Quotes: Duke 113, Pfeiffer 36

Duke Head Coach Joanne P. McCallie
Opening Statement:
“A good game for us. I thought a lot of people contributed. I really liked the idea of having 28 assists and getting to the free throw line a lot. Obviously it is a different level of competition but you still have to get numbers. You still have to be impressive. You still have to play as a team. I thought we did that. I actually thought we were better in the second half than the first for a lot of reasons, in terms of ball movement. I thought we learned each other a little bit. I liked some of the stuff they were doing because they were forcing a lot of broken plays. They were just hustling all over the floor and playing their man-to-man before they went to their zone late. That was good for us to attack the foul line, to create, and to not really call as many sets, but to, more or less, play the game. I thought the team did a good job with that, particularly in the second half. Oderah [Chidom] was a real bright spot, very confident. She did a real great job, came right off the bench ready to play. They didn't really have an answer for her ability to go in and get to the basket and get rebounds, so that was awesome. Azurá [Stevens] I thought was just tough, from start to finish. They always had to worry about her. We are still working on getting better passes to Azurá. Sometimes I don't think we help her all the time. The ball kind of goes in the wrong direction. Overall, I thought she played very, very aggressive. So, we will go from here.”

On the first stretch of the game:
“I think at that time, any time you're keeping the score low for your opponent, you're going to come around. I think we rushed on offense. I don't think we were taking our time and really attacking. That's why I felt that it was a strange score to start. That's just part of the game. I thought our team was getting used to playing and used to playing with each other. We took some quicker shots, we weren't offensive rebounding. I thought we slowed down on offense and that was key for us to work the ball.”

On Kyra Lambert's performance:
“The seven steals weren't bad either. I think Kyra [Lambert] played very within herself. She was 3-4 from the floor. She did not force things. She let the game come to her. She's got great speed. She's got a turbo that can really go. She is learning how to use that in the open court and create.”

On the freshmen:
“I think they've been doing well in practice so it carries over to the exhibition game. These are games, competitions against somebody else other than us, so I think it's important to go to our strengths. Haley [Gorecki] really settled in in the second half. She is a tremendous shooter. She can really go in transition. I think everyone is getting used to the defensive sets that we're calling and trying to play.”

On more connecting plays:
“Blue-White was pretty bad. There's not much I can say about that. Erin [Mathias], her IQ, to get 4 assists in 13 minutes and just look for her teammates and be a threat. I'm really pleased with Erin, she's much improved from last year. She's much stronger, physically, as well. That's a higher IQ making better decisions.”

On Angela Salvadores:
“We expect her Sunday. We will see. We've got two practices, but that's the plan.”

On Lyneé Belton:
“Lyneé [Belton] is interesting. She's just got to pass her test. She's in practice. Lyneé is going 5-on-5 in practice. We're all looking at her like, 'OK pass your test.' You know, they do all those tests, but she's doing well. I mean physical test. I said, 'Go practice your jumping or balance or whatever they do.' She's been in two and a half hour practices, going up and down. She's doing well.”

On the progression of closeouts on shooters:
“I thought so. At times we underran it and then we overran it a little bit. We've got to be aggressive and find that happy medium. I thought our closeouts were better in the second half than the first. Still, kind of interesting, being athletic and quick, you can overrun somebody and give them an opportunity. They were small and going by. It was great to see Azurá guarding some 5'4” or 5'6”. That was a good opportunity for her, and Oderah as well. We're still working on that, it'll be on our film tomorrow.”

Sophomore Forward/Guard Azurá Stevens
On her thought process when facing a team with so many smaller players:
“Just to exploit the mismatch. It's what we try to focus on in every game, because we have the height advantage, especially at my position most of the time. We just try to exploit that whenever we can. And we knew coming in that this would be a shorter team, so just sticking to our inside-out attack game was really key for us.”

On her demeanor in this game and after some shots went in, her general calmness:
“That's also something I've been trying to work on, just staying calm on offense. In practice, we talk about being slow with the ball and not letting the defense rush you so that's something I try to work on so this was a good chance to try that out.”

On her transition from playing with Team USA to playing back at Duke and bringing back what she's learned:
“Just sticking to what we do as a team here at Duke, the summer was great but now I'm in a different phase, I'm focused on Duke and just helping my team win.”

Junior Forward Oderah Chidom
On how her role has changed with all the new personnel coming in:
“I'm actually able to play my natural position that I was recruited here to play. We have a lot of good guards this year and they're coming along. They've made so many transformations from when they first got here in July to now and it's kind of cool to see them display it on the court here, today.”

On being more assertive and aggressive with the ball:
“I think a lot of it was excitement. I mean, I haven't played in a long time. It was my first time playing against someone who wasn't Azurá or Amber [Henson] or Kendall [Cooper] so it was just nice to see somebody else for a change.”

Pfeiffer head coach Tooey Loy:
On whether his players grew up as Duke fans:
“We got a lot of Carolina fans. We had parents wanting to come in here with their Carolina jerseys on. It was gonna be bad enough so let's not give them any more ammunition”

On recruiting international players:
“We definitely recruit internationally. The one thing about recruiting international for our level is we can get a low-major, mid-major DI player who doesn't know the difference between Pfeiffer and Duke to some degree. It's not as much as it used to be. But they still want to come here and play college basketball and enjoy the experience they just don't know the difference sometimes. So sometimes we can get a little bit better player going international but we recruit everywhere. The international game is a little bit different, it's a little more spread out. We have one player who is not eligible yet through the NCAA, we are still waiting on her eligibility. She is gonna help us out a lot; she will probably be one of our top guards. She can really shoot it. We got a good chance in our level to be a good team this year.”

On dealing with injuries last year after starting strong:
“Last year it was a one-point game in the final two minutes, and I thought we were doing pretty good last year and then we just went through a string of injuries. We had four of our top seven get hurt and really struggled the rest of the way. With not having as many scholarships at this level you have to stay healthy. And I know Duke went through some injuries but they start with more players than we do. We usually start with five or six, and those five or six need to stay healthy to have a good year at our level.”

On having a rotation with 15 players:
“Because we are going to play fast and we are going to press, and I hope Duke knew we were tonight, but we are going to press for 40 minutes and run the ball so we will play 10 or 11. And that is about as deep as we will go.”

On defense cohesion in the first half:
“It was really good, really good. That's what we have been working on. We have been talking defensively, we like to switch on a lot of things, we like to really jump passing lanes, and again that first five, I was really impressed with them the first five, six minutes of the game. And even when we rotated, and still had some of our top players in, I thought we were really good. I felt our speed gave them some problems; our lack of size gave them some problems because they were coming off screens and we were running up under them. They came out in the second half that they could score at the rim anytime they wanted to, and we really couldn't do anything about that. Early on, our pressure and the way the kids talked and everything and switched and got to the right spots was really good. We watch a lot of film about this and pump them up likes to get them ready for the season.”

On playing 6'5” Azura Stevens:
“We learned that we better not face a 6'5”, 6'6” kid because we can't guard them. There's nothing we could do there. If we front her they were throwing it over the top. If we play behind her she doesn't know we are there. Luckily I don't know that there are any 6'6” players in Division II, and if there are they don't move like she does. We haven't been playing our bigger kids that much and they had some good minutes. At least she knew they were on the floor. Grayson Harris and Jonaisha Watson late in the game came in and were physical and gave us a little bit of a physical presence, so some good minutes for them.”

On having a 5'9” player jump center:
“Well she didn't jump, we told her not to jump. We were just setting our defense to get our initial trap. We would have had to stand on somebody's shoulders to have a chance to win that jump ball so it didn't matter.”