|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 4, 2017Katie MeierJessica ThomasKeyona HayesConway, South Carolina Duke - 57, Miami - 52 KATIE MEIER: I just thought that was an awesome basketball game. If you really are into strategy and personnel, and when you want to see young ladies have to be at such a high intellect and play their guts out. If you really study the game, there was so much going on in that game. There were so many adjustments, and how hard it was to get people open. But to see these players just completely spill their guts out, on both teams, and yet being exhausted and everything else and being so smart, so high level. So that is a credit to the entire season of work in the ACC and how difficult this conference is. You know, you've got two teams that really want to score more than in the 50s, but when it comes March, you make sure that you're locking down on the defensive end, so I think both teams were really, really committed to the defensive end. And both teams hit really special shots. We don't have a lot of regrets in this game. We really don't. Took the lead in the fourth, right where we wanted it, feeling great about everything, Rebecca Greenwell picked a real fun time to get hot. That was rough. That was rough. We had done such a great job on her, and then she's special that way, and she's just that kid that just stays mentally in it, and you just can't knock her down. Heck of a couple shots by her. I think that was the difference in the game. But these two, we ran -- we made up about two or three play calls in the middle of the game just because of the looks we were getting, and they executed them. And Jessica made some high-level reads and Key had some amazing finishes. I like my team. I love my team. We really had a great time in this tournament, and I think that there's no question we played our best, best basketball in March, which is a coach's dream. Hopefully March has still got a lot of adventure ahead of us. Q. What does it say, you guys seemed like you had a really good game plan for Lexie Brown, sort of giving her trouble, and then of course she just comes down late, hits two free throws and then hits that end one. What does that say about her as a player? KATIE MEIER: Well, you know, I think we did a really nice job on her, and she got eight points at the line. She's a great free-throw shooter. She earned them. But those eight points at the line, you've got a scenarios in your head, but she got almost half her points at the free-throw line because she shoots such a high percentage, and some of them were not on a shot. I mean, the two free throws she got when she was just dribbling, we just said this is our fourth foul, we don't want another foul, and she got two very important free throws there just running an offense, and that's the kind of stuff you can't give Lexie because she's so dangerous in other areas. But her on the free-throw line -- if she missed one tonight, I was shocked, honest. Q. Talk for a second, that last possession I think you guys were down one and then they got the shot-clock violation off that, what were you trying to do? KATIE MEIER: It's the same play we had run earlier and I don't want to give away so much of our strategy, but we had a lot of looks and we just -- I don't think we ran it as crisply. It might be one of those times where you just got a little -- you get a little bit of a cloud. You know, a lot of minutes, people have played maybe 100 minutes in this tournament. And so you think you're playing crisp or whatever, but maybe that got us a little bit. It wasn't exactly how we wanted it to go. Q. Keyona, you seemed to be able to expose the Duke zone and get some awfully good looks inside. How were you able to do that? KEYONA HAYES: We had a game plan, and they have holes in their zone, and we just found the holes. I found the holes, and I just played from there. Q. Another game for you guys with 30 points in the paint. For a team that's so heavy on the guards, why do you think you've had such success in this tournament getting into the paint? KATIE MEIER: That's a great question, but that's what I'm saying. You think you're going to come into the ACC Tournament after you've played teams two and three times and think you're going to get what you want, you're not going to. So if you're immature about it and you just cry in your soup, but you've got to expect it. We didn't get what we've been getting all year, but that's why I love this team because we can stay patient and stay within ourselves and stay very much in the moment and take what people were giving us. I do think that our high-low game this entire tournament was phenomenal, but I think it was also our guards were checking down a little bit off of the ball screens and making some really great -- we call them Gillman passes down the lanes, and our posts were holding their pins a little bit longer. The guards get a lot of attention, and they draw people away, then we can kind of get them on the inside. Q. You guys have about two weeks off now before you play again in the NCAA Tournament. What's your plan going forward? You said you were having a great March so far. How do you keep that going? KATIE MEIER: Well, if you'd like to come to Miami and be on our practice squad, we'll put you to work. Yeah, it's weird, we're usually on spring break right now, so I expected to play tomorrow, so I haven't had a meeting about that yet. But we will -- this team, this team, you've got to kick them out of the gym. We literally, at this point -- my trainer tells me how long we can practice, and they fight me want to practice longer. And I have 25 minutes of intensity days and 45 minutes of intensity days and the trainer has to tell me to get these guys out of the gym. And then I'll ask why they're tired, and they'll say, well, I was up at 6:00 getting my shots in. Oh, my God. So this team I'm not worried about. We'll stay sharp. Q. Kind of a follow-up to what you just said, great game last night, yesterday, that you won against Florida State, and then to get your kids to come back and play at such a high level back-to-back days speaks volumes about your kids. KATIE MEIER: Yeah, and we had another game before that that wasn't easy, either. It was the all-physical bracket. I mean, it was unbelievable. We talked real quick, we're very authentic and we're very frank, and I said, right now if I didn't think we were a Sweet 16 team and beyond, I would tell you how much I love you, how great you are and ignore the mistakes, but that's not us. That's not us. And if you want to be high level, we're going to hear it right now. There's a couple things we did wrong in the last minute there, and then I went and patted them on the back. But they want it. As tired as they are, I'm so proud of our effort, I really am. But you're going to be tired. You're going to have stress. You're going to have pressure. And we're fine with it. But we're not going to come away from this tournament without making some adjustments, too. We're not going to up in the clouds saying "nice try," we just won't. In fact, they'd hate them if I did that to them. They expect the truth. Q. For both players, talk about that last minute, the highs and lows that you got the lead after fighting back but then to give it up to Duke in that last minute, talk about the emotions of it. JESSICA THOMAS: I mean, it was up and down. It hurts, you know, as seniors, as a veteran squad it hurts because we let it slip away. Like Coach said, it's just a matter of execution, and when it came down to it, we had a big possession, didn't execute the way we wanted to, and could have easily took the lead and took the game. I mean, emotionally, it sucks. But I mean, but it is what it is. We've got to get better, and we know that. KATIE MEIER: But I disagree with her. We did not give it to Duke. We did not give this game away. We did not. We fought hard to take the lead, and they took it back. 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
|