Jan. 25, 2009
Georgia Tech Head Coach MaChelle Joseph
Opening Statement:
“I have to give Duke a lot of credit. I think defensively Chante Black is really special inside and Abby Waner provides a lot of leadership for this team. One of the things I said early on in the year is that we’re going as our freshmen and sophomores go, and it’s pretty tough when you’re on the road at Duke and you come in here and my 10 freshmen and sophomores haven’t played here before and don’t understand the environment. I think that Duke did a great job of taking us out of the things that we like to do. We weren’t able to run or get easy baskets in transition and that really stifled us offensively. They played a lot of matchup zone, which we struggled to score against. The bright spot was that we were able to outrebound them. We outrebounded North Carolina and we outrebounded Duke, the two top rebounding teams in the league, so we’re feeling pretty good about that. We’re going to continue to get better. We got some good quality minutes for some young players. I have to give Duke a lot of credit, I think they’re a very good team; they’re deep, they’re athletic, they have size, and they have great leadership and that makes a big difference.”
On the North Carolina game and the emotions that were carried over:
“That was a huge game for us and it took a lot of emotion out of us. When you have 10 freshmen and sophomores who were the primary people playing in that game, for them to have come back from 15 points down in the second half and beat that team, it is hard when you don’t have tremendous leadership or experience to help you recover that quickly from something like that and then play at Duke. It’s a tough swing when you have North Carolina at home then turn around and play Duke. For a young team that’s never been in Cameron that’s an even tougher challenge. I don’t think that there was much carry over as to how we played against North Carolina, but I was proud of the fact that we never quit playing. We played for 40 minutes and we got better as the game wore on. That’s what I was looking for today.”
On the early foul trouble of Alex Montgomery and substitutions:
“That’s the earliest that we’ve had to go offense-defense in a game. We’ve done it throughout the first half when Jacqua [Williams] or Alex [Montgomery] would get into foul trouble. We get a lot of confidence and swagger from her [Montgomery]. She’s our leading rebounder, she’s been averaging a double-double all year long, she makes us go on offense. With her sitting on the bench and having to substitute, we couldn’t get any flow. It seemed like we were really searching out there to find some kind of offense.”
Duke Head Coach Joanne P. McCallie
Opening statement
“It was just a great team game. I thought the first half was critical in the way our team dictated defensively and holding a team to 18 percent shooting in a half usually bodes well for intensity and developing some things there. There was great balance in our scoring and great balance in our shot selection in terms of moving the basketball as well. So overall a great effort by everybody. Obviously there are things we can improve on, but I was really pleased to see us get to the free throw line 24 times as well. It was a very physical game and we really didn’t go to the free throw line too often in the first half so we were a bit better in the second half and that was good.”
On why she called a timeout after a 10-0 Georgia Tech run
“I think the team knew at that time that we had gotten a little bit careless with the basketball on a few occasions and they had taken advantage of that. It was nothing special, I think the team regrouped and said `Hey, wait a minute, let’s focus,’ and I think everybody did. It was a good pause, we needed that pause because we were just a little bit out of the flow and giving them some looks we don’t want to give folks. We want people to work hard for what they get and so I thought everybody did a good job of doing that.”
On what Georgia Tech couldn’t do that they did in its win over North Carolina
“I thought we kept more poise on offense and didn’t quick shoot as much. That last game was just fire, fire, fire, so there was a lot of scrambling for loose balls and opportunistic situations that arose from the film that I saw. I think just maintaining poise and focus and make them defend as much as possible even when they’re trapping a lot. You’ve got to move the ball and get the quality opportunities and the quality shots and I think the team really tried to do that. It’s different if a team has to play 20 seconds of defense versus eight seconds.”
