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NCAA WOMEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: MIAMI

March 17, 2017

Coral Gables, Florida

THE MODERATOR: We welcome the 12th seed, Quinnipiac. We're joined by Coach Tricia Fabbri, Carly Fabbri, Adily Martucci and Morgan Manz. And what we'll do is we'll open it up with opening remarks from Coach.

COACH FABBRI: Good afternoon. We're excited to be back in the Big Dance. We're excited to be in Miami. We're looking forward to a great game with Marquette. They've had an incredible season. Big East champions.

But we're really looking forward to an opportunity that we've worked extremely hard for, earned, and to be back here a third time in five years. We've got incredible experience. It's a great opportunity, and we're just really excited to make the most of an opportunity that we have, again, worked really hard for all year long.

And this is a moment that I don't feel is too big for this team. And, again, we're looking forward to the weekend, the competition tomorrow and the 40-plus minutes against Marquette tomorrow.

Q. Carly, it's been, like, two weeks since the MAAC final, I guess, and there's been spring break, the storm. I don't know how much of it you ended up getting or not. But just what has this all been like to go from the three games in three days in Albany to three days of hurry up and wait for tomorrow?
CARLY FABBRI: For sure, in any tournament three games in three days, it is a lot. But we felt good coming out of the MAAC Tournament, obviously having won it.

We got, I think, two days off, and then we went right back to practice and refocused. But when we found out on Monday who we were going to play, you know, we were really excited, kind of finally putting a name to a face.

But I think those days off, they helped us recover from a grueling tournament up in Albany. But we're happy to be back in tournament play. Happy to be in a warmer place in Miami. But definitely it was a long too weeks, but it helped us refocus for sure.

Q. I believe you won 10 games (indiscernible). Can you talk about how much confidence the team has here coming in? Is the confidence pretty sky high (indiscernible) accomplishing things this weekend?
ADILY MARTUCCI: Absolutely. After our little slump, the ten games straight has been really big for us and definitely grown our confidence levels. And since then we've just had a huge belief in each other and in our coaches and that's going to be huge come tomorrow.

Q. When the seeding came out on Monday and Marquette was asked their initial reactions about facing Quinnipiac, one of their guards said I've never heard of it. What are your initial reactions to that, and how does that fuel you?
CARLY FABBRI: I think that it's nothing new to us. I think a lot of teams that we do play from bigger conferences, they do have trouble pronouncing our name. They don't really know where we're from, even though we have, you know, been a major power for the past couple of years.

But, I mean, if anything it's just an extra push. We're motivated as it is. We've had this school since summer, we wanted to win our championship in the league, which we did, and we want to win a game and the NCAA Tournament. But I think we're just a little bit more focused on ourselves. I think if they don't know who we are, they're going to know who we are tomorrow.

Q. Adily, as a starter your team has been prone to slow starts. Marquette just said a little while ago in their press conference they want to start the game really well. They want to dictate pace of play, especially in the first five minutes. How do you go about combatting that?
ADILY MARTUCCI: We definitely want to do the same. I think because of our slow starts, we need to really change that and start very hot on offense. And I think the big thing about doing that is just staying confident in our own shots.

I know I am very confident in my teammates, and they're confident in me. But I think for ourselves we just need to be confident in our own shots.

Q. When you get to this game, when you talk as a team since summer, like Carly said, to win the MAAC, get to the NCAA Tournament, when you accomplish that, do you almost feel like, yeah, you're playing for yourselves, you're playing for your school, of course. But do you feel you're almost representing the MAAC, too -- in some way that you're carrying the MAAC flag a little bit when you get into this environment as well?
MORGAN MANZ: I definitely think it's an honor to represent the MAAC. There is only one team that gets to be sent here. You have to win your conference.

So being able to come here represent the MAAC in the best way we can, we're going to go out there and hopefully we can do our best.

Q. Trish, third time in five years with this team. In your mind, what sets this squad apart from the two prior teams that you sent to the NCAAs?
COACH FABBRI: That's a great question. Ultimately, I think that this team has benefited from the experience of being in not only the tournament but having won championships. They've been able to set a different expectation this year. I also think that we benefited from getting into a championship game and not winning and really having a focus and a clear vision of what they wanted for this season.

And they were unwavered in their goals and what they wanted to achieve. It was a challenge. Every season is. And we faced our challenges. But how we responded to our challenges has made this team very different than the teams that we've had in the past.

Nothing good's ever easy. I said it a million times. But how we responded to losing three out of four the end of January into the beginning of February, and now to win 10 straight, to get into this position, to earn the seed, to see Marquette on this neutral court, to remain unwavered, to stand in those challenges and to respond the way that we have all together has made this team very different.

I've said the word time and again we talked a lot about grit, resilience, finding ways. We haven't gotten out to our best starts. That's been maybe just who we are, but we have been resilient. There's no panic; there's poise in how we find ways to win. And that's what I would expect from this team tomorrow, regardless of the start.

Q. The logistics of this week, (indiscernible) or something like that. How difficult was all that to deal with from a logistics standpoint?
COACH FABBRI: Honestly, it wasn't bad at all. Because my part-time job is meteorologist. I really enjoy The Weather Channel. And so we were planning ahead.

And fortunately enough, after the Selection Show, with the weather coming and even before that, we had the plan in effect that we went grocery shopping. We had plenty of supplies on hand.

And with finding out that we were playing on Saturday really did help us that we were able to not practice on Tuesday. And the governor did close the roads down.

So there was no way -- there was a travel ban, we were not going to get on the roads. And the players can tell you that they went in, they went grocery shopping in the team room and everyone had their supplies for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And everything was copacetic, and we were able to have very good prep days, our practice and stay in a routine. And the best thing we knew we were coming to Miami.

Maybe they weren't going anywhere for spring break but we still were able to get to Miami. So it was really a win-win for us.

Q. I know it turned inland, but how much did you guys end up getting?
COACH FABBRI: It was around 10 to 12 inches of snow and it was still pretty icy the next day, but we fared pretty well.

Q. There's three games really on their schedule that sort of jump -- the three against DePaul. DePaul locked down everybody all year, and DePaul averaged 100 in those three games. What's it about their ability to get out and go that might concern you the most?
COACH FABBRI: Yes, just because I studied up as much as I could and ironically, I just had that championship game on that night watching them play.

The synergy that they have with the three players that played on the AAU team together, you know, their connection, their ability to get out and find one another, that's a big deal. That seems to obviously carried over and turned into a short turnaround into this program that's really on the rise and playing so well right now.

But we have a game plan in place to defend what their strength is in their transition. And it's not going to be easy, because they get out and they're just talented players with a great coach that have found a great way to get out and score and average 80 points. We certainly have our hands full with them wanting to get out and play up and down. But with that said we like to go up and down ourselves.

So I like that pace. I think it's going to be an exciting basketball game for 40-plus minutes, however long it's going to take. I think it's going to be a really good women's basketball game in the tournament which is what you want to see. These are the elite teams in the 64, but they want to get out and run. I think we have our challenges, but I think we also do have a plan that's in place to hopefully try and slow that transition game down.

Q. Coach, you sort of touched on this earlier, but just how much of an advantage does your experience, the players who have been in the tournament before and just the veteran players veteran leadership, will help you tomorrow?
COACH FABBRI: Again, reflecting back to the first time and the second time, you get this excitement and happy to be here. And as the years go on, and your goals and aspirations change for your program, and within the players. And now it's a real opportunity for us, and it was talked about not only as the coaches, but when you don't have to talk about it, coaches to your team and players, when it's an expectation amongst your players and your team is talking about what they want, makes our job a lot easier.

So this is an expectation from them. They've worked extremely hard to get here. This is the moment they want. I expect them to make the most of their moment.

Q. When you went 1-3 in that stretch, was there -- what changed? There's all sorts of reasons, ball just bounces that way or whatever? Were there meetings? Did you change things? What was the catalyst to go from that to this?
COACH FABBRI: There's a lot that goes into it. There's not just one thing. There was certainly an injury to Brittany Johnson. We were playing five in and five out. We adjusted to that. There was just a flip of the calendar to February.

There were some other symbolic things that we did as a team from within, that if I believed made an impact on going back to the purpose of what we were doing, why we were doing it. And maybe that's a question that the players want to answer more than myself.

CARLY FABBRI: I think we just kind of banded together, I think. Obviously we didn't like to lose. And it was happening a little bit more frequently than we were used to in past years.

So I think we just banded together. We made some changes on the court, off the court, and we just got back to Quinnipiac basketball, sharing the ball, winning.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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