University of North Carolina Athletics
Postgame Quotes - Duke 95, North Carolina 71
February 26, 2017 | Women's Basketball
Duke 95, North Carolina 71 • February 26, 2017
Postgame Quotes
North Carolina Head Coach Sylvia Hatchell
Opening Statement
“Thank you all for being here. As you can see, Duke has a very good team. They're big and they're very experienced with really good shooters and all. I was proud of my two freshmen here [Olivia Smith and Taylor Koenen] who played forty minutes apiece. Neither one of them got to come out, not even for a second today, but they both played well especially for freshmen. Taylor [Koenen] has eight assists, which is really good, and Olivia [Smith] likes to run to that corner and find that corner. If she's open, she can put it in there. She was five-for-ten from the three, which was good. We're a little short-handed right now with Stephanie [Watts], Destinee [Walker] and [Hillary] Fuller out, so we really don't have any kind of rotation they can do to give them some type of break. They went hard for the whole time and they played their hearts out. Again, the rebounding with the size difference was big, but we hung in there with them pretty well until the end of the third quarter. We turned the ball over three or four times and they were able to run down there and get some easy buckets. We hung in there with them until that part of the game where we just turned the ball over several times and they scored about ten or twelve points in two minutes. That really hurt us. Again, we did some good things. These young ones were thrown in the fire and we're tired. This is not the first game where we've had several players who had to play for 40 minutes. We play Pittsburgh at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday in the ACC Tournament down at Coastal [Carolina]. Tournament time, anything can happen. I've seen some unbelievable things happen in my career at the ACC tournament, so we want to go down there and make some noise, compete hard and just see what happens.”
On what she said to the team after the game
“I brought out all the good stuff, like Taylor [Koenen]'s assists and rebounding, and Olivia [Smith], and the fact that they both played 40 minutes and the fact that Duke's opponents were averaging scoring 53 and we scored 71 on them. They're a very good team. They advertise I guess the biggest team in the Duke program history, and the fact that we could score like that. So I brought out all the good stuff, and I told them I said, 'Hey, it's tournament time. I've seen lots of things happen.' I told them that I remember when Georgia Tech went in, and they were one of the bottom seeds and they played for the championship. I remember that Agnus [Berenato] didn't even have enough clothes. They didn't take enough clothes to stay the whole time. They had to go buy clothes because they didn't take enough stuff to stay that long. But trust me, I have a house down there; I got clothes there. But anything can happen in the tournament. I've seen that happen so many times, in our tournament and then in the men's tournament too.”
North Carolina Player Quotes
Olivia Smith, Freshman, Guard
On having her family at the game:
“I'm from Raleigh, so I grew up here. This is my home. My sisters went to Carolina, so I had them here, my grandma here, and my mom and dad. My dad doesn't get to make many games because he travels a lot. I could tell that my dad was happy because he doesn't smile very often, and I could see him smiling. My grandma said that when I hit my first shot her and my sister broke into tears. So having that love and support meant the world to me.”
On what she's looking forward to at the ACC Tournament:
“I'm really excited for us to get some more time to mesh, and come together and really show that through the adversity that we've gone through that we can still go out and compete and that our heart won't change no matter what people have thrown at us.”
Taylor Koenen, Freshman, Forward
On what she's looking forward to at the ACC tournament:
“I'm looking forward to starting 0-0. Coach was talking about the ACC Tournament and how it's like a new season. We are all equal and we can put the season behind us and go out there and give it everything we got and start fresh. So I'm excited for that because we are good and hopefully we can prove that.”
Duke Head Coach Joanne McCallie
Opening Statement
“A very good team game, very proud of our team in terms of playing together, and obviously rebounding was strong, which was important to us. Defensively, we did some good things and we had some things we need to shore up and learn from, so that's good. Thirty assists is unbelievable. I have not seen that statistic in 25 years of being a head coach. I've seen 28; I've seen 29, but not 30. So we are excited about the ball being shared like it was, and for Kyra [Lambert]. I'm just really proud of Kyra [Lambert] because that is so much of what her game is. The ability to create and score and just distribute the ball and rebound and kind of do it all. So that's very impressive. And Becca [Greenwell] was just loaded and ready. I mean she just played her game, let it come to her, her teammates found her, which was great, but she just took full advantage it. That zero-turnover stat is huge. And that was an excellent game as well. I thought Lexie [Brown] was very strong. Leaonna Odom off the bench was very strong. And we are just trying to get better heading into this weekend.”
