|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 2, 2017MaChelle JosephKatarina VuckovicConway, South Carolina Miami - 87, Georgia Tech - 71 MACHELLE JOSEPH: I thought we played in spurts. I think one of the things with a young team is the inconsistency, and tonight was no different. Their seniors and their upperclassmen obviously stepped up and had tremendous games, and that's been something that has been Achilles heel for us all year is having consistency with such a young team. But I give Miami a lot of credit. Again, I've never seen somebody shoot 90 percent in a quarter. That's a first for me. And shooting 65 percent from the field is -- that's huge for them. I think they're going to be a tough team to beat in this tournament. Q. What were you able to do offensively in the second half that you weren't able to do in the first? MACHELLE JOSEPH: Well, I felt like we just slowed down and we were able to execute. We changed our press offense. We were able to get easier looks at the basket, and I thought Kaylan Pugh started being really aggressive attacking the rim, and that made a big difference for us. Q. What's the future of the NIT, NCAA, what are you looking at right now? MACHELLE JOSEPH: Well, I think right now that we're going to be in the NIT. I think we had to win today and play really well in this tournament to get in the NCAA Tournament. We have a high strength of schedule, high RPI, but we just didn't come up with the wins. We had four overtime wins. We lost seven games, less than nine points, I think, combined. So we had some tough, tough games throughout the course of the season. But the thing I'm excited about is we return 11 of our 13 players, so we have tremendous depth coming back, and those players got a lot of quality minutes. Francesca Pan being named the ACC freshman of the year, obviously we're going to rely on her heavily. She struggled today, but her and Kaylan Pugh coming back are going to be two of the better guards in the ACC. Zaire O'Neil is one of the dominant post players in the league. Elo Edeferioka continues to get better and Imani Tilford will be our starting point guard for four years coming back. Obviously Chanin Scott shows a lot of bright spots for us. She did some things this tournament that were really -- gave us something to look forward to. Obviously the future is very bright. Q. What is going to be your regimen then for the next couple of weeks as you prepare for postseason? MACHELLE JOSEPH: Well, first of all, we'll take some time off just to recover, get focused on our academics. We've got some things we need to take care of in the classroom first and foremost and take care of some nagging injuries we've been dealing with all season. We didn't have a bye week this year. Our bye week in ACC play was the very first week before the season started. That's been really tough at an academic school to go through this kind of ACC schedule with no bye week. So the schedule really wasn't in our favor to start the season. We had really tough games. We played three of the top four teams in the last the first four games, and we never got a bye week, so we're going to take some time off, regroup, and we'll come back and we'll practice and continue to work on the things that we've been working on and get ready for the NIT. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|