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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 3, 2016MaChelle JosephAaliyah WhitesideGreensboro, North Carolina Georgia Tech - 67, Wake Forest - 65 MACHELLE JOSEPH: First of all, I just wants to say that I'm really proud of this team. We've been on a journey all season long. We started with a really tough ACC schedule. We had three of four on the road to open up our ACC schedule, and we have three upperclassmen. To start out that way, it's really tough, and we got banged around a little bit, but this team never gave up and they continued to work and get better and better every day. We've had a great run in February, and all the little things that we weren't getting done in January, we got done in February, and that's why we've been one of eight of our last 12 games or now nine of whatever it is, nine of our last 11 games because of these seniors making plays. Roddreka Rogers, I don't know how she does it at 5'11", but she seems to get it done night in and night out, over 900 rebounds in her career, and Aaliyah Whiteside leading the ACC in scoring this year and carrying a really young team, I'm just really proud of these two seniors. Q. On the last play that you scored, was your objective to have Tilford penetrate? MACHELLE JOSEPH: No, absolutely not. They asked me on the TV there at the end if we drew that play up. No, the play was to go to Aaliyah Whiteside on a ball screen and Chubs made a play. Imani Tilford, she penetrated and found Dreka underneath the basket and made a heck of a play. The games we've lost early in the season and in the ACC, those close games it was because players made plays and all year long we kept saying we've got to have players make plays at the end of a game and I thought Imani did that. She penetrated and found Dreke and Dreke was able to make that lay-up and then on the other end, Imani Tilford was able to get a great stop on the other end defensively. Q. Aaliyah, did you feel like the game was kind of slipping away and did you try not to force it? What was your plan going into the fourth quarter? AALIYAH WHITESIDE: I knew we had to keep fighting and I knew we were going to come through, we just kept getting stops and chipping away at it and we got some momentum going and I thought we did a good job of making plays and getting stops later in the game. Q. Coach, Milan Quinn has been on quite a run and it seemed like a lot of your defense was focused on kind of limiting her touches. Though she had a double-double it seemed like you guys really made it tough on her. MACHELLE JOSEPH: Well, she's really improved. I mean, she's one of the most improved players in the ACC for sure. Last year when we played them I think she had 1.1 rebound and obviously you can see what she's done in her two days in the ACC Tournament as a junior. She's very aggressive. She is a tremendous rebounder. I don't know that I've seen a rebounder like Roddreka Rogers until I saw her. I think she's going to have a great senior year. She's a tremendous competitor. But I have to give Dreke a lot of credit because we were really gunning, more focused on the guards, you know, taking them off of screens. They score a lot on ball screens, and I thought Dreke did a great job of being physical with her as much as she could without getting in foul trouble. You could see those two battling for every rebound, and I thought that was really fun to watch. Q. You've now got Louisville coming up tomorrow. What can you tell me just generally speaking about the Cards? MACHELLE JOSEPH: Well, obviously they're very talented. They have probably the most All-Americans, high school All-Americans of anybody in the ACC. They're a very young team. Obviously, they have the Player of the Year in Myisha Hines-Allen who's a tremendous competitor. We had them at home, I think, the second game of the season. We thought we battled for 40 minutes with them. We had our opportunities down the stretch to make plays, and at that point in January we just weren't ready. We're looking forward to the rematch. We feel like there's a lot of teams in the top four or five teams in the league that we were right in the game with for 40 minutes. Obviously we have tremendous respect for Louisville and the way they're playing right now. They're really aggressive. You know it's going to be a very physical game. It's going to be a game where we've got to take care of the basketball because they're turning people over. We have to be strong with the ball. But we're really excited to be playing on Friday in the ACC Tournament. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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