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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 4, 2020Jennifer HooverAlex SharpIvana RacaGreensboro, North Carolina Wake Forest - 83, UNC - 73 THE MODERATOR: Welcome to today's postgame press conference. We will with go ahead and get started. We have Wake Forest, transcripts will be available upon completion of today's press conference from ASAP Sports and we will be sure to have those on our app and website. JENNIFER HOOVER: First of all, go Dukes. I couldn't be more proud of this team where we had our warrior spirit all year in a game where we knew it was going to be a touch match-up. We had a close game a couple weeks ago against them at our home. We just had different players step up at different times and it was a total team effort and one of our big emphasis coming in was you gotta defend and rebound if you want to move on in March and in postseason and when I look down and see we beat them on the boards 47-22, they took it to heart and so proud of our kids. THE MODERATOR: We have Christina Morra and Ivana Raca. Q. With a week between games basically how important was it for you to come out and not have any rust and look like it didn't take long for you to get going? JENNIFER HOOVER: Praise God we finally got a break and had a bye. It was our first weekend off since before Christmas, so the kids, we gave them off Friday and Saturday and when they came back on Sunday they had a refreshed and renewed spirit and energy that we were excite about and I know they felt it as well and just felt really ready to go. It's an advantage not having a bye until now but it was a disadvantage back in the first week of February when we were in the grind. I thought we had a good practice on Sunday, got after it a little bit on Sunday and less on Monday and even less yesterday and prepped to be ready to go today and give our kids the credit they go out and make the shots and defend and I thought we came out with a real focus and fight about us. Q. Coach, you end this third quarter on a 6-0 run and then you go on an 18-3 run to start the fourth. What were you seeing on them that allowed you all to score so quickly and fast on them? JENNIFER HOOVER: I think we saw some opportunities where they started to trap our point guard and give Gina Conti a lot of credit because I thought she made some great passes out of traps that led to a lot of buckets for us and you look at Gina's line and she not only has one assist but I think they had a lot of passes to the person who then made the assist because that's the way it's built coming out of the traps. I thought we got into a groove and put the peddle down and that was key for us. Q. Ivana, tied career high out there today and did you get frustrated with slaps in the game? IVANA RACA: I have to give credit to my teammates. They were fighting me really well under the basket, and I have so much that I took advantage of. Q. Alex, I think you hit a shot on the second or third possession of the game and then you didn't make a shot until it was like 50 to 50 something. What got you going there? What clicked at the end? ALEX SHARP: I think my mentality was just keep shooting it. This is my senior year so I wanted to go into this game saying play every game like it's your last. So I wasn't going to second-guess my shot at all, I was just going to put it up. Q. Jen, you talk about the rebounds, but if you look at points in the paint and second-chance buckets you guys dominated inside. Knowing that they weren't at full strength there in the paint was there an emphasis to attack the basket? JENNIFER HOOVER: We felt like we had to win the battle of the paint and control the third of the court and we knew Bailey was going to be back and we prepared all week as if she would be back and she is a great player so we thought that would present some opportunities for us and we thought it would present some match-ups for them in having to guard Ivana we which is s tough match-up for some guards. So we did work to get the ball inside and give Ivana and Christina credit for being able to finish when we got it inside and when you get two kids that got double-doubles and are playing as hard as they play for as long as we gave them out there. I don't think Ivana got a break today and I might have given Sharp a half minute which is too much usually. But we kept talking in timeout about defending and rebounding. We have to defend and we have to limit it to one shot and done. So I think we did a great job of that. Q. Jen, I know it's tournament time and it's survive and advance but do you go into tomorrow looking at a must win to play in a postseason tournament? JENNIFER HOOVER: We started talking about that two weeks ago before our last three games and what our scenario was to be eligible for the NIT and we said we didn't want to talk about the NIT yet we could work and once you win one game it's what can you do in the next game. It's a quick turn-around and we will play a team that presents a lot of challenges for us, but we will get a lot of rest today and we will turn it around and give them a shot tomorrow. It's another team that we played recently so it's not a ton of -- this time of year everybody knows what everybody does and what everybody runs and it's a matter of who can execute it on the floor. Q. Coach, this was a close game at halftime, 37-35, UNC. What was the message to the squad in the locker room to get them to come out? JENNIFER HOOVER: The message was to defend and be background, still. We talked about that and we were up on the boards at that point and we talked about that was going to be the difference maker because if we could background we could get out in transition a bit and get some be points on the board and get them to believe in themselves and play confidently. They did a great job with that moving the ball around and sharing the ball. I think when we have 14 turnovers and a few of them were late-game situations we got a lot of shots up. When we played them before I think they shot 80 shots and we only got in the 60s. Our goal today was to make sure we had great shots and in that span coming out of halftime we locked in and focused and got some great stops. We try to get turkeys, three stops in a row, we continued to report those to them. Coming out of a timeout we needed one more stop to get it and they came out and got fired up about it and got that stop and it fueled us. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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