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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 6, 2015Kelila AtkinsonDearica HambyJen HooverGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Duke – 77 COACH HOOVER: I couldn't be more proud of our team and just what we've done in the last two weeks, and particularly how special this has been in Greensboro for us. They never quit on us. We were down 18 today and you saw there's no quit in these Deacons. We came storming back, and just so proud of the grit and determination that we saw in these young ladies over the last three days in particular, and obviously disappointed with the outcome. Duke is a very good basketball team. There's a lot of length there that you have to deal with. It took us a half to get, I think, familiar with it again and reacquainted with it, if you will, before we really got comfortable again. You've got to give them a lot of credit for that. Q. You anticipated my question by talking about their length, and even though you had played them twice you felt like it took you a half to adjust. In the second half do you feel like in that run that you got better shots or that you just made your shots? COACH HOOVER: I think we adjusted and we kind of settled in and we got a little bit more penetration and went by some of the initial length. We really felt like we had an advantage when we could get by that initial length on the perimeter, and I think, again, in the second half we were able to exploit that a little bit off the bounce with both Ataijah Taylor and KK Atkinson and then that opened up a lot of things. And when Dearica gets going and you hit a couple threes, we're a pretty hard team to defend, like we've been able to do down here. Really proud of the overall team effort and each of our kids just really bringing what they bring to the table. Q. Were you a better team having played the last two days instead of playing Duke just clean, or do you think it mattered that you had a lot of fatigue going on? COACH HOOVER: I thought the first five minutes we looked like we were the team that had been playing and it was the third day. I think after that I didn't have that feeling as much, but I did feel like those first‑‑ the first four or five minutes, I didn't feel like we had quite the pep in our step. You know, 11:00 games are a little tough. We don't play very many of them. You're getting up and eating breakfast at 7:30 a.m. These are college kids, they don't get up 6:00 a.m. very often. But that was part of the hand we were dealt and the hand we dealt ourselves with not taking care of business early in the ACC season. Q. What do you think the three days here did for your program? COACH HOOVER: Well, I just‑‑ for what this team laid out, they sold out for us for the last three days, and we talked about it in the locker room.  We've had our ups and downs this season, and we've faced a lot of adversity. We've lost three kids that we lost for the season with injuries, and they never wavered on their belief in each other. They're the closest team, one of the closest, if not the closest, I've ever coached. They're true sisters. They get along with each other, love to be around each other. And in that respect I feel like they saw what they can do for each other when we come to Greensboro. Again, I've got to talk to Mr.Whalen (phonetic) back there and see if we can buy this floor and put it in the Coliseum because we like it. We don't want to wait. We talked about today if we wouldn't have played the first day, imagine this game being us a day fresher than we were or two days fresher. But it was what we were dealt, and these kids came in with the determination and a relentlessness about them that I just couldn't be more proud of. Q. You cut that 18‑point lead down to three. What did you do well during that stretch? COACH HOOVER: Stopped some rebounds, okay, and that was the difference in the Syracuse game. When we got stops and rebounds, we get the run, and when we get stops and rebounds and we can run, we're pretty good. It's one of those things we talk about a lot. You have to be able to defend and limit their second‑chance opportunities. We hammered them on the O boards when you have the comparison, but of course they shot better than we did. But that was the difference in the game I felt, and then when we're running we get a lot of really good looks and we love to play with each other. We practice a lot running, and the looks we can get. Q. Dearica, what has your college career meant to you and are you looking forward to some future games with Elizabeth Williams? DEARICA HAMBY: It's exciting, but I'd trade it all to be still playing. Q. Dearica, you broke the rebounding record today. You folks fought hard enough and continued to play so that you got that record. Can you talk about achieving that and also what you hope that you've left behind for your teammates? DEARICA HAMBY: Just that anything is possible. I came in as a freshman, I averaged 4 and 3, and if you would have told me this two years ago, I would have told you that you were crazy and that you didn't know what you were talking about. It was exciting, and I just hope they continue to build off of it, and hopefully somebody within recent years can come in and break the record, also. I'm all up for that. Q. Coach, can you talk about the energy that Kelila brought to the floor today? COACH HOOVER: Well, KK is such an explosive player. She loves to play off the bounce for us. I thought she was one of the big lifts, like what I said, we were a little about the flat early, I thought she came in. I told her before she went in, I don't know if she remembers, Hey, we need your energy, we need your spark. And that's one of the many things she brings to the table for us. She was a starter for us much of the season and then had a concussion in our game against Boston College at home and we lost her for a few games. But she stayed the course and when she got back in‑‑ the thing that happened when she was out is Millesa Calicott got minutes and seized an opportunity. Well, that's one of the things that makes this team so special, when everybody starts playing to the best of their ability, now you add another player back into there, now you bring KK's ability to create off the bounce and shoot the pull up and get by people and you've got Millesa shooting threes, as well. Then it becomes a really, really hard team to defend and a really special group of young ladies. Q. For both players, what's it like to see all those 6'4" and 6'5" players, particularly coming after you on the perimeter? How do you adjust to that? And Coach McCallie was fretting about her team's rebounding. How did you get so many second chance points against this team? KELILA ATKINSON: I think our team was more capable of not being scared of any of the players on the opponent's side. I think if we have the mindset of being aggressive and going around and keep attacking it instead of like hitting a bump after a bad turnover, and we just have to keep the mindset of keep moving forward and keep attacking until the time is over. DEARICA HAMBY: Honestly I thought we were the tougher team tonight. Obviously the game doesn't show that with the final outcome, but we definitely gave it a fight and attacked. The first half wasn't our best, and I take some of that blame. So yeah, the first half was definitely the difference in the game. Q. Coach, how do you kind of quantify the stages of despair as you're going through that shooting slump? There was a period of time where you got good looks and then there was a period of time where you missed three front ends of one and one and there was another period where it seemed like everything was getting blocked. How do you get the girls to work through that frustration? COACH HOOVER: Right. Well, I thought the period in the first half where it seemed like everything‑‑ we were getting the ball inside and we were getting blocked quite frequently, it was just a matter of we just had to keep remembering to attack the basket and to not fade on our shots that we were getting great looks, that those are going to fall. We had to stay the course and stay positive with them. When we missed the three front ends of one‑and‑ones we had to talk about, well, we got every rebound, didn't we? You're trying to build the confidence in them and understanding that those are a lot of opportunities for us to get O boards is on free throws. We worked a lot on that, and they do a great job of running a few little looks that they do, and they play off each other on the O boards. But I think the biggest thing for us today was this team believed in each other so much, was to keep that belief going, and take the teaching moments we could but then also point out the positives because we were able to build on those positives. We were able to come up with 24 offensive rebounds. We did end up shooting 14 of 18 from the free‑throw line in the second half. So I thought we really made some great adjustments at halftime, and these kids just made the adjustments, that they weren't ready to go home. They've enjoyed being here and staying at the proximity and they've enjoyed the crowd and what Greensboro does for this tournament. It's unbelievable. It's the highlight event, and they know that they're playing in the best conference in the country and they know they're going to play against the best players. Q. What becomes of the lucky pants? Will we see them next year, go to charity, or what? COACH HOOVER: I don't know. They're pretty‑‑ they need to be washed. They became a little bit of a distraction, and I didn't want that to take away from the kids at all, but even the kids were saying, Coach, you've got to wear them again. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I think it was a special weekend and it was special for a lot of reasons. I have to give a lot of credit to our administration and our fans and our cheerleaders and our band. The Deacon fans, there's none like them in the country. We don't have as many of them because we're such a small school, but they were as loud as they could be and so proud to be a Deacon today. And these seniors know once you're a Deacon you're always a Deacon, and you bleed black and gold, and there's nothing like it. Q. Other than the pants, what were you able to do in these three days so well that you were not able to do consistently during the season? COACH HOOVER: Well, I think this team really took coaching and game plans and just really applied them, and I would say that's probably just growth. We were so young and inexperienced at the guard position most of the year that we grew every day. Every game we came out of we had a lot of teaching moments. These guys can tell you we saw a lot of film, and I think in this last two weeks we were able to draw plays up at a time‑out that we had never ran before, and we could execute them to a T. The game winner against Miami, it was something we drew up in a time‑out, we told them the reads, we didn't have any timeouts, and they executed it. I think that's what the growth of a young basketball team is, again, to trust each other, that the right person is going to make the right pass and we're going to make a shot or we're going to get a rebound. We were able to do that the last couple weeks, and I'll tell you, these kids, they respect all but they fear none. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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