LOCKER ROOM REPORT: Pack Handles Hokies
NC State head coach Wes Moore, senior guard Aislinn Konig, and sophomore center Elissa Cunane met with the media following the Wolfpack's 76-69 win over Virginia Tech Thursday evening.
NOTE: Click on each respective thumbnail to watch the press conferences.
Wes Moore
“It was a tough game. You’ve got to give Virginia Tech a lot of credit. [Aisha] Sheppard, in particular, was unbelievable. We tried to face-guard her some in the fourth quarter and try to keep the ball out of her hands, but she still did a nice job of being able to get the ball and get looks. There were times that I thought we did a great job getting a hand up. If you got any closer, it was going to be a foul. She still hit them. Give them a lot of credit. I’m proud of the way we didn’t panic falling down by 14 at one time. We kept our composure. I have a lot of confidence in these players and this team. I thought they did a great job of holding that together and cutting the deficit there in the second quarter. In the first half, we had four assists and eight turnovers, and in the second half, we had 15 assists and three turnovers. That was the difference in the game. We pride ourselves in rebounding, but we got out-rebounded tonight. If we hadn’t taken care of the ball, we would have been in trouble. Elissa Cunane had a great second half. Kayla Jones had a great second half and hit some big three. Ace hit some big threes. I’m fortunate to get out of here with the W.”
“We had Kai Crutchfield on her. I felt like Kai is one of our better athletes, and she’s a veteran. Really, the only other choice is Jakia [Brown-Turner] who’s a freshman. We’ll see when we watch the film, but I thought Kai did a pretty good job at times. You’ve just got to tip your hat and say ‘great job’ by Sheppard. Ace did a really good job on [Dara] Mabrey. She had one three, and actually Ace wasn’t matched up with her on that three. Someone else was. The tough part is, if you’re trying to get over picks or whatever, then they’re going to be able to rub you off and turn the corner some, and Mabrey did that. We tried to adjust on that a little bit. That was on handoffs. Pick on the ball, we tried to get our posts up there to really help on that and slow them down when they came off the pick. The handoffs were what gave us some trouble with Mabrey. Taja Cole set everybody up. We give Sheppard a lot of credit, but Taja Cole was the one that made them go. We knew that coming in. She had a two-to-one assist-to-turnover ratio coming into this game. She’s super quick, and we had trouble at times containing her. She’s a great player.”
“That’s what’s bad. I didn’t go to the bench in the second half hardly at all, but you go with your comfort zone. You’ve got to trust the players that are out there that they know what’s going on. The young players and anyone that’s not playing as much as they’d like have to show me in practice that they’re focused and they know what’s going on to what we’re doing and execute it. This isn’t church league or whatever. We’re out here trying to win ball games. At some point, I go with who I trust. In the second half, we didn’t sub a lot. Elissa was hot. K.J. was hot. Kai’s a veteran doing the best she could defensively, and Ace was hitting threes. We took Jakia out for a little while and put [Kaila] Ealey in there. We went with a veteran again. It was a tough, gutsy win. We had to hang in there and find a way to pull it out.”
“Big time. Two things: getting [Cunane] the ball, and I pulled K.J. aside in the hallway at halftime and just said, ‘You’ve got to quit playing like you’re a freshman or sophomore. You need to start playing like the great player you are and get your confidence up.’ And boy, she did. She hit some big threes for us in the second half. We needed that. We needed her. She’d been a little down on herself, but when you’re a really great player, you forget that last play and move on. In the second half, I thought she did that. But we definitely wanted touches to Elissa. We had to get her going. We do four-out-one-in. We’ve got to get her touches and let the defense pick their poison. If they decide to help or double her, we’ve got people around her that can knock down threes. If they don’t double her, we’ve got confidence in her that she can score one-on-one. She was able to get their post in some foul trouble. She struggled in the first half, but in the second half, she answered the bell.”
“Against Texas, we fell down 10-2 to start the game. They just really jumped on us. That’s why I’ve got confidence in this team, maybe too much. We were down 14, and I felt like we were still okay and could turn it around, but you’re not always going to do that, so you’d like to get off to a better start obviously.”
“You’re right: three assists and two turnovers. That’s great for [Cunane]. I told her that if she ever gets her assists above turnovers, I’d let her play point guard. Check her numbers; I think I’m pretty safe. But you’re right; it’s good to see her have more assists than turnovers tonight. I hope that she’ll continue that trend.”
“I think what helps is Kayla Jones hitting a couple of threes, and so now they have to respect that and get out and guard her. Ace hit some threes. It all goes hand-in-hand. Elissa makes our three-point shooters better, but our three-point shooters make Elissa better because the defense has to make a choice. We’ve got some things in place to try to exploit a double-team, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to hit some shots out of it.”
Aislinn Konig
“We went into our talk downstairs, and the message was that we can’t let up on this. Yeah, they’re hitting a lot of shots. It’s a very good team. They’re going to hit shots, but we have to play our game our way, and we have to do the little things that we’d been doing consistently throughout the season so far. That’s rebounding and taking care of the ball, and we know the shots will come to us if we do those things.”
“Honestly, we trust [Cunane] to the point that we didn’t even notice whether or not it was going in. We know that, if we give it to her, she’ll do good things with it.”
“We started off slow with the assists in the first half, and in the second half, I think we really found our chemistry and our rhythm together. We realized that they’re not going to let us score off of the first attack. Sharing the ball was a really big part of our success tonight.”
“Our defense is something, as a team, that we take a lot of pride in. [Mabrey] was definitely one of our keys coming into the game, knowing that she’s a great shooter with a very deep range. I took that upon myself that I was going to try and take that away from the game so that we would have a little bit of an even playing field.”
“Any moment like that where you’re able to get the crowd involved and get some energy is huge because the energy of the gym and the crowd plays as much a role as our energy on the floor. I think that was probably the turning point where we started to find our flow.”
“This game, despite the fact that it was a tight one, and we would always love to win by as much as possible, was a lot of fun. It’s fun playing with my teammates. I have this amazing group of girls around me who are always cheering me on. Despite the fact that maybe I haven’t been shooting as well as I did last season to start off, it’s exciting to play in a big game, see my shots go, and see huge shots go in for my teammates like when Kayla Jones got really hot tonight. That was awesome, and then Elissa’s big three to start us off was the type of stuff that gets everybody on the floor hyped. It’s not so much my success; it’s the team’s success.”
Elissa Cunane
“I give credit to my teammates because they’re just picking me up. They’re like, ‘Elissa, the ball’s going to go into the hoop. Just keep taking it to them.’ My coaches kept telling me to keep going strong. It just worked out for me in the second half.”
“It’s just a battle down there. Sometimes, you get lucky with fouls. Sometimes, you get unlucky. It’s just a battle every game. You can’t let up. This game, I just tried to go into contact more instead of falling away from it, and I got some calls.”
“We were best friends all through high school, and we played on the same AAU team and against rival high schools. I’ve seen her quite a bit on the court. It was definitely a big focus going into the game, but I knew that when the tip happened, it was just another team. I had to put that relationship aside and just play basketball.”