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NC State Women's Basketball

Wes Moore, Wolfpack Players Discuss Kansas State Win

November 19, 2021
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NC State head coach Wes Moore and multiple players met with the media after the 90-69 home win over Kansas State.



Head Coach Wes Moore

Opening statement...
Great team win. Kansas State, with [Ayoka] Lee inside, you start with her averaging 30 a game, obviously we have a lot of focus on her. We said going in we wanted to make somebody else be the leading scorer, but we didn’t necessarily mean let the kid hit five threes. But hey, nice job of focusing and helping hold Lee. It was a team effort to hold Lee to about 10 points under her average, so what a great player she is. I think we’ll learn a lot from this film. 69 points is a little more than we’d like to be giving up. I know we put up 90 but there’s gonna be a night where we don’t hit 10 out of 22 threes, so we’ve got to make sure we’re prepared to defend, rebound. I was real proud of the fact we had five assists and seven turnovers at halftime and we flipped those numbers and had seven assists, two turnovers in the second half. Heck of a job there. It was a great team win. Lot of players contributed. Obviously [Raina Perez and Kayla Jones], Raina having four assists and zero turnovers and KJ shooting the ball really efficiently from inside and outside the arc. Great night.

On Camille Hobby’s game...
We’re blessed to have two players of that caliber at that position. Nowadays in the days of the transfer portal and all that stuff, it says a lot about the person Camille is to stay here and do the job she’s doing. We’re gonna get her playing time. She’s earned it, she deserves it. I know everybody out there would like to have more of it and that’s a battle we’ve just got to make sure we keep on the back burner and we’re focused on winning and doing the best we can as a team instead of worrying about individual accolades. We’re very blessed to have her and Elissa both. It’s a dynamic duo and if you get in some foul trouble, just being able to stay fresh. We’re very confident in Camille when she goes in.

On where the team stands through five games...
I’ll tell you after the next week or two. We’re getting ready to play the No. 3 team in the country, who is, I don’t know, they may be averaging 100. They put up big points, they press you the whole game, they’re gonna do a half-court trap, they’re gonna do full-court zone, full-court man, they’ll face guard, they’re gonna mix up their D. Offensively, they just go. They push it and score in bunches. So it’s gonna be a great challenge, then you’ve got Washington State who I know made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament a year ago and has pretty much everybody back, so those two are gonna be big challenges. And then oh, we come home and a couple days later go to Indiana and play the No. 4 team in the country. So, one, three and four, who made this schedule? It’s gonna be tough, it’ll be a big challenge. But they’d rather play the big games, to be honest. They get excited about those, so it’s good for the players, good for the fans, stinks for the coach. But hey, we’ll find out early where we are.

On Diamond Johnson’s rebounding ability..
She does it. That’s what I told them after the game, she’s got the green light now, I’m gonna let her go on the offensive boards. We’ll get somebody else back. And if you want to go to the offensive boards, then you need to produce. We had four starters get zero offensive rebounds tonight. I’m just telling you, the elite teams, the Final Four teams, they are great offensive rebounding teams. So that’s an area right there that we’re gonna have to get better if we want to try to accomplish the stuff we want to accomplish. Just got to have that mindset when I look up and I see somebody drifting down the court not going to the paint, not going to the boards, it’s frustrating. We’ve got to make sure that we hold everybody accountable because that’s an area that we have to get better at.

On the strong second and fourth quarters...
Until I watch the film, it’s hard to say. The first quarter is pretty simple, we gave up 19 points and 18 points the third quarter, so that tells you a lot right there. A great number from a year ago: We were 22-0 when we held teams ot 70 or less. We were 2-3 if they scored over 70 points. You can’t do that. 69, I guess we did it. That’s just something I thought. We didn’t do a good job recognizing when [Serena Sundell], she’s hitting threes behind the pick on the ball, we’ve got to adjust. We’ve got to go over the pick and make her turn the corner off the bounce. We didn’t want to have to do that because when you do that, your post a lot of times has to help and you don’t want to let Lee run free. We were trying to get away with it, but after a while we’ve got to adjust. That kid was hot. Some of our closeouts, we’re helping on the posts, they kick it out or skip it, we’re closing out, we’re not closing out ready to guard, we’re getting beat off the bounce. There’s areas we’ve got to get better at defensively. We’ll watch this film tonight and hopefully clean it up before Thursday or we’re gonna be in trouble.

On the dynamic of playing games while on a vacation-like trip to the Bahamas...
There’s a lot of these events where you play three games. I say ‘We don’t want to play three games.’ I want them to have some time to enjoy it. If you’re just gonna play three games, you might as well just stay home. We’re leaving Monday, so Monday afternoon they’ll have a little time [to enjoy]. Tuesday we only have a one-hour practice slot, so we’ll probably walk through 30 minutes, we’ll watch film 30 minutes, practice an hour. But that’s still gonna give them a lot of time left. Then Wednesday I think our practice time is middle of the afternoon, so Wednesday morning hopefully they’ll be able to enjoy a little bit. And then here we go, on Wednesday afternoon we need to turn all the attention. We’ll still be, Monday and Tuesday, paying attention, but Wednesday we kick that in. I do think you play well when you’re happy and you’re enjoying things, so I’m not gonna have them sit in their room. Years ago when I was D3, every year I drove from Maryville, Tennessee, to Washington DC to a big tournament up there and a lot of those teams would sit in the gym and watch games. We were going to the Smithsonian, the White House, whatever. And then we would go out there and play well. I just believe in, hey, some of these kids may never get back there. This is the first time I’ve been to Nassau, so I’m looking forward to it. I heard they’ve got a great water park, so I’m ready. We’ll have a good time, mix it up, and hopefully play some good basketball. I’m excited. We try to do one of these a year and it’s great for our players and for everyone to enjoy. Hopefully helps recruiting a little bit too when they know you’re gonna have fun like that.

On watching Maryland’s game against Baylor on Sunday...
I’m looking forward to seeing that. Obviously, we get all this on computer anyways, so we can really slow it down and edit it and stuff, but it’ll be fun. I’ll take a peek at it. I just know Maryland is very, very talented. Brenda Freese does a great job. It’s gonna be a big, big test. Our first game outside of Reynolds Coliseum, also. Even though we did a scrimmage against Tennessee at a neutral sight, it’s gonna be a little different. Our fans have been awesome, so I was hoping we could take all of them with us but I don’t know if that’s gonna happen.

WOLFPACK PLAYERS

On winning the rebounding battle...
KAYLA JONES: Coach Moore made sure we focused on boxing out. We had scout and we knew that they crash the boards well, and that was our biggest focus; keeping them off the glass.

On Perez’ big first quarter...
RAINA PEREZ: Everything I threw up was going in at that point. Just pushing the ball in transition and having [Elissa Cunane] set a screen knowing that the big post can’t really come out and guard me. Everything was falling.

On holding Ayoka Lee to her worst shooting percentage of the season...
KAYLA JONES:
Whenever I got matched up, it had to be when I was helping double, really, and then Elissa and Camille [Hobby] keeping her pushed up so we can help dig in. That was the biggest thing, making her settle for jump shots and not be so close to the basket.

On how Kayla Jones is feeling health wise...
KAYLA JONES:
My biggest focus is defensively, getting out and guarding. That’s lateral, that’s what I’m really trying to buy in on, making sure I close out correctly. So I feel like I’m coming along, I’m having more confidence. In the beginning, I was scared to close out because I thought they would just drive by me, but now I’m just trying to close out and trust my knee. I feel like I’m having more confidence.

On Camille Hobby’s performance...
KAYLA JONES:
She does a great job. Camille is a go get a bucket, she likes to get a bucket. She’s a threat, especially with that little jump shot around 15 foot. She’s just a great backup for Elissa, she has a great person in front of her to learn from and I feel like it shows on the court.

On Kansas State’s physicality...
RAINA PEREZ:
They’re a tough team. They’re tough, they’re big. We didn’t expect them to be as long, at least I didn’t expect them to be as long. Especially when they were in the zone, it was a lot harder to find gaps. The backup post was what, 6’7 I think? They have a lot of height and it was tough.

On where they feel they are as a team so far...
RAINA PEREZ:
I think we’re doing pretty well. I think we’re starting to work on a lot of things in practice that we need to, especially defensively. I think we can only go up from here. It’s only the beginning of the season and we’ve got a couple tough teams coming up next week, Maryland and Washington State, pretty good teams. We’re gonna be pretty good. We’ll do well.

KAYLA JONES: One game at a time.

On the team’s good 3-point shooting night...
KAYLA JONES:
Our team is confident by the 3-point line, but we did a good job working inside and out, and also driving and kicking. That’s really what we want to do instead of iso’ing the three, we like to feed off of each other.

 
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