Wes Moore: "The Energy Has Been Unbelievable In Practice"
NC State women's basketball coach Wes Moore met with the media today to discuss the start of the season for the Wolfpack.
NOTE: Click the video above to watch the interview.
On Diamond Johnson...
Very explosive, very quick off the dribble, quick crossover. Can shoot the three from really, really deep. She does a lot of things well with a high basketball IQ.
She’s really an all-around player.
You’ve probably already heard it, but Allen Iverson has an All-Star game in Philadelphia, and she’s the only female ever invited to play in it so that tells you she has a little bit of talent.
Again, we have a lot of returners back, but it definitely gives us a lot of depth.
The WNIT schedule...
WNIT and the group... we’ve always had a great relationship with them and even they also run the Cancun Challenge which we’ve been in several times.
We wanted to get some quality opponents and to have two P5s and Towson State had a phenomenal year a year ago and Wofford... it’s going to be four good games and an opportunity to find out where we are as a team, hopefully get better.
It’s a great opportunity and whenever you get the chance to play in the WNIT it’s something you want to take advantage of.
On Elissa Cunane having a “five-star effect” on the program...
We were fortunate when I first got here, my first year, we had team camp and her high school team, Northwest Guilford, came to team camp. We saw her when she was really young and she likes to joke about how every time I talked to her on the phone when we were recruiting her, reminding her of our four-out one-in system, as she likes to say.
But you know, she was a perfect fit for us being able to go through the post a lot, get them touches. But she also just moves so well, and she’s worked really hard. I think she’s in the best shape of her life, she’s gonna be running the floor better than ever. And just what an unbelievable person, so in state, we’re very fortunate to have somebody like that in our backyard. But you’re right, she wasn’t top 25 or anything like that, but she’d be in everybody’s top 25 right now. A lot of that is just the hard work she’s put in and the staff contributing as well and helping her grow.
On Kayla Jones’ and Jada Boyd’s health...
Kayla Jones, of course, that was a big blow for us first round of the tournament a year ago, she tore her patellar tendon and I had said pretty much all year she was kind of the glue to our team. So that was a big loss. She’s had surgery, even though we’re six months post-surgery, she’s still trying to get all the way back and that’s a tough one for her to come back from. I do anticipate her playing in the opening game. Jada Boyd, probably not. She tore a tendon in her shooting hand. Hoping maybe in a month to get her back. I’d love to get her back before the trip to Nassau, the Bahamari challenge in the Bahamas, but that’s gonna be touch and go whether she’s even back for it. So it’s gonna be late November or early December probably.
On the team’s offseason trip together...
We try every year to, you know the NCAA allows us to do one scrimmage and one exhibition game if you want to use it that way. The exhibition game has to be a non-D1 team, but the closed scrimmage can be against a Division-I program so we always try to get someone really good and so we went up to Boone, North Carolina, rented a couple homes in the mountains. We went up Friday and then Saturday took them ziplining, to a haunted house, out to dinner and all that, and then Sunday we scrimmaged the University of Tennessee and it was great. And of course Kelly, Jolly, Harper and her husband John, they were both on my staff at Chattanooga for a few years, so it was just great to go against, I know they’ve been picked like second in the SEC by the media, so a quality opponent to really test you. But as you said also, it’s a great, you know we’ve got three freshmen, we have two transfers, for them all to kind of spend some time together in closed conditions was really fun and great for them, and then obviously the basketball was good too.
On if he thinks this team is on a mission...
I think so. The energy has been unbelievable in practice every day. Just them having fun, competing. They’re all very competitive out there, and then when anybody makes a play or somebody burns somebody else, they celebrate it, have a good time with it. I like the energy we have, I like how competitive they are. We had talked about, on the championship rings, possibly putting “third-straight Sweet 16” and the players said ‘no, we don’t want that on there. We don’t want to be reminded of not going deeper last year than we did.’ So I do think they’re very hungry, and that’s why all the seniors came back. I think that’s because there’s still some unfinished business, and it’s tough. The neighborhood we’re trying to get into is really tough, but they’re definitely motivated to try to break through.
On how long he focused on the loss to Indiana before moving on...
First of all, I just thought Indiana was tougher than us probably. They attacked. When I went back and clipped that game, they shot a lot of layups, and so they were the aggressor and we settled for jumpshots. And some of that had to do with their defense and all. They’re a great team and they got everybody back, so that’s gonna be another big challenge on our schedule. They do a nice job and those kids are all really blue-collar kids who work hard, that are really high basketball IQ. So that’s the biggest thing, we’ve got to be tougher physically, mentally. We’ve got to be the one that’s attacking and aggressive rather than sitting back on our heels. And again, as a coach, maybe that’s being able to advance the ball, you know I felt like I probably could have done a little bit better. I probably wasted a timeout there late in the game and because of that, we weren’t able to advance it. So, we can all learn from it and again, especially going up there and playing them on their home court this year is gonna be a great challenge for us. But it was disheartening and again, losing Kayla Jones, I won’t make excuses, but that left us really Jada Boyd who had the experience at that position, and Jada Boyd couldn’t go 40 minutes and if I remember right, I think she got in some foul trouble as well. So, that’s one thing we try to do too, is try to be more prepared if we were to lose somebody at that position, try to be prepared. So we worked a lot on four guards and possibly going small if we need to, but definitely being prepared if one or two of them are out.
On opening the season against a team like South Carolina...
Our schedule this year is brutally tough and that’s why you do it though. First of all, you’ve got to test your team and expose yourself early. Find out what do we gotta do better to get to that level. That’s part of it. The other thing is exposure. That game is on ESPN. You can’t buy an opportunity like that. Opening night of the season, it’s us and then there’s two men’s teams that night also on ESPN. It’s so valuable from a recruiting standpoint, exposure and all that. So it benefits us on the court without a doubt. You sometimes wonder, I think next year we’re gonna play pretty much the same people that we've got on this year’s schedule and we’re adding UConn to it. But we’ve gotta find out where we are, and I think we’ve got the talent. Those kids want to play in the big games, that’s why they come here. They want to play on that big stage and so we’ve got to keep putting them out there and finding out where we are as a program.