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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTFebruary 28, 2018Erik JohnsonTaylor OrtleppGreensboro, North Carolina UNC 69, Boston College 64 MIKE FINN: Coach, we'll begin with a brief opening statement and we'll go to questions. ERIK JOHNSON: First of all, I like the cell phone rule so I hope you abide like that just like our team at dinner. There's been some teaching moments over the last few years where I've had to send a group text, hey, put your phones away. But what I guess I'd like to say, since you gave Coach the mic, the record of this team in no way reflects what the season was like. Again, this is the story that people need to know about this team. This is the most fun I've had coaching. They were incredible to coach. Every single time-out, I had ten sets of eyes locked in on my eyes, nodding, "Okay, Coach," asking a follow-up question. Whenever I'm away from them, this is a team that I never, ever had to worry about cliques or blaming others. When they went into that locker room, it was positive, productive, and this group of four seniors truly changed the culture of our program. You know, when you take over a program and you've got a change of culture, there's some growing pains in there. This team for the first time, again, was just was awesome, and so people are going to look at our record, and they will tell me, "Coach, tough year, I'm sorry." You know what? I love coming to practice every day and the worst thing about my day today is I don't get to go to basketball practice and I don't get to coach them tomorrow. Now, Taylor Ortlepp, Georgia Pineau, Emma Guy, three unbelievable sophomores along with Sydney Lowery and Milan Bolden-Morris as freshmen, what an incredible future. But again today was really about the leadership of Andie Anastos, the kid off the hockey team; Rachel Gartner, who is a captain who you guys don't get to see play very much but I get to see play every day; Katie Quandt, who is willing to give up the me for the we; and Martina Mosetti, and the four of them changed the culture of this program in so many positive ways and I'm just so proud to have coached them. Anyway, thanks for giving me the mic. We'll take any questions that you have. Q. This is a two-point game after the third quarter and UNC went on a 10-0 run. What were they doing to get that run started? ERIK JOHNSON: So we did a really nice job on No. 44, Janelle Bailey, in the first half, and you saw those double-teams really frustrated her, and we continued to do a nice job. So what she did, there's a reason that she was the USA Basketball Player of the Year, she stepped out. She stepped out and started hitting jumpshots and to her credit, here is a big, strong, athletic kid who is an incredible score side and who knocked down, I'm not sure whether it was three, four, mid-range jumpshots. And the other big key, was two of their players looked -- everybody knows North Carolina has three players that score all their points, right. Well, guess what? In that 10-0 run, the two 3-pointers came from No. 1, Taylor Koenen and from No. 3, Jaelynn Murray, and those two kids stepped up and banged huge threes. And so really you have to give North Carolina at credit and I told the team this in the locker room. North Carolina had to step up and make big time plays to beat us. To their credit they did, they have a Hall of Fame coach, they have got really, really good players and it was, like I said it was a hard-fought battle and we came a couple basketball plays away from being able to win it. Q. Taylor, when you were getting good looks at three, you were knocking them down. All of a sudden in the second half you stopped getting good looks. What did Carolina do to turn that around? TAYLOR ORTLEPP: Yeah, definitely. I think we didn't really change much with our offensive play but they were just identifying us early, picking us up in transition, and they were switching harder out on offensive sets, so it made it more difficult to get up. But I think we still worked together to get good looks at the basket and as a team, we kept in the fight. ERIK JOHNSON: One thing I'll say for Taylor is that we still continue to run plays to Taylor, and we actually like it when people pay more attention to her. It's kind of a win/win. She gets an open shot, we'll take that. If they commit two people to her, Taylor is a really good player getting to the rimming, driving-and-dishing. She created some moment for us and I thought she did a really nice job with that today, too. Q. What would you like people it know about Boston College's program that isn't necessarily on record? What would you like them to take away from the Eagles program? ERIK JOHNSON: Yeah, like I said, this is a team that, to put in context, had four seniors that maybe weren't our leading scorers and the star players. But they created a culture that is going to continue Boston College women's basketball into the future. We built the basketball side of things around three sophomores or three sophomores and two freshmen that really were our five leading scorers, and a fifth-year hockey kid. You know what, it was just, like I said, really, really fun every single day to watch them learn and compete and listen and just play for each other and all the things that we preach every day. Like I said, I know that's not reflected in the record but this was not a tough year. I hate losing and losing does wear on people. But what I learned about my team is what they can do when adversity hits, when you lose a few games in a row, when you lose a close game, when you can't quite get over the hump, is at no point, did they ever point fingers, quit, pout, and that says more. I'm so much more concerned with the content of their character and who they are, and again, as a parent and as a coach, that just makes me proud to be part of this group. Q. In the past two meet-ups, you've gotten 23 and 20 and this meet-up was no different. How do you keep that confidence in shooting? TAYLOR ORTLEPP: It stems from my team. We all work together. We all work really hard. Our focus was today running out in transition and taking advantage of their defensive style. I know my position on this team, and having confidence to take the shot when I'm open and pass when I need to, when I'm guarded, just comes naturally to me. And it's a team game, so, yeah. Q. You and Andie basically shot your way back in the second quarter. Is six 3s a career high for you? TAYLOR ORTLEPP: Actually no, it's not. ERIK JOHNSON: She doesn't know her own stats, which says a lot about her. But yeah, actually it's not. I think she had seven in our last game at Syracuse. She has been on a nice little shooting roll, so appreciate you giving her a shoutout. It helps when the ball is going into the basket. She's worked really hard to get to that point. Really appreciate you guys covering us. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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