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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 8, 2014Len'Nique BrownWes MooreMiah SpencerGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Notre Dame – 83 North Carolina State ‑ 48 COACH WES MOORE: Rough day. Obviously very humbling day. And it's hard right now to look at the big picture. But hopefully we can do that soon. And there's about 290 Division I teams out there that would give anything to trade places with us and be playing in the NCAA tournament in a couple of weeks. We've just got to pick things up and maybe try to learn from some of the things that occurred today. I'm proud of these kids. Obviously 25 wins is a great accomplishment. And so do our best not to let one bad day overshadow what they've accomplished over the last few months. Again, Notre Dame, great team, and wish them the best. And again, we've got a couple of weeks to try to get back on track and be ready to go. Q. Coach, how close was Markeisha to being potentially able to play today? COACH WES MOORE: You know, I think once she got out there it was just ‑‑ you know, there's no structural damage, but there was a bone bruise. And I think the doctors that looked at it yesterday felt like there might be a chance. But then when our team doctor got here today he just felt like it probably was a little bit too painful for her to go. So we wanted to be ‑‑ definitely be careful with it. She's going to be very important to us in a couple of weeks, plus feel like she has a professional career ahead of her. So there's no need in taking any chances with something like that. Q. Just to clarify, she was not medically cleared to play? COACH WES MOORE: Again, when they looked at the MRI and all that again today, you know, again, it's a bone bruise, it is painful. So they just felt like ‑‑ we didn't want to ‑‑ we didn't want to do anything today to, like I said, maybe compromise her ability to go in a couple of weeks. Q. You had some players that haven't played significant minutes against a team at that level. Who really showed you something of the people that haven't played a lot? COACH WES MOORE: It was a rough day, you know, so it's pretty hard for me right now to analyze that game, our individual play. Obviously I'll go back and watch the film, maybe. I may just throw it away, to be honest with you. But I don't think anybody stood out and had a great game today. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. So mainly, you know, Notre Dame had a big part of that, as well. You've got to give them credit. No. Again, we were ‑‑ it was tough, you know, even to run some of our stuff. We had people out of position and different things. So it was a rough day. Again, that's life. You're going to have those, and that's the great thing about college athletics, it teaches you a lot. We learned a lot today, I'm sure. Q. Coach, have you ever, in all your time coaching, had this many injuries to deal with in key players? COACH WES MOORE: Probably not, especially so close together. I've never had two ACL's within a 24‑hour time span. And then for Keisha to be ruled out, yeah, it's tough. But, you know, there's other people that go through it, too. And we just have to keep battling. I just hate it that these kids that played so hard all year and so well all year, I hate that on this stage we had such a rough showing. But again, just got to deal with it. Q. Both players, you got some time to recover from all this and you get one of your key players back. What do you hope you learn from today's game? MIAH SPENCER: Just keep playing hard, every position. I know we had some players that were out, but we have to pick it up ourselves and come together as a team and play hard each possession. LEN'NIQUE BROWN: We have to bounce back, no matter what, we have to play hard, play through. Q. Coach, can you just talk about what makes Notre Dame so difficult to stop offensively, great ball movement, shooters. I know they've got a lot of talent. COACH WES MOORE: All of the above. Obviously they're well coached. They pretty much always have five players on the floor that, A, have very high basketball IQ's, and B, can shoot the lights out. And again, they run their stuff extremely well. They read and react to how you defend. It's not so much a set play or anything like that. It's more once you make a decision how you want to defend they've got a counter to it. So, again, I would have liked to have played them at full strength, but at the same time, they're, what, 31‑0, so they've shown that anybody in the country they can pretty much do this on a given day. Q. Coach, you get emotion from your team when you guys are winning and you feel good and so forth. And now your team is facing an experience maybe for the first time for you leading them and them under your leadership. How do you work through that and how did you initially try to get that started today? COACH WES MOORE: I just told them, like I told you guys, we still have a lot of basketball ahead of us. And we're fortunate these kids have put together a great résumé. We ought to get a really good seed in the NCAA tournament and have an opportunity to make some noise in there. So we have a lot to be excited about. And we do have some time now to catch our breath. We'll take a couple of days off and then get back in and try to clean some things up and get better and be excited about the opportunity. Like I said, there's 290 Division I teams that would love to have the opportunity that we're going to be presented with here in a couple of weeks. Kids are resilient. We lost to Notre Dame last week. We gave them a couple of days off. And the second day off a lot of them were in the training room, and I was really concerned about how they were going to bounce back from that, I'll be honest with you. I was thinking about trying to pick them up, and I'll be honest, they picked me up when I went down there. That's the way these kids are. They're very resilient and they're going to keep coming back. And I have no doubt we'll do that again. Q. Yesterday Kody was effective after Keisha went down. Today she had difficulty getting the ball and difficulty getting good shots. How much of that was Notre Dame's defense? COACH WES MOORE: I'm sure a lot of it was, but also, she was out of position today. We had to move her inside and I don't know how smart of a decision that was on my part, but we had to put somebody in there. You know, you can talk about running different stuff, but when you've ran four out, one in, all year long, it's kind of hard to change when you find out less than an hour before tip that your one in is not playing. Again, as coaches we've got to be prepared for that. But you can imagine if the Denver Broncos an hour before kickoff Peyton Manning wasn't playing, it might affect their game, as well. Q. You sort of addressed a little bit what I was going to ask. How much reshaping on the fly did you have to do with what you do offensively considering it's been a pretty simple formula on the first option for 31 games? COACH WES MOORE: Obviously I didn't do a very good job coming up with counter ideas. We run quick hitters, and we have other things we can do offensively. But Keisha is a big part of what we try to do. And we work inside out. These are the kids that obviously can do a lot of things on their own, as well. But it starts ‑‑ it runs through her. And obviously you take her out, that changes things. But, again, I don't want to make excuses. We're a better team than what we showed today, with or without Keisha. We've got to do a better job than that. We've got to play better, we've got to do the little things we didn't get done today. That game should have been a little more respectable than it was. I'll take the blame for that. I didn't have them prepared for this situation, obviously. Q.  Coach mentioned how after the game last Sunday against Notre Dame you all had a good demeanor. Do you feel like with Keisha coming back in two weeks, you can make a good run in the NCAA tournament? You still have confidence in yourselves? LEN'NIQUE BROWN: I think we'll be able to bounce back. We've been bouncing back all year. I think we can. MIAH SPENCER: I think a couple of days off is going to give us our legs back, get our minds back right, let all this go, and focus on what is ahead of us. I think we'll be fine. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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