ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 3, 2022

Katie Meier

Destiny Harden

Kelsey Marshall

Miami Hurricanes

Postgame Press Conference

Miami 61, Duke 55

KATIE MEIER: Well, I just want to start off by saying, what a conference. I mean, my God. I've been in it a long time, and as a coach, I'm as tired and as challenged this year as any year in the league. I really -- I mean that Boston College-Florida State game, Duke -- come on, these games are blood baths. Everyone is playing their guts out. There's some fantastic players. Celeste Taylor was fantastic tonight and really started Duke off well.

I'm happy with this win because I think Duke is a really good team, and they played extremely well tonight. I thought we got a really good effort from them, and we had to make a lot adjustments, so credit to them. And then I just want to talk about my team.

I think we're really good. I think you shut down Kelsey Marshall to some extent, you think you kind of have the game plan for that, and we'll have someone else step up. In the beginning of the year, we had a saddle on Kelsey, didn't have Destiny, didn't have Mykea. Lola was new, Maeva was new. We were trying to figure it all out, so we rode Kelsey pretty hard. But as the year has evolved, I think we've become a team that can go to three, four different players. Mykea Gray's guts today was incredible. So Mykea and Destiny, think about that, we didn't really have them at the beginning of the year and now they played very maturely, and I had that veteran lineup at the end. And some really specific play calls for Destiny that she came through on and Lola too.

So really happy with the win. Any win in this conference is huge and we put ourselves in a position in late February to be a team that -- I mean, I don't have any question that we belong in the big dance, and this win proves it. We'll have to prove it again tomorrow and give a great effort against another great team.

But we did so well as a conference -- not a conference. We did extremely well. Everybody played well, and we were down some and we were playing teams well, too. When we all come together in this tournament, any win you get in this tournament to me proves your worth, proves that you're one of the top 68 teams in the country.

Q. I was wondering if you could just talk about Lola. You just mentioned her, how she kind of stepped up today. She went 4 for 4, 11 points. Like you said, made one of the big shots kind of late. What's her growth been like this season?

KATIE MEIER: Yeah, Lola is -- I think physically she runs hard, she demands the ball, she plays hard and everything else, but I think it's more mentally how much she's matured, how confident she is. Her face is different. She's just a warrior.

I make all of my players say a word before the game. I call their name out and they give me one word where their mind is, and the last couple games she's been saying discipline and focus. It's incredible. She used to maybe get down a little bit and we had to rally her back, but we went to her on a big play -- and I think she traveled when we went in to her -- and that might have been the end of Lola in December.

But it's February, and she just put her shoulders back and came through for us. Thanks for asking because I think it makes us a really special team when she's playing well.

Q. You hold Shyeann Day-Wilson to 13 from the field and I think you really attacked that challenge. I wonder what went into that process of guarding her and what you can take going into that matchup tomorrow with another great set of guards?

KATIE MEIER: Yeah, she's special. She's special. She has a couple personnel tendencies that I think Coach Fitz on our staff did a really nice job on the personnel scout. We completely blew the personnel scout in the first quarter and you could see the staff so frustrated. The players were frustrated at each other, they were yelling at each other like come on, you know this. I don't want to give it away, but there were certain specific personnel scout that we were blowing, and so Duke got 20 points in the first quarter.

We adjusted and really kind of focused up.

But she's a tough guard, and I thought the posts did a fantastic job of stepping up on the ball screens and making her go to a counter move.

So our guards were hawking her like crazy, but we gave her too much space when she was scoring, and when we closed that gap a little bit, we made her pass.

Q. I think you kind of answered my question, but I want to ask you about the difference between Duke's 22 points in the first quarter and 33 for the rest of the game, the next three quarters. Was it execution? Was it scheming? Was it focus, discipline?

KATIE MEIER: I mean, they -- we talk about like four to six inches of difference. Celeste -- I talk to my team about this is almost. This is almost. You almost win. You take that six inches away from Celeste Taylor, and in the second half you saw we made her put on the ground a little bit to a hand that we scouted. But in the first quarter she had it a little bit too much. And so we were almost there, and almost isn't good enough in March. We had to close that six inches there, we had to gap up a little bit more on Day-Wilson, and the players really nodded their heads and said, we've got this, and I thought we really did, clamped down.

Q. Obviously not your first win over your alma mater but does it feel different --

KATIE MEIER: I'm so old, I don't even remember where I went to college. I've spent three times, four times as much time at Miami as I have at Duke, so I'm a Hurricane.

Q. Then as far as on offense, shifting from the first quarter to your success the rest of the game, what were you looking at just to get so much going downhill, those DHOs that you were running?

KATIE MEIER: Yeah, everyone is excited to be in the ACC Tournament, and so the players were prepped for some looks that we knew we would get. We just went early. We just went early, and Duke is too sophisticated to think they're going to open up the door and let you go, so we had to go later on some of our stuff. That's the simplest way to say it.

Then I think the other thing is we rode Destiny Harden in big moments for big buckets, and I love Des's eyes. She's got big eyes anyway, but when we call something for Des and her eyes get real big, I know that's going in. And she had big eyes in that third and fourth quarter. She really came through for us.

Q. Destiny, you had a really great tie-up there in the second quarter and you showed so much grit. What were you saying to each other on the court to keep your head in it when it was not going your way in the first half?

DESTINY HARDEN: We just kept telling each other stay composed, be disciplined, play together, and just keep getting stops, keep getting stops because we wasn't scoring. And then we said if we don't play defense -- if we don't play offense, then both of us aren't scoring. Once we started putting the ball in the net, then we got ourselves going.

Q. Katie, what did you tell the team at halftime? You guys were trailing by four. What did you tell the team at that point?

KATIE MEIER: Well, I spent a lot of time with my staff at halftime, I really did. I usually come in at ten and I didn't get in until eight minutes or so left on the clock, so I didn't have a ton of time to talk to the team. They always write stuff on the board, they write the positives and the negatives. So when I come in, they've already talked through -- it was all negatives. There wasn't a plus on there, was there? Uh-uh.

So I was like, well, I'd better get them confident because they're pretty down right now. They didn't have a lot of positive things to say to each other.

A couple things that I thought we could be faithful, and I really believed. At the start of the third, we ran a play that we basically just put in at halftime and got Kelsey on a little curl there and the ball kind of rolled around and went in, and I thought we're going to win.

We changed something, we adjusted, we got Kelsey free, and when that little ball just rolled and went in, I just thought, we've got this. It just changed us a lot. I thought the team did a really sharp job on that play.

Q. Kelsey, it's a quick turnaround. What do you have to do to get into the mindset of having those shots fall tomorrow?

KELSEY MARSHALL: Nothing really. You know, just staying composed, believing in my teammates, my coaching staff that they'll find ways for me to score, and just letting the game come to me.

Q. For the players, like Coach talked about earlier, it seems like you guys are probably going to the NCAA Tournament, but how do you forget about that and focus on these games that you have ahead of you here in Greensboro?

KELSEY MARSHALL: Well, I can say for the past month, we really don't focus on the past, we focus on the next game that's coming up. So we're going just to take every game one game at a time and try to win that game, and whatever comes after that comes.