Boston College at Virginia: Postgame Quotes

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Boston College at Virginia
February 20, 2011
Postgame Quotes

Virginia head coach Debbie Ryan
Opening Statement:
“All the credit goes to Boston College. They came out, and they torched us offensively. When they came out and had such a great start, we struggled on the offensive end with a simple 2-3 zone. We just had no rhythm, we had no rhyme as to what we were doing, and it got in our heads a little bit. Obviously we were a little shell-shocked at the start of the game, and it was hard to get them out of that from then on. It’s unusual for this team to play like that. They’re usually a team that battles and stays in there and plays hard regardless, but we just couldn’t get the ball in the basket in the first half. It was excruciating.”

On team’s struggles:
“I thought they played hard at times, but I feel like we did not give a sustained effort for any period of time. When all five players were playing together and playing hard, I felt like we were still disjointed. A couple of players were playing hard and a couple of players were not getting their job done. It was killing us. Everything was just so disjointed and so out of sync.”

On team’s shooting drought:
“I think that instead of playing stronger because we had good defense, we got weaker because the shots weren’t going in. That’s not how you’re supposed to play. You’re supposed to buckle down on defense and find ways to get easy buckets and get to the free throw line. That was the easy part-when we did penetrate, we did get to the free throw line. We just didn’t make them in the first half. We were shell-shocked.”

On Boston College’s shooting performance:
“They have very, very good shooters everywhere. You’re trading two-for-three, because as you saw, they’re literally money in the bank on every three-point shot. We were playing the zone incorrectly, and it’s not the way we were prepared. We just made some really bad decisions on that part of the game-especially on [Carolyn] Swords. We were really, really bad inside, and we needed to be a lot better than we were. We were supposed to have some help in there, and we didn’t. A lot of it was fear of the three-point shot. They were prepared much better than they played today, and it’s just hard to carry it over when there’s a week in between games.”

On whether the gap between games helped or hurt team:
“This team was spent last week. I don’t know if we’d had a game on Thursday if that would’ve helped. It would’ve been tough, because one day off was not going to be enough. We were exhausted, and it was a very difficult turnaround from four overtimes to the Maryland game. Momentum-wise it would’ve been nice, but physically, I don’t know if we would’ve been able to sustain it.”

Virginia junior guard Ariana Moorer
On offensive struggles:
“I just think that we weren’t hitting shots early. If we had hit a couple of shots, we probably would’ve been okay, but shots just weren’t falling.”

“It was pretty frustrating-just the part that shots that usually go in just weren’t going in. We got great looks at times, but we just couldn’t knock down shots.”

On defense:
“We put a lot of emphasis on ball pressure in practice-it’s all about what the ball can see. Apparently we didn’t do a very good job of that today since [Carolyn] Swords had a double-double. We’ve just got to get better in that area-putting pressure on the ball.”

Virginia sophomore guard China Crosby
On whether performance will affect team’s morale heading into Duke:
“I don’t think so. We’ve been in these types of positions before, where we didn’t come out strong on the offensive end. Coming into Duke, we know how good Duke is. We just have to leave this game behind us and worry about what’s coming next.”

On poor start
“You just have to get to the basket, try to draw fouls and try to get on the free-throw line. We had pretty good looks, but we still couldn’t finish. It is a big deficit to come back from. We just try to stay positive, but shots just weren’t falling.”

Boston College head coach Sylvia Crawley
Opening Statement:
“I thought we had a good team effort tonight. We played as a team. We talked about that. Our last game was against Miami and we tried to do some one-on-one in that game and that’s not really the characteristic of our team. We don’t have great one-on-one players. We are more of a team ball club so we looked at a lot of film and talked about executing plays. I thought our players did a great job of executing the plays, playing as a team, making the extra pass and finding the open person.”

On zone defense:
“Our zone defense has been really good for us lately. We have some injuries. We have some people sick. We keyed in on their two shooters, 23 [Ataira Franklin] and 2 [Whitny Edwards], and we tried to contain the other ones when they penetrated. The zone defense was effective for us today.”

On getting the lead and not relaxing:
“I thought our team did a good job. Once we got the lead we didn’t relax. That is something that we have been working on and I thought we did a better job coming out second half still keeping our intensity and still executing, not relaxing because we got the lead and finishing the game strong.”

Boston College senior center Carolyn Swords
On the overall game:
“I had a lot of fun playing today. We have a great group of girls and we have been working so hard in practice. I was trying to do my best to make myself available on the low blocks. Virginia has very skilled tall post players. Our guards did a great job of finding me at the right time, putting the ball in my hands, and putting me in a great position to score. Defensively I was trying to rebound. We worked on getting my possessions and making sure we were one and done with them. I think we did a really good job of working together today.”

On offense:
“My teammates do a great job of talking to me when I’m one on one or when I’m double-teamed. I can either find them or score.”

On the beginning of the game:
“We were very excited on how the game started out. We were really trying to focus on keeping our effort consistent and not let what was going on outside of our team affect our play and continue to try to control the tempo.”