University of North Carolina Athletics
Postgame Quotes - Carolina 79, Oklahoma State 77
November 20, 2014 | Women's Basketball
Postgame Press Conference
North Carolina 79, Oklahoma State 77 • Nov. 19, 2014
North Carolina Head Coach Sylvia Hatchell
Opening Statement
“It was a great game. I thought it was two very good teams out there. It was a game of runs. We started out strong, but we knew they would come back. They're a really, really good team. Good players and well coached. In the first half, we probably took too many threes and didn't make them, but second half, we were 50 percent, both from the three and overall, we shot 50 percent second half. It was a great game, a lot of good players. We learned a lot and sputtered some out there, but [Stephanie Mavunga and Allisha Gray] played really well. Having 18 assists and only 13 turnovers, that was really, really good. Danielle [Butts] came off the bench and was four for six, had six rebounds and 10 points, no turnovers, and one assist in 10 minutes. So that's great that we can have kids come in and everything. It was a great game for us, and we learned a lot, so now we need to get ready for the Oregon Ducks.”
G Allisha Gray on her steal to end the game
“I just jumped up, used my jumping abilities and grabbed it. It was the biggest one I ever made.”
F Stephanie Mavunga on offensive rebounds
“We've been doing a lot of rebound drills in practice this week, so we knew we had to get on rebounds because the last game we lost by 10. And every time we lose in rebounds, we have to run next morning. And the team doesn't like to run. So it was just more of a mentality, so we really knew we had to crash the boards. I wouldn't say it was easier, just more of us really putting more aggressiveness into it.”
On the difficult upcoming schedule
“It's big. We're at Oregon; they have a new coach. We're actually going to spend Saturday at the Nike campus. Then we'll play Sunday and head on to Hawaii, and of course playing Stanford over there. They are really good, beating UConn, so that'll be a good matchup I think. The girls are really looking forward to that. Three games over there will be tough, playing Hawaii on their home court, and then 48 hours after we get back, we head to Rutgers and play up there. So we have a really, really tough non-conference schedule, especially this stretch right here.”
Oklahoma State Coach Jim Littell
Opening Statement
“I'm proud of our team for battling back, especially the kind of start that we got off to in the first half. But we are disappointed. We felt like we had an opportunity to win the game here. When you play a team that is as good as North Carolina and as athletic as North Carolina, you cannot give up 29 points on put-backs. We got to do a better job of blocking out, and also we left a lot of points at the free-throw line. We were 14 for 21. But you don't have to look very far to realize that we lost the ball game by giving up 22 offensive boards and 29 points on put backs. We tied the basketball game late and they got a run out basket, and where we just didn't get back defensively. When you come in and play somebody in this type of environment you got to be really good in all phases. We weren't strong enough to get it done at the end. North Carolina's got an excellent team, great players. I mean Allisha Gray is about as good as they come. She's really, really talented and hit some key shots with the game on the line. But, we're pleased the way we battled back, but we're disappointed some of the mistakes that we made that kept us from possibly winning the ball game.”
On his Team' Resilience
“Well you know they didn't quit and I'm proud of them for that and I told them that. They could have quit, they could have quit in the first half but we fought back and I thought we were really good offensively in the second half scoring 48 points. We ran good offense. We got some nice put-backs. We flowed right in from transition into our early offense, and got some good looks. I am proud of them for the way they fought back two or three different occasions. At the end of the game, we're down by three, we call time out, run a nice set for a crack-back block for Roshunda Johnson. She hits a three, I think that tied it at 77. At that point, so I was proud that we executed out at the time out. We just got to do some things- we just got to do some of the dirty work, the blocking somebody out. We're not very athletic. We're not very athletic, and we're not going to out-jump people. We thought for a while we could jump with North Carolina, and we cant. So we got to go home and go to work on checking off of the boards and get better. We came into this game with the idea that North Carolina couldn't beat us on the first shot, but they could beat us on the second, and that's what happened here tonight. “
On being Behind Early On
“Offensively, they were hard hedging screens and kind of double teaming us off the ball screens. So we tried to flash from the backside and I thought it was a good adjustment that helped us offensively. Defensively, we just wanted to square up in the zone and the next person rotate out on their man. We didn't do a real good job of that. That's why you have athletes like that, where they can attack the boards, it just comes back to that. We just kept telling our kids, 'grind it out one possession at a time,' and I think they did that.”
LaShawn Jones, Center
On OSU Regrouping in the Second Half
“I just thought for us to regroup we just had to keep communicating with each other because in the first half we weren't doing that so much. But the more that we kept talking to each other, the more things started to flow together on offense and on defense. For us to make a good run in the second half.”
On if Carolina was Overwhelming?
“We were just a little overwhelmed because we weren't communicating, but once we started communicating, a lot of things started to come in place for our team.”
On Not Quitting
“We are a team. We are never going to quit. We have to learn to rely on each other and have each other's back even through a game like that. I just feel as though, block outs, that really killed us this game. And once we continued to block out, and I feel like we are going to have a lot of success as a team.”
