University of North Carolina Athletics
Postgame Quotes - North Carolina 59, Maine 58
December 31, 2015 | Women's Basketball
NORTH CAROLINA POSTGAME QUOTES
North Carolina 59, Maine 58 • December 31, 2015
Head Coach Sylvia Hatchell, Freshman Stephanie Watts
Opening Statement
“Stephanie [Watts] was tough down the stretch. We should've never been in that situation, but we're so up and down. We do good things, and then we miss so many shots. I mean, Xylina [McDaniel], I don't know how many more shots she could've missed today. We had a 5-point turnaround there one time in about four seconds.
We just keep working on things, but there at the end – the out of bounds play – the girl was not on [Watts]. Two of them were on Xylina, and they were face-guarding Xylina. So, Stephanie looked at me and she went (zig-zag hand gesture) and I said yes. So we knew whenever they play zone or they double like that, the most open person is the one throwing the ball in. She tapped it to Z, she went out behind the 3, and Z threw it to her. We've done that five or six times this year.
Anyway, she's going to be great, her and Destinee [Walker] both. They're just freshman, they're learning and they're going to make mistakes out there. She picked up some cheap fouls in the first half, but they're just playing through it and getting better and better. The confidence though, she's got confidence to take that shot, and the last two big shots.
Maine's a really good team. They beat Clemson by 33, and they beat LSU by 9. Now they lost to Purdue and I think Minnesota, but they're a very good team. The one kid was from Finland I think because she played with LaTangela [Atkinson] over there, and 42 was tough; she was really tough. We weren't getting around screens on 20, so again those are just things we have to continue to work on and learn.
Film work, lots of film work, we'll probably spend more time doing film work than we've ever spent, but those are things we've got to do. Hey, we're 10-5 going in to ACC play. We have won the last four games in a row, so we want to get on a roll here. We've got the first two ACC games at home. We've got to take care of business, but it's fun coaching these kids. They're great kids, and they listen and work hard. The biggest thing is sometimes we say stuff to them, and they look at us like, “what are you talking about?” We're talking to them on this level and they still haven't learned a lot of the terminology and stuff like that, but we're a work in progress.
On what the team needs to work on heading into ACC play
“Rebounding, help-rotation on defense, finishing our shots and stuff around the basket. Sometimes we don't read things out there as far as coming off screens and stuff like that, so that'll all come with experience. Mainly, just on defense with the help-side, and the rotations is really big, we've been working a lot on that.
On taking responsibility to make shots at the end of the game
“We have a lot of players on the team who could have made the shot, like Jamie [Cherry] and Destinee [Walker], but I just noticed in the end when they weren't guarding me on the out-of-bounds, that's a play that we run a lot when they're not guarding me on the out-of-bounds. So I noticed that, looked at Coach Hatchell and asked if that's what we should do, and she was like, 'yeah, go for it' basically, so we ran it at the end.
