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NCAA WOMEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS AND FINALS: STOCKTON

March 25, 2017

Stockton, California

SOUTH CAROLINA 100, Quinnipiac 58

THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon, and please welcome Quinnipiac Bobcats head coach, Tricia Fabbri and our student athletes, Jen Fay and Adily Martucci.

First we will have an opening statement from Coach Fabbri, and then we will open up to questions for our student athletes.

TRICIA FABBRI: I'd just like to congratulate South Carolina moving on into the Elite 8. I thought they were very good all day long. We knew we would have our hands full.

And I said yesterday, I think the lone remark I did say, I knew they were really good defensively and it was very -- they disrupted us offensively in terms of really feeling comfortable. That said, I thought we were really playing very quickly with our shots to start the game, and just looking at our numbers, we ended up shooting 43 percent overall, which isn't terrible.

But South Carolina lived up to their No. 1 seed all game long, and they were tough. They were really tough today.

Q. Can you just talk about the start and you know, not only from the scoreboard from the hole that you guys were in, but what it did mentally to sort of get off to that start?
JEN FAY: The first two games we played in the tournament I thought we got off to really good starts. It wasn't obviously the same this time around. But I mean, they came out shooting the lights out and we just tried to stay in it and play hard.

Q. What did Coach Fabbri tell you in that last moment as you walked off the court?
ADILY MARTUCCI: Just congratulated me. I wasn't too worried about like what was being said. More of just embracing her for the last time, at least on the court. Just having a moment with her, that's all. I don't know if like I remember any of the specific words said, but just hugging my coach.

Q. Either one of you, but Coach talked about how defensively, she knew coming in they were a problem, but offensively, they were an issue, too. Can you talk about the problems they caused for you there, too?
ADILY MARTUCCI: Yeah, they shot lights out. Our game plan was to really try to help off of our players to help our bigs with Wilson. And something's got to give when that happens. Those threes really were daggers. I felt like they shot 100 percent from the three-point line; it felt like that. They shot very well.

Q. Defensively, did they do anything that surprised you, or was it basically what you knew was coming but done exceptionally well?
JEN FAY: We ran the same offense that we've been running all year that's been working really well. I think the difference was that they were just a little bit faster, a little bit stronger and a little bit bigger and I think it took its toll as the game went on.

Q. What have these past five years meant to you?
ADILY MARTUCCI: Going to make me -- waterworks over here. Indescribable. Life changing. The best years of my life. I'm just so proud to be a Bobcat and to be a part of this family. It's really hard to describe my five years year because it's been so amazing and just the growth that I've witnessed with our program and within myself. It's life changing.

Q. I'd like both players to answer. Could you guys just talk, what changed for this program in the last two weeks?
JEN FAY: We put our school on the map. Not only do people know how to pronounce our cool now but they also know who we are and what we stand for and what we're all about. I think that's the biggest thing is that we left our mark.

ADILY MARTUCCI: I'm also, I think we inspired a lot of people back home, and just different teams on campus. And yeah, it's just inspiring to be an inspiration.

JEN FAY: Also the mid-major teams that can be in our position now; I think we've given them a pathway to follow. I think that's pretty cool, too.

Q. What changed? Maybe the bar is different for your program than it was.
TRICIA FABBRI: Yeah, it's a great question. We clearly had stated prior to the start of the season, that getting into the tournament was not the end game anymore for this program; that winning games was the goal.

And accomplishing that, this day today for us, having the experience while this loss stings; and obviously South Carolina was so good, and the margin of victory is not easy to swallow.

But it now, for us, we obviously measured up against one of the top programs in the country. We clearly know where we stand. We clearly now have our next steps in the program and where we go now, another route and strategy, is being hatched.

So how we got here, there was a good foundation set. Not many people outside our region knew about it, and now we're going to use how everyone knows how to say Quinnipiac; a week ago, no one knew much about us.

Now everyone in women's basketball has paid attention to our story, and we plan to use that. Now getting a taste of the Sweet 16, being here the second weekend will now be a part of what we want to continue to build upon for this program going forward.

Q. Individual coaches and players and individual accounts in the MAC have been Tweeting and rooting you guys on, and it seemed like they were along on this ride with you. What does it mean to play in a conference that has so much respect between all the programs?
TRICIA FABBRI: The MAC has such great coaching camaraderie that it doesn't surprise me at all. We have a school and we have a coach in Bryan Georges; that this has been accomplished before, so we knew it could be done again.

We talk as coaches about the conference getting multi-bid schools in the NCAA Tournament. That's a goal of ours. We have Joe Frager, who has won a national II Division Championship. We have Patty Coyle, who has coached in the WNBA. We have recent hires in Heather Vulin, and if you look at her resumÃ©, coming from the BCS schools; and you have Ali Jacques, who has done a good job of turning a program around at Siena U; Jada Pierce, you look at the resumÃ©. In recent hires, it is a league full of great coaches in the MAC, and the league is -- we bond together because we know that together we can do even more for this mid-major.

So this is a big deal on our success across the board in the conference. We're excited about the direction that the conference is going, about getting more teams into the NCAA Tournament.

Q. In that first quarter what do you feel like they were doing defensively and what was it preventing you guys from being able to do?
TRICIA FABBRI: Well, certainly, I felt like we were playing offensive basketball. Fast forward, we were not as calm as we had been. And then when a couple of our shots, where the right shot didn't go in, we were trying to play too quickly instead of calmly.

And I think that was obviously due because of South Carolina, Jen said it: Their size, speed and length was disruptive to us. And then, we did, we kind of -- have to credit South Carolina. But I thought (power interruption) and my staff certainly enjoyed the most, and ultimately that's the greatest joy in coaching is watching the maturity and knowing that you in some way, hope that you helped, and that's the beauty in coaching. Adily is no exception.

Q. At the end of the first quarter, obviously the first quarter wasn't what you wanted to be. What did you say to the team to get back into it?
TRICIA FABBRI: They were saying it to themselves: One possession, let's defend, let's get after it. We took good care of the basketball. Let's just settle down and set screens.

I thought, you know, we just didn't play as well together as we did over the weekend and I again, certainly South Carolina had everything to do with that, but we had made so many good plays, good basketball plays playing against Miami and Marquette, credit South Carolina.

But I thought we could have done, you know, hopefully just made more plays. I thought we were not as moving and cutting and reading and playing as well as a unit today. But again, I can't say it enough. I'm being repetitive, sorry, South Carolina had a lot to do with that.

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