ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 6, 2022

Katie Meier

Kelsey Marshall

Miami Hurricanes

Postgame Press Conference

NC State 60, Miami 47

KATIE MEIER: I mean, I don't know you can defend that team any better than we did. I just don't know. We held them to 60. If you told me we were going to have more points in the paint against them and they were only going to hit five threes and that we were also going to out-rebound them, I would think that we were out on the court right now with confetti on our heads. I just don't know that you can ask more from a team and be gutsier or whatever than we were.

They had a couple of amazing runs fueled by the crowd, fueled by emotion, and frankly our emotional fuel tank was a little empty on the fourth day.

I just saw behavior in my team a little bit of -- like staring at the ref and asking for a foul. We haven't acted like that all year. And some of those runs were fueled by our immaturity, a little bit of an emotional -- yeah. If you're ever going to have an empty fuel tank, I think it is on the fourth day after playing three amazing teams to get here and then playing the best team in the conference on the last day and asking your kids to defend their brains out.

At some point emotionally on the offensive end, we got really empty. There's no other way to say it. The only one who kind of kept us in it was Kelsey, and I thought she played great and really was calling -- demanding calls. And when Kelsey is at her best, she's coaching with me. I thought she did a great job there.

They hit some really big -- some big shots on plays, and they really did. The step-backs on Perez and Diamond and all that. And then we had those moments, too, in that third quarter. Honestly the run at the end of the half, we were fine. We could have withstood it. But that third quarter run really broke us and I thought we had some -- and the end of the second half, we had answer shots. They got a big shot -- I liked the play, I liked the call, I liked it. We were fine. The ball went in and out, we got Maeva for three, we got Kelsey a three, we got Kelsey a pull-up. We were fine. The third quarter run was rough on us, that kind of broke us and then of course we never went away.

NC State is so phenomenal. I'm glad Elissa is okay. I'm really glad she's okay because they represent our conference so well. Wes does an amazing job. It is so hard to score against them, and I think people are saying that same thing about Miami. But they're a championship team all the way. I hope they're not in our bracket. They're really good.

Congratulations to them and the classy program. 100 percent. What a great conference.

Q. Big picture, 10 games ago you guys were sitting at 12-10. Since then you've won eight of the last ten --

KATIE MEIER: Thank you, I need that reminder right now.

Q. But you've coached for such a long time. What is so special about this group? And all things considered I know you didn't get the result you wanted today, but how proud are you of this group to rip off this many wins and do it the way they've done?

KATIE MEIER: Yeah, I mean, you're going to -- my emotional fuel tank is a little empty too, now, but I love them. I've loved them from the beginning. I've loved them when we were getting derailed at Carolina, and I just want to be there for them.

I think that's where we have a certain resilience because -- and I said it yesterday, but the roots are deep here. When we're yelling at each other on the court, we're not losing our composure, we are family, and that's how family talks to each other. So when we're saying box out and screaming at each other, that's not when we lose our composure at all. You see other teams that make a mistake and they turn their back, and we make a mistake and go right at each other. And I think that has a lot to do with how vulnerable we've been and how open we've been with each other and how we're not scared of a hard truth because this is not going to happen to us again.

I told the team in the locker room, we're going to be in a situation like this again. We're going to be playing on someone's kind of home court. It's going to be loud and they're going to be the higher-ranked team. That's how the NCAA Tournament is set up. If we have bigger dreams of advancing -- we're not a host seed, so we'll be playing on someone's court. And as long as we have emotional fuel to withstand runs in the next scenario, this team -- we just grew deeper roots today. That's what happened. We got deeper, we got stronger.

What a run. What a run. I haven't had time to think about it, but I will. I will go through Twitter and I will watch those games. I will watch the edited version, I'll hear the excitement and the love and everything, because we deserve it. We deserved it. That was just a remarkable performance by a unbelievably gritty team. But I'm telling you it's because we are 100 percent real with each other.

Q. Kelsey, just talk about the run you guys had, the tenacity you showed today and playing against one of the best teams in the country.

KELSEY MARSHALL: I think we made a phenomenal run. Nobody thought we would make it this far, and we did. Extremely proud of my team, that we never gave up. We came in as underdogs and we showed people that we're not the underdogs no more and we're going to keep it rolling in the NCAA Tournament.

Q. Kelsey, what can you take away from this tournament run, and how do you look to use that as motivation for the next NCAA Tournament?

KELSEY MARSHALL: Just to go in every game with a fight. Never think that another team has an upper hand on you. We're good enough to beat anybody in the country, no matter what their ranking is, and yeah.

KATIE MEIER: We showed that.

Q. Katie, this experience in the ACC Tournament and having to take down so many top teams to get here in the first place, what can you all learn from and use in the NCAA Tournament?

KATIE MEIER: Well, I want to ask everybody if there will be an NCAA bracket that would have a Duke, which I think should be in there. But if Duke is your first game and then you come out of that and you're playing a Louisville and you come out of that and you're playing Notre Dame and you come out of that and you're playing NC State, by my math, is that like going to a Final Four-type scenario?

So what a ridiculous bracket we were in, right? And we performed and performed and performed and then we performed a little bit. This is one of the very rare games where I though NC States' bench outperformed our bench. It's obvious they did, which is great for them. It's something that we have been hanging our hat on, and we need to get that back.

I really thought Maeva actually played a really nice game and gave us great minutes but we really were missing Lashae Dwyer. And I don't know if you guys know that, but she only played like one minute in this whole tournament, and she's our ball pressure guard, and she hawks the ball a lot. She broke her nose and had a concussion. We had one minute of Shae in this tournament,

Kelsey is hurting and we missed that one extra little spark, and I think that would have made a big difference today, as well.