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Quotes: Duke 83, Georgia Tech 51
1/10/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Duke Coach Gail Goestenkors:
On the game as a whole:
“Overall I was pleased with our effort, I thought we had great intensity and focus. I thought we did a good job moving the ball. They are extremely athletic and have a lot of traps and presses that they throw at you. We did turn the ball over too much. When we didn't turn the ball over I thought we did a nice job getting out in transition, attacking the basket, finding the open player and hitting the shot. The one area that we obviously we need to clean up is our turnovers.”
On the difference between this game and the Virginia Tech game:
“We broke down that Virginia Tech tape and we talked about it. I think all the players understood that they didn't bring their best effort. They didn't have the intensity that we are known for and the defensive intensity in particular. I thought today they made a commitment to come out with the attack mindset and get after it on both ends of the court.”
On the three-point shooting:
“It is encouraging. We are a good shooting team so we've always felt like, and continue to feel like, our offense is going to grow when we find out where everyone's niche is and everybody's role is offensively. Our defense has been ahead of our offense but it's coming along, so tonight was a really good night for us.”
On Chioma Nnamaka's fast start:
“We put Lindsey Harding on her after she had the first 8 points. That was a big change for us. We started with Wanisha Smith on her and Wanisha is a very good defensive player but she was letting her touch the ball and have vision. Nnamaka is too good for that. Then we put Lindsey on her. Then we changed it up a bit; sometimes we would switch and sometimes we wouldn't. Lindsey wanted the call after Nnamaka went off, she wanted to guard her and I thought she did a very good job.”
On the defensive effort:
“I thought it was much improved from the Virginia Tech game. I thought we had some breakdowns towards the end of the first half and at the end of the game when we had some of our subs in and I didn't think that they were as focused as they need to be. But overall, I was pleased with our defensive effort.”
On the turnovers:
“That is just the most frustrating part. I feel like it is just focus. Some of the turnovers are not forced turnovers and we just need to clean that part up.”
On Alison Bales' touches:
“She didn't get as many touches. If we hadn't been hitting as well on the outside, we would have tried to get the ball inside. But they were so worried about her inside that they weren't rotating out, particularly on Abby. They were stuck on Alison and we'll take what they give us.”
On her great shooting night:
“With there traps that they were doing up top, it really left the backside open and sometimes the backside of the zone can forget about the deep corners. Some of my teammates did a good job finding me and I guess it was just one of those nights.”
On not looking ahead to Maryland on Saturday:
“Before the game I was more focused on coming out strong unlike Virginia Tech, where we came out very slow. The whole point of this game was to start off strong in preparation for the future games and for this game also because we knew that Georgia Tech would start off strong and play hard the entire game.”
On the way they are playing going into Maryland:
“We just have to have our focus for 40 minutes. Defensively we're doing a great job and offensively if we are able to play like we did tonight we'll do great. Overall, I think we are ready.”
Georgia Tech Coach MaChelle Joseph
On playing Duke:
“I think looking at this Duke team on tape, I commented to my staff, that I felt like there's been more talented Duke teams, but I don't know that there's been a better Duke team. I think that this team plays harder than any Duke team I've ever seen. I've followed this program since Gail has been here. When you get talented players playing as hard as they're playing, good things are going to happen. I was very impressed with their defense. It is very difficult to reverse the ball from one side of the floor to the other against them. The other thing is that they've got Alison Bales inside. You can get by people, but once you get by them you've got a 6-7 kid waiting for you on the inside. I was very, very impressed with them. I thought that we competed in spurts. We did as much as we could do at times on the defensive end. I think we could've taken care of the ball better though on the offensive end.”
On forcing Duke to take perimeter shot:
“We weren't trying to force them to shoot great, we were trying to force them to take perimeter shots. They hadn't made a lot of threes this year with the exception of Abby Waner and Emily Waner. Emily had hit 14 and Abby had hit 22, and then she [Abby Waner] went 6 for 7 tonight. I don't know if she's ever been 6 for 7, but that was pretty impressive. That was one of the things I didn't expect was them to go 10 of 16 from the three point line. I think the thing about this Duke team is that they do what they need to do in any given situation. If it's an up tempo team, then they're running. If it's a team that likes to play a zone like we do, they know we like to play a 3-2 match-up zone, then they were in the corners, and it made it really hard for us to guard when they can spread the floor like they do and put two great three point shooters in each corner.”
On playing without their second-leading scorer:
“Playing without our leading rebounder and second-leading scorer is tough on the road especially when you're playing one of the top teams in the country. But I really thought that our young kids competed. I started a freshman inside and I thought that she played tough and aggressive. She's 6-0 going up against 6-7, so I thought that she did a pretty good job being physical in there. I also thought that Kentrina Wilson who plays guard for me starting at 4 did a tremendous job just attacking the basket and trying to defend in there. I thought Carrem Gay had a great game inside. She took advantage of the fact that we were playing four guards. She just posted up and had her way inside.”
Players Mentioned
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