Wes Moore: "It's Time For a Little March Gladness"
NC State head coach Wes Moore met with the media via Zoom Monday afternoon ahead of the 2023 Ally ACC Women's Basketball Tournament.
NOTE: Click on the video in the player above to watch Moore’s press conference.
Opening Statement
It’s time for a little “March Gladness.” We’ve had our ups and downs. It’s been a roller coaster ride, and we always talk about how we split our year up into four separate seasons. Our non-conference season was pretty good. Our conference season was, like I said, a roller coaster. Now, we’re ready for the ACC Tournament and a fresh start. You wipe the board clean and start over. We’re ready to attack that.
On Diamond Johnson’s availability for the tournament…
I’m not really sure. We’ll see how she’s feeling. We’re also considering just holding her out until the NCAAs and give her essentially an additional two-week break before we’d have to crank her back up completely. We may be going in shorthanded again. We’ve played the last game or two with seven or eight. Right now, we’re probably looking at being in that same situation. Hopefully, that extra couple of weeks will help Diamond be close to 100 percent, but we’ll see. You never know. We’ll see how she’s feeling in the next few days.
On what he expects to see from Syracuse…
Again, they’ve done a great job with that team. They’re playing really well right now. They go in with a lot of momentum. From our game before, [Georgia] Woolley’s who hurt us. She lit us up for 25 points, and you know what [Dyaisha] Fair’s capable of. She probably didn’t have one of her better games, and she still scored 14. You’ve got to worry about those folks, but really it’s the whole team. They’re really great on the boards. We’ve got to keep them off the offensive glass. They do a great job defensively of turning you over. I think we had 19 turnovers in that game. We’ve got a lot of things we have to improve on if we’re going to have success on Thursday.
On the competitiveness of the conference…
I agree. There’s just unbelievable parity. I think anybody in this conference can beat you any given night. We’ve found that out for ourselves. We had some tough losses. I think the portal has evened the field a little bit. People were able to reload and turn over their roster. It’s just made for a lot of really good teams in this league and, obviously, a lot of really good coaches. You have to perform. You have to play well on a given day, or you’re going to go home with a loss. Again, it’s a great conference, and I think everyone’s playing really well right now. It’s going to take an unbelievable run in Greensboro for somebody to walk away with the championship.
On what he’s learned from his team…
We’d give up 36 points at halftime to Pitt on Sunday, and I just told them, “We can’t win like this.” When Pitt gets in the 70s or even 80s, they’re going to win usually. We had to do a better job defensively, and we came out in the third quarter and only allowed nine points. That really gave us some momentum, and we were able to hold on. Like I said, it’s been a roller coaster. We’ve been up and down. We’ve had injuries to overcome and different things, but we haven’t shot the ball as well as we would like. Consequently, defending and rebounding become very critical to our success. We’ve got to buy in on all of that, try to keep the score down, try to do a good job on both ends of the floor on the boards, and holding people to one-and-done instead of getting an extra shot or two. Hopefully, we can find a way to get hot and start knocking down shots, and at some point, we’ll add Diamond back to the mix, and that’ll help as far as scoring goes as well. Again, it’s day-to-day. You’ve got to take them one at a time. That’s for sure.
On what a fresh start would look like for him…
Well, like I said, we buy in defensively and on the boards and compete at a high level because I know everybody else in this league is going to do that. The ACC Tournament brings out another level, and everybody understands you win or go home in this situation. I think it starts with that. Like I said, we need to hit some shots. We’ve shot the ball better than we have, so maybe it’s confidence. Part of it, though, is also shot selection. I think we’re better when we can penetrate and kick or go inside-out and spot up. I think we’re better when our feet are set. I was proud of them Sunday. We had 25 made buckets, and we had 21 assists. We’re doing a better job of setting our teammates up and creating good looks for them, and hopefully that’s something we can continue to do and build on. I think that would help quite a bit, too. So defend, rebound, shot selection, and then when we get that good look, let’s knock it down.