NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST FOUR - SACRED HEART VS SOUTHERN U

March 15, 2023

Jessica Mannetti

Ny'Ceara Pryor

Olivia Tucker

Kelsey Wood

Maples Pavilion

Sacred Heart Pioneers

Media Conference

Sacred Heart 57, Southern University 47

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Coach Jessica Mannetti and student-athletes Kelsey Wood, Olivia Tucker, and Ny'Ceara Pryor.

Coach, would you like to make an opening statement?

JESSICA MANNETTI: Yes, thank you. What a day. What a game. We are so excited. I am so proud of our team's effort. Southern is a tough team. They were tough and gritty and athletic and they gave us everything they had for 40 minutes. A true battle.

I'm so proud of how our team rallied and stayed together and took this opportunity for 40 minutes to play Sacred Heart basketball and give us an opportunity to make history.

I think that's the biggest part that we are the most proud of, is we made history tonight for our program, in our conference, and we really were able to showcase what great basketball our team was able to play.

So couldn't be more proud. Super excited for the opportunity to continue in the bracket for the first time in school history and keep it going.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you. We will now take questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Ny'Ceara, just talk about your performance tonight. 11 points, 10 assists, almost a triple-double with 8 rebounds. Just how good does it feel to have a double-double in the NCAA tournament and were you aware how close you were to the triple-double at the end?

NY'CEARA PRYOR: My coaches told me that I was so close to the triple-double, but I think it was just an amazing experience, amazing feeling to go out and do what I had to do to get the win.

So it just felt great for me.

Q. Olivia and Ny'Ceara, when you guys are struggling at the start of the first quarter and Kelsey shoots her first three-pointer of the season and makes it and then adds a second one, what -- if I saw the stats correctly, that's the first three-pointer she's taken all season. To make them, what does that show for the team?

JESSICA MANNETTI: Oh, it was her sister.

Q. Oh, it was Amelia.

JESSICA MANNETTI: Yeah.

Q. How much does that lift the team up when you guys are in the depths of the struggle this season.

NY'CEARA PRYOR: Definitely. Amelia has made great shots over the course of this season. I think that we trust her to shoot the shots. When she made them it just fired us up to keep playing defense and we got back in the game.

OLIVIA TUCKER: To piggyback off that, Amelia is a great spark off the bench. Like she is always going to knock down shots for us and she is a great three-point shooter and comes into practice, so it's just repetition at this point. Overall just comes in and does the little things for us.

Q. I'm guessing, Kelsey, to see your sister do that and then it sparks the run for you guys, how much did that change things for you guys as a team in your eyes?

KELSEY WOOD: Yeah, we talked about this going into halftime. We were all in there as a team and we kid of gave her high fives and were like, you're the reason why we're in this game.

Those two threes really gave us that spark off the bench and I think it just uplifted our attitudes towards the game, because we were down by 10 points going into the first media.

So I think those two threes really gave us the spark we needed and that sparked our defense as well. It was a really, really well-done job by her.

Q. Ny'Ceara, great year. I'm sure you've seen a lot of different defenses against you. Their No. 4 looked like she was doing a pretty good job disrupting your shot. If you can tell me what she was doing, was there anything different about it?

NY'CEARA PRYOR: Definitely No. 4 was a great defender. But for me, it was just do other things that my team needs. I got a lot of assists tonight. She played great defense. She face guarded me the whole time. Denied me the ball. It was a great game plan, but my team took it and they dealt with it.

I just think that was a great game plan, but we just came out with the win.

Q. My follow-up was going to be it looked like you made a conscious decision to, okay, maybe my shot is not there right now and I'm going to pass the ball.

NY'CEARA PRYOR: Yeah, for sure.

Q. For Olivia, Ny'Ceara gets off to a rough start and the two of you, Kelsey, too, talk about persevering through her basically going through, what, 15, 16, 17 minutes without scoring a bucket and you guys are down, persevering through that?

OLIVIA TUCKER: Well, Ny is a selfless player. I think all of you guys can see that on the court. She picks us up. She is always looking for her teammates, and she did realize that they were face guarding her, so she had to do other things, and that's kind of how her stat line came out. I mean, she had 10 assists. That's just amazing in itself.

She is a great leader on and off the court, so even though they were denying her the ball I think everybody else stepped up and did a really good job in that end.

KELSEY WOOD: Yeah, I agree. Ny is our leading scorer always. She averages like 20 points per game, so when she has an off game, not that we're surprised, but it just uplifts everyone else on the court and makes us realize that we really have to step up, not only for ourselves, but for Ny and our team.

Ny did a great job getting everyone the ball. She's the reason we scored our points. She is just a great player. (Smiling.)

Q. Ny, if you would start, but if everybody wants to answer, feel free. This is not just the first NCAA tournament win in program history, it's the first in a team sport in school history. Has the magnitude of that -- I guess is it even possible for that to sink in? What's the emotion?

NY'CEARA PRYOR: It's a great feeling. You know, I always tell my team, like we just made history. Like we are not done writing our story. I just think that's a great feeling four us. And I feel good.

Ya'll feel good?

KELSEY WOOD: Yeah, (laughter.)

NY'CEARA PRYOR: So, yeah.

OLIVIA TUCKER: One other thing to add to that, we have the best fans. You saw our cheerleaders, our band out there. We have the best fans. They flew out to California, and that just gives us a spark in itself, too.

Kudos to them, too.

KELSEY WOOD: I think it'll take a day or two to settle in for us. We're living in the moment here in California, so it's just really great experience for us.

Q. For Kelsey and Olivia, you have those young players that are coming in, one your younger sister, doing great jobs and helped you get to where you are. How is it to have those players help to take the burden off you and help you get to that point to be so selfless and have great chemistry, even though there is sort of like a little age gap between Ny and ya'll?

KELSEY WOOD: Yeah, honestly, I don't realize we have freshman on this team. All of them step up. They do their job, what they needed to for our team. Obviously it shows in our winning record in conference.

The freshman are great people, great teammates. Amelia, Ny, Sierra, they came in guns-a-blazing and they just -- even like summer we were playing pickup and they just fit right into our community at Sacred Heart.

For me I forget they're freshman. They make the little mistakes that freshmen make, but they're just such great people and great teammates.

OLIVIA TUCKER: Yeah, they definitely don't play like freshman. They definitely came in and stepped into that role. Like we were a young team. We were still trying to figure out who we were in the beginning of the season.

They came in and figured out our system, our standards. And coach holds us to a very high standard as well. We held them to a high standard, as well as them holding us to a high standard.

So I think accountability is on both ends. It doesn't matter what age you are in our program.

Q. So first media timeout; you're down 14-4. This is four any and all of you. I think they made 5 of their first 8 shots, outrebounding you something like 10 to 4. Couple turnovers and then out of that timeout it's 18 to 2 through late in the half. What changed there?

NY'CEARA PRYOR: Our defense. We harped a lot this season about our defense, and we took pride in our defense and we held them to 4 points in the second quarter. I just think it was our defense. That was the change in our mindset.

KELSEY WOOD: Yeah, we were talking on the bench. Just we told each other, we've been here before. We been down by 10 points and came back. We kind of just stuck together, and like coach says, a tight team is the better team in the end, and I think we were the tighter team in the end, so...

Q. For the players obviously, just thoughts on facing Stanford, nationally-ranked team, Top 4 team in the country, a lot of history with the program, Tara. How are you going to approach this game mentally and stay confident in yourselves amid odds that are stacked against you probability-wise?

NY'CEARA PRYOR: I will start. Coming into this game we are going to take it one possession at a time, one quarter at a time, one half at a time.

Also it's just a game at the end of the day. You can't make it bigger than what it is. I just think that's the biggest thing for us, just playing our game and sticking to what our game plan is.

OLIVIA TUCKER: Yeah, I think it's just important staying to SHU basketball. Sticking to what we do. I'm sure the coaches will come up with another good game plan for us and scouting report, so I just think coming in, doing what we do.

People overlooked us in this game, too, so who knows what the outcome could be of this game as well.

KELSEY WOOD: I agree. (Smiling.)

THE MODERATOR: Any more questions for the student-athletes? Thank you Ny'Ceara, Olivia, and Kelsey.

KELSEY WOOD: Thank you.

OLIVIA TUCKER: Thank you.

NY'CEARA PRYOR: Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach Mannetti.

Q. Coach, what did you say to them when they get down by 10 and they jumped on you right away and you had that explosive second quarter? Any words of wisdom to them?

JESSICA MANNETTI: You know, I always love hearing their interview answers because they're talking about how, oh, like we were such a connected team this whole time. We battled. We were 2 and 9 after our nonconference. We really put a great streak together to open up our conference season to then feel that connection, feel that gel. They're like, oh, we never thought of them as freshmen. You should've seen them play in those 2 and 9 games.

So for me, I always love to hear them, but what I said was the same thing we've said every time: We didn't start in nonconference or first quarters well. So we had to learn really valuable lessons from not starting well.

I can remember some first games we lost in the first quarter by the same deficit we started the first quarter, and so I think what I told them was, we've been here before. There were times we were down 17 to 6 and we battled back.

Our second conference game of the season we were down 17 to 6 at the first media, I think. We battled back. I said, look, settle down. We're a little tight. We're a little disconnected. We've got to lock in better defensively. We're getting ripped to rim. They've gone to the free throw line three times. We have to be better defensively for our offense to start connecting.

Because what we really pride ourselves on is scoring off of turnovers, right? You look at their turnovers. We forced 20 turnovers and scored 21 points, and for us, that's really where we generate our best offense, because we're most efficient in transition.

So I just told them, settle down. We've been here before. Let's answer. Let's close it to tie or be up one possession by the end of the quarter. Those two threes we talked about that Amelia Wood hit were huge. They were huge for us, those back-to-back threes.

And then I think we took a deep breath and we were, okay, okay, we're okay. We settled down a little bit.

No, I mean, I'm not a wizard with anything that I talk about. You take stuff that you learn from, and if you have to lose sometimes, you never want to lose the lesson.

Q. Yeah, I don't know what reporter thought it was Kelsey that hit those.

JESSICA MANNETTI: Yeah, it's okay.

Q. On defense especially, even as you guys turned the ball over 14 times, you're pointing out what you do in transition, but to limit a very fast and very good transition team to 7 points in transition, how were you guys able to formulate your game plan knowing if they force turnovers they like to do the same thing you guys like to do?

JESSICA MANNETTI: Yeah, they were averaging 17 turnovers a game and capitalizing on those on their stat sheet. Like on paper we were very similar. So I asked the team, how would you play us? Like how should we play a team like us?

Truth be told, Southern is so impressively athletic downhill with the ball. They run a dribble-drive system similar to ours in their four-out motion.

I said, how have teams disrupted us? Well, you have to gap them. You have to play off. You have to anticipate the drive. You have to force lower percentage contested jump shots, because I'm telling you, if they get to that basket they're going to score and we're going to foul.

I think we really locked in defensively with that effort to say, let's try to clog driving lanes. When we did a really good job off the ball we were in the gaps to force the ball handler to make decisions. And then we did force a couple turnovers out of our press and their downhill attacks to be able to capitalize on those. Obviously when you have a point guard like Ny it makes a lot of really good things happen.

So I think that piece was a huge game plan that we finally started to execute and we were able to get the easy buckets and not have to work so hard against really aggressive and active defenders.

Q. When they're so aggressive against Ny, where obviously they're disrupting her shot all over the floor, and I know noticed at point you even were trying to calm her down on the free throw line as well.

JESSICA MANNETTI: Yeah.

Q. She had 7 assists early. What does it say when she can recognize that so quick in a game, that I might not get the shot that I want, but I can still impact the game offensively?

JESSICA MANNETTI: Yeah, I would love to take the credit for that. So I have an assistant coach Candice Leatherwood. She played for me at Sacred Heart. She was my point guard here, a very, very good one.

So whenever Ny comes off you'll always see her go and talk to Candice. Candice kind of talks her down from whatever is happening on the floor. Candice sees exactly what Ny sees and knows how to tell her how she can help her in those moments where she might get a little tight.

Her shot wasn't falling. She's so unselfish. She did have 7 assists because she sees the floor so well. Even though she's willing she's really able to quickly see the open man and does a really good job.

I think when they disrupt Ny, game plans to disrupt Ny forced other kids to step up. So the question always is who is going to step up in these moments when the game plan is to take two and three of your players and really disrupt our point guard?

Tonight we had really great efforts from a lot of different people. I mean, our posts gave us 21 and 10 I think combined. They were off the charts good tonight.

So I was really pleased. Even though we didn't shoot the three well we were able to score a lot of points in the paint, and Ny was able to find our posts a lot more than we have been in recent games to be able to capitalize in those paint points.

Q. Two questions about your defense. Number one, looked like you were able to take advantage of your physical side. I know Ny is not that tall, but you had a height advantage over the rest of the floor and their guards were kind of small. You were able to take advantage of that. And the second one will be you needed to make some shots to start running your one-two-two.

JESSICA MANNETTI: Yeah. So we talked about a couple things. We wanted to exploit on paper what we thought were their weaknesses. We had a size mismatch, but sometimes that's a size mismatch to their advantage if they're good at getting downhill and we're big and a little bit slower.

So the gapping was really important, and once we locked into being in gaps I thought we utilized our size better to force ball handlers into making some quicker decisions than they wanted to.

But, yeah, the big thing about us is we have to be able to score to press. We do such a great job in our press. We stick our big athletic, active guards up there, Amelia and Sajada, and they do a really good job disrupting that guard on the reversal.

So we do have to score, and it's really important fir us to say when we are going on scoring droughts, we got to get paint touches, at least try to get to the free throw line, especially by the 5:00 minute mark we always have a race to 5 fouls.

Hey, can weigh draw 5 fouls so we can get to the free throw line on any whistle after that to be able to hit that free throw and press. We started to get to the free throw line a little bit more, which was great. Then we were able to settle down and get into the press.

Yeah, when we are not scoring it's tough for us because we can't really defend the way we want in the full court, which I think we're really confident in. Southern really forced us into some tough shots. I don't know if you saw the fourth quarter the way I saw it, but I was like oh, can we hit a shot right now? This is tough. They did a good job.

I was pleased we were able to respond to how physical they were and how quick they were and we were able to handle that. Didn't turn the ball over at a high, high rate for them to really make us pay.

Q. Two questions for you, shooting related. First of all, shot 3 of 21 from deep. Obviously you would've liked to shoot a better percentage than that. Talk about what accounted for the low percentage considering the volume of threes you took.

JESSICA MANNETTI: I know.

Q. On the bright side, you did get to the foul line more. Shot 12 of 17 in the free throw battle. What accounted for the poor three-point shooting? And on the flip side, what accounted for the strong free throw performance, getting to the line more in that battle?

JESSICA MANNETTI: Yeah, you know, some days you have great shooting nights and some nights you don't. I think Olivia Tucker took great shots tonight, and she's usually one of our best three-point shooters. She wasn't hitting, but she came up huge down the stretch where we ran some underneath out-of-bounds actions to her and she hit her mid-range.

So tried to get her really confident in being able to hit those shots.

Amelia hit two threes early and then went a little cold.

They forced us into some quick threes too because they defended us really well down the stretch and we just couldn't get into the paint. They did a really good job sagging and switching to force some quick -- some late shot clock threes.

Some nights you're on, some nights you're not. I never know which night this is. We open up the conference season going like -- in two games combined I think we were like 9 for 17 from three, and then 3 for 21 two games after that.

Hopefully we'll settle down a little bit now that we have shot in this gym a little bit more and hit some shots in rhythm.

But get to go the free throw for us, we always -- our goal is always to shoot 20 free throws a game. Like I said, that race to 5 fouls first, to be able to get to that line. We run the dribble-drive, so really if we can continue to attack and force defenders to keep us in front of them, I mean, couple defenders you can really exploit mismatches in it.

I'm not sure that's going to be our game plan Friday as much, but when we really study our opponent and we can really target some defenders that we know are foul prone, we're able to really utilize that to our advantage.

Q. Southern was very complimentary about you all locking them down. Did you ever foresee 21 to 4 in a quarter? Your second quarter numbers are good all year, but 21 to 4? Like can you explain that in a sentence or two?

JESSICA MANNETTI: I wish I could. I mean, I was kind of a fan I think in the second quarter. They felt really confident and connected. I think in that second quarter when our team feels confident and connected and can handle the pressure, I think we look for each other and we play really connected basketball.

You know, 21 to 4 is a dream, right? What was our shooting percentage? It was 61.5%. Truth be told, in our game against FDU the other day we had a really high shooting percentage in the first two quarters, too.

I think sometimes when they're really locked into each other in those moments where we're able to offensively have -- finish and hit some shots, but get to the paint and share the ball -- and our post obviously scored in that quarter -- we feel really good and that confidence goes a long way, which was probably how Southern was feeling down the stretch in the fourth quarter with their ability to really turn up that pressure offensively against us, too.

Q. Two here for you. You have been at this school for a while now. To get not just your program's first NCAA tournament win, but the first team sport win in the school's history, just how can you describe the feeling of achieving that with this group?

JESSICA MANNETTI: It's amazing. It's the greatest feeling a coach -- as a coach that's been here, has been so close, right? First NCAA tournament appearance in my decade that I've been coaching. Making history with the school, like we're so proud of these kids.

It's hard. I talked about this the other day. It is hard to win in March. These kids have worked so hard, and there are kids all over the country that work hard, players that fight every day, they battle in practice, battle in games, they do everything right and they don't get this opportunity to be here.

And I said to them in the locker room today, hey, guys, we have this unbelievable opportunity in front of us for 40 minutes. We can do something no other team has ever done, which is make history. I showed them the March Madness WWB page where they did a poll that said, who do you have in the first round -- First Four game, and the poll said Southern, 54% and Sacred Heart 46 or whatever it was.

That's the last thing I showed them before we went out. Nobody picks us still. We have been here all season. Let's keep proving everybody wrong. I think that has been our motivation, is prove everybody wrong and then have so much pride in who we're doing it for.

It's for every parent that brought them to AAU and spent money and time to support them. Every coach that ever coached them. Every family member that ever hugged them when they celebrated wins or consoled them for losses. Every fan that ever cheered for us.

It's for our administrators who have supported us. These moments are so much bigger because you get to celebrate them with everybody that has come with you. It makes it that much more special to say, hey, we did this for and with Sacred Heart.

Q. Then since we talked about it yesterday, about your last game, at what point were you finally not nervous about the result for this one tonight?

JESSICA MANNETTI: I'm telling you, even with 10 seconds -- what was it at? It was the last timeout they called and I'm like, oh, my gosh. We have to switch 1 through 5 and we have to make sure -- they're coming storming back. This could be a March Madness highlight in the worst way for us ever if they come back.

So I was nervous until they in-bounded the ball and didn't foul us. Then I was like, oh, my gosh, think we just won. I think that's when I realized. I'm always so nervous.

I watched them win against Jackson State with that much time left the same way. I was like, oh, my gosh, please don't let that happen again. I was thankful that we didn't have to go through that battle with them because they are so tough.

Q. So how familiar are you with the HBCUs like Jackson State, Southern? When you were a player or when you were in college and as a coach, how familiar are you with the HBCUs, and now the somewhat renaissance that someone like Deion Sanders is bringing to HBCUs?

JESSICA MANNETTI: Yeah, so when I was a player I wasn't as familiar. When I became a coach I became very familiar, because obviously in our nonconference -- I was in the CAA and now the NEC, so in our nonconference we were able to schedule and we would play HBCUs in tournaments. I'm so impressed with the level of play.

I told the head coach, wow, I'm so glad we get to play you. We don't have a lot of the exposure to play teams in the SWAC. I was so impressed. I lost a recruit, Liz Martino, who plays at Jackson State, very good player. I had followed her this season. Her team was doing so well. Jackson State was doing such a great job.

So I really was able to follow a lot of teams, and I continue to be impressed. I think that the level of basketball around the country, if you take the Power 5s out, which obviously is the highest level, there are so many good mid-majors, so many good mid-majors.

I think this platform gives such a great opportunity to expose, hey, great mid-major basketball at all different levels in all different conferences. Let's celebrate these young people for all these great achievements and all the things they're doing.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Coach, good luck on Friday.