Richmond at Virginia Postgame Quotes

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Richmond at Virginia
WNIT Second Round
March 19, 2012
Postgame Quotes

Virginia Head Coach Joanne Boyle
On the win:
“It was a good win, from start to finish. We played our kind of basketball. We were pretty good on both ends of the floor. Turnovers were the one thing that we were sloppy with, but other than that we shot the ball well and we defended the ball well. We could have sat down and defended a little better, but we were better on the boards tonight. Overall, I thought it was a good game.”

On the strategy against the Richmond offense:
“We didn’t want their guards to get off. We had an advantage on the post with our size, which helped defending them inside. It was a bit of a chess match, too. They went with a four-guard lineup, and tried to really make our posts work from the outside. I thought Richmond did a really good job. I was proud of the girls, they sat down and guarded better tonight.”

On the combination of man-to-man and zone defenses:
“Our goal was to keep them off-balance. For us our zone is our bread and butter, but they are such a good three-point shooting team, we didn’t want to sit there. We wanted to make them have to attack the basket. I think we did a good job of not fouling them. We don’t practice man-to-man a lot, but we needed to do that so they didn’t get easy looks at the three.”

Virginia Junior Guard Lexie Gerson
On the WNIT:
“It’s a privilege. Any time we get another opportunity to play, it’s a privilege. I just love to play basketball, so I’m excited that we get to continue the journey.”

Virginia Senior Guard Ariana Moorer
On attacking the lane in the second half:
“I wasn’t aggressive in the first half; I was passive. I went into “point guard mode,” I was looking for the open player but not looking to score. But the coaches kept telling me that I needed to be aggressive and look to the rim. That’s what I did.”

Richmond Head Coach Michael Shafer
Opening statement:
“I think we lost to a really good basketball team tonight. I’m not trying to trumpet it, but there’s no question that we lost to an NCAA basketball team in Virginia. At the same time I think our basketball team competed as they have done all year long. They battled and played hard against a really good team. I’m very proud of the way our basketball team competed, but I don’t want to look at the game today because our season as a whole was really really good.”

On Virginia running the same defense as the previous game against Richmond:
“They’ve been primarily a zone team. In the first game we shot them out, and in this game we kind of started to attack them a little more in the zone. They switched to man which was very effective because they were very physical in the switches, and we weren’t able to get the ball into the paint versus a switch is what we like to do. They moved out of the zone quicker in this game versus the first game.”

On Virginia’s run during the second half:
“They came out in the second half and hit us with a couple of misdirection plays that got them a couple of looks, and to their credit they knocked them down.”

Richmond Guard Abby Oliver
On Virginia’s defense
“I think we have seen a lot of defenses this year. Their defense was great tonight, but I don’t think it was anything different than what we have seen. I think one thing that hurt us, especially in the second half, was we were stagnat on offense. We let them guard us and guard our penetration. We just didn’t move very well on offense.”

On the overall season:
“It has been a great season. We came into the season and people were saying we were too young to do much. I think we just kind of took that, and that motivated us. We knew that we had a lot of talent and that we could do big things on the court. That motivated us to come in every day to work hard and compete. It took us a long way.”