play Boston College first. It was hard to keep their attention there not to overlook Boston College because we were so -- we really want this rematch with Miami. It was a tough, hard fought game down there. Obviously we played them on senior night. They have three or four really good seniors, three starters in the lineup. But I thought out team came out and they kind of punched us early and got us down 10 and we fought back. And going into the fourth quarter we had the lead. Ball drops one direction or another in that game, it was some critical calls right there with five minutes to go, and the ball goes another way, we come away with a win. One of the things that we're excited about is we've been so close all year. We feel like if we ever put all our pieces together on the same night we're going to be a tough team to play. We've kind of been looking forward to this tournament. We talk about it's our time. We paid our price throughout the course of this season, losing some heartbreakers. So it's one of those things where we're focused on what we want right now and that's kind of redeeming ourselves. And we're a young team, we basically return everyone but two players next year. We want to play deep in the postseason and get as much experience as we can. Q. Kaylan, your thoughts on playing Miami again? KAYLAN PUGH: I know that I'm really excited as well as my teammates. We just want to execute the game plan so we can have a great game again and we're going to come out with a win, so we're really excited. Q. Coach, your thoughts about playing a game before your opponent has had a chance to play; is that a positive for you? How do you look at that? MACHELLE JOSEPH: Well, it's just basically the hand we're dealt right now, and there's nothing we can do about that. We played hard all season long to try to get ourselves in position not to have to play today. That didn't happen. But we can't focus on what didn't happen. We're going to focus on what we can control, and today -- what we can control tomorrow is how we come out and play. And we work hard all season long, all off-season, non-conference season. We're in shape. We're ready to play. And we're going to focus on coming out tomorrow and getting a stop and a score on every possession, and we're just going to give it everything we have. We have nothing to save it for, so we're going to leave it all here. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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