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BIG EAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 4, 2018Mary GedakaHarry PerrettaChicago, Illinois Georgetown 63, Villanova 58 HARRY PERRETTA: You know, it's like I said, it's difficult to beat a team three times, especially one where you're so -- first game we won by two. Second game we won by one. This game was exactly the same kind of game as the other two games. They were nip and Tuck down the stretch. Whoever made, in my opinion, it came down to whoever could make a couple of threes, and they did. There was a crucial play in the game where we didn't switch a screen. They hit a three to go up three. Once you get that lead, like we won the first two games because we were able to have like a four or five-point lead going into like the last three minutes, and we held on and won the game. Today it was the exact opposite. They were able to get that three-, four-point lead with under 3:00 to go. It makes us a little nervous because then we have to try to get a basket, and it puts a little pressure on you. I just think we didn't play bad defense. I mean, before we started fouling, they were only in the 50s, you know? But our problem was we were only in the 50s, too. So I think the two games before that, I think we got in the 60s. So, you know, I just think that's the way it goes, and you have to just move on. Q. Mary, this team might be going to the NCAA Tournament. So is there something that you can point to that you can move forward with? MARY GEDAKA: I think we need to continue to have high energy, and especially in practice these next couple weeks. We just need to buy in and continue to buy into each other. I think that's really important for us to advance and get ready for the postseason. Q. What makes Georgetown a tough team? MARY GEDAKA: They're extremely athletic, and basically in every single position. Sometimes we had a difficult time scoring against that, and I think that was the issue today. They're obviously a really great team. They're really hot right now, so we had a difficult time with them today. But I think we can just use this as motivation to keep working as hard as we can for the postseason. Q. Can you speak to why this Villanova team could do something special here? MARY GEDAKA: Yeah, I think especially with some of our big wins this year it shows that we have a lot of great team chemistry. So I think that's a really big part to our success this year. We're really figuring out how to score the ball and play good defense and buy in. So I think that's really a big key. We're just rolling with it. HARRY PERRETTA: The other thing I wanted to tell you was, remember I told you before, the more times we play somebody, the harder it is for us to beat them because they become accustomed to our style. You know what I mean? That was another thing I was concerned about in this game playing. In a ten-team league, you probably will play everybody twice. Some of the 16-team leagues, you didn't play everybody twice. You know what I'm saying? Now in this league, you play everybody twice. If you beat them twice, it becomes even harder to beat them the third time, especially when they become more accustomed to your style. Q. What gives this team the ability to do something different in the tournament? HARRY PERRETTA: If we draw teams that aren't accustomed to us or haven't seen us, then we become a dangerous team. I think that's what our advantage is. Like I said, every time we've played an opponent, we've played them tough. We've beaten some teams twice. We beat them at Villanova by a point. They took 25 more shots than we did. 25 more shots and we won the game. So sometimes you just get lucky to win a game. That's why we actually rebounded the ball better today than we did at Villanova. The only difference was we didn't make as many shots as we did at Villanova, and they made more. They made more threes -- they didn't make more threes. They made a better percentage of threes. That's a better way of saying it. Q. With Mary and the way she has the ball in the post, you guys have really maneuvered a lot of what you do offensively around her at times. Can you speak to her importance this season? HARRY PERRETTA: Well, she's super important because she's the only player on our team that can mismatch one of their players. She mismatches their center. If you notice, they went small because they couldn't guard her. So a lot of times our guards can't get to pass the other team's guards. We don't have a breakdown player, so Mary becomes that breakdown player. Kelly's the second best at it. But Mary's better at it, not necessarily because she's good at it, but because she's facing an opponent, a kid that she can take it by. Q. Coach, you guys had a really good showing in the first half of the season with so many wins in a row. What was the atmosphere like? What was the thing that really put you guys over the edge? HARRY PERRETTA: I just think we made shots that we needed to make when we needed to make them. There were a lot of close games we won at the beginning of the year. So we made crucial shots, I guess is the word I'm trying to say. That's what my concern was. How many times can we keep doing that? We did it a lot. We did it 22 times. So I'm pretty happy with the team chemistry and all that. But that was the reason why we won early. We made a lot of crucial shots. Like I said, even today, we missed a couple crucial shots that we had a chance to tie on. We had two or three chances to tie on threes and we missed them. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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