home jobs contact us
Our Clients:
Browse by Sport
Find us on ASAP sports on Facebook ASAP sports on Twitter
ASAP Sports RSS Subscribe to RSS
Click to go to
Asaptext.com
ASAPtext.com
ASAP Sports e-Brochure View our
e-Brochure

ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT


March 6, 2020


Jennifer Hoover

Ivana Raca


Greensboro, North Carolina

Florida - 76, Wake Forest - 47

THE MODERATOR: We will get started Wake Forest. Head coach Jen Hoover and student-athlete, Ivana Raca, Coach?

JENNIFER HOOVER: I'm super proud of this team for what we came to Greensboro to do and the fact that we came up short today is no discouragement to me because these kids are warriors and they fight and they claw. I thought today we came out and were ready to go and give kudos to them. They were red hot and went 8 for 10 in the first half. Whether we were a step slow or whatever may be the case, I thought we got some good looks and we couldn't finish a couple things early and it just started to go the wrong direction and we couldn't stop it.

Q. Coach, third round of the tournament here. Was it the motivation level you will play up to your team after this one?
JENNIFER HOOVER: I told them, like, we want to play three games every time we come here but we want the third game to be the championship game. I don't like to have those conversations in the locker room with seniors in there that won't have that opportunity, but they're a big part of what we've done and every player that's wore the black and gold uniform is a big part of what we're trying to do and that's our goal. We've got to get off playing in the first day and you want to get off playing in the second day and that third day is the championship game.

Q. Jen, what kind of impact and how big were the six early turnovers, coupled with Florida State's 8 for 10 shooting?
JENNIFER HOOVER: I thought that was tough. The Virginia Tech game I thought we turned it over something like 7 of the first 10 possessions, too, and kudos to them they took advantage of those turnovers.

Some of those I convenient yet. I have a hard time thinking we traveled four times in the first three on four minutes of the game. Yeah, maybe our legs were that heavy but that's a struggle for me as a coach when we haven't had issues with traveling that much in the past.

Again, you've got to give them credit. They knew we were a hot team and we were dangerous and I thought they came out and were overly physical and physically aggressive and ran us off of screens and bodied us up and that might have caused some of that. It might have made us play faster. We were trying to step to things a little bit more. It was disruptive and I think that's probably their game plan, not to let us get any confidence because if so they were going to have their hands full. We knew they had capable scorers and capable shooters and our game plan is was not to sit back and let them shoot the three. I think they did a good job of spreading the floor and pushing it in transition against us and getting us back on our heels and they had a couple that got by and you say we overrotated and I thought we got hesitant about getting beat off the dribble and we allowed too many open wide looks and they shared the ball really well. They ended up with, what, 18 assists? And they were making that one more pass, we would cover the first pass and not able to get out to the second pass because we were worried about the midline and doing some of those things and are we say step slow because of it being the third day, it definitely -- it takes a lot of gas out of you when you see them go up and every one of them go in, felt like 20 went in in the first half.

Q. You were a target of their defense today yet you responded with 18 points. Talk about the motivation this brings you as you get ready to go to next year?
IVANA RACA: I'm not going to talk about next year. I will talk about the postseason. We have that now and we will focus to take the championship home. Now for the three games, I took advantage what my defense gave. If they gave me guard player I would post up and if there were post players I would just attack off the three-point line.

Q. Jen, obviously you've won a couple games in the tournament, got to 500, do you feel like you've done enough to earn WNIT bid, and are you excited about that opportunity?
JENNIFER HOOVER: This group is super excited about it. We came into the season seeking out a postseason bid and wanted that to be the NCAA bid when we started conference when we did. But this group is hungry and they want to prove how tough they are and what we can do. In the locker room I heard them talking about that. We're not done yet. We get to play and we're at the mercy of wait and see now. We do feel like we've done enough in this conference to make this run late to make enough noise throughout the conference season and some of our wins. Hopefully it will be enough to give us a shot because we would like a chance to win a championship and it would be a big, big thing for this program.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP sports

tech 129
About ASAP SportsFastScripts ArchiveRecent InterviewsCaptioningUpcoming EventsContact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297