University of North Carolina Athletics
Postgame Quotes - Carson-Newman Exhibition
November 6, 2014 | Women's Basketball
Postgame Press Conference
North Carolina 88 • Carson Newman 27
November 5, 2014
Head Coach Sylvia Hatchell
Opening Statement
"It's great to be back. My face is actually a little bit sore from smiling so much. It's great to be back and enjoyed the game tonight. I thought Carson Newman did a really good job of hanging with us early on in the first half. They really controlled the possessions and battled us on the boards, and they really played us really smart and very well actually most of the first half. Second half, we got a lot more aggressive, started getting out in the passing lanes, became more aggressive offensively. Allisha [Gray] got going and started scoring some points for us, and we just overall picked it up more. Of course, I let everybody play quite a bit. This was Jamie [Cherry]'s baptism into college basketball. We had a first tonight. This is my 40th year, and I've never gone to put a freshman in off the bench and they didn't have their jersey on. So we go to put Jamie in, she took her warmup shirt off, and she didn't have her jersey on. And she didn't know where it was. So they had to go to the locker room and find her jersey and bring it out. So anyway, I love the passion and the excitement of the fact that she would be so excited and into the game that something like that would happen. I got so tickled whenever she took it off and her jersey wasn't there. But that was fun out there. This is a good group. We've got experience, we've got leadership with a great senior class, we've got depth, you can tell that, and we're going to continue to get better and better as we have time to blend everything, and so, we're looking forward to next Monday night playing Wingate and opening up on that Friday."
On G Jamie Cherry shooting
"She'll start making more of them too. I've always liked a scoring point guard, and we run things for that. As she gets more experience, she'll become much smarter out there as far as what she can and can't do. There's things she did in high school that she can't do in college just because the talent level and the size and everything. She's learned a lot of that in practice; her upperclassmen are helping her a lot, talking to her and helping her understand things. Ivory [Latta]'s talking to her constantly, all the time, whether she's in the game or she's sitting over there. You notice, she sits lots of times up there with Ivory when she's not in the game. So as she learns more and more of the game, she'll continue to get better and better."
Cherry on her first game
"It was a great experience, just being able to experience with my teammates and having Coach Hatchell back on the sideline. I thought I could have done a lot better, but I know it's my first time, and it's the first experience. It's a learning experience, and I thought I did pretty well for my first night."
F Xylina McDaniel on having Coach Hatchell back
"Having Coach back is like having our mother back. It's good to have her there; we feel the warmth. She really is like our mother because we are all away from home. Not having her last year really showed us that we need to appreciate her more. Hearing her voice and being able to look over and see her puts a smile on all of our faces. She pushes us to work harder, she doesn't even have to say it, but it's the fact that she's here and she's coaching us, so we aren't going to waste our time, we're going to work as hard as we can just to make her happy."
G Allisha Gray on defense
"The second half, we really played Carolina defense the way it's supposed to be played. The first half, everybody was trying to get the jitters out, and the second half, Coach Hatchell got to us and said we need to play Carolina defense and get up to them. And it shows when we run our defense right the results of turnovers and layups.
