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Jan. 7, 2016

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Head Coach Joanne Boyle
Opening Statement:
“I’m just disappointed, I don’t know who that was out there. It was one of the strangest games I have been a part of in terms of how we came out so well against Miami and couldn’t find ourselves in the effort category tonight, so that was disappointing.”

On Notre Dame’s length being a factor:
“They were playing some zone and really covered our shooters well so we didn’t get the ball inside to collapse it. When we got inside we went too deep and too far into [Brianna] Turner. We just weren’t hitting our shots. You will have nights when you aren’t hitting shots, but in our last game when we weren’t hitting or turned the ball over we came down and we played defense. It felt like we just let the offensive end of the floor affect the other end of the floor. In the second half, right before halftime, we were down eight and four hustle plays cost us going into the half. That set the tone and we did not recover from it.”

On Brianna Turner being a matchup problem:
“She is a great player. She has great size and they put her in great position, but we also missed a ton of assignments on her. Again, that is disappointing. The rotations we worked on were there on occasion, but were not there for most of the game and that cost us.”

On possible intimidation factor against No. 3 ranked team:
“I didn’t feel like there was. I wouldn’t say the last few days of practice were our most competitive, so from that standpoint I was a little nervous. I felt like prior to Miami we were more competitive and I don’t know if we just came out flat. We are not going to compete against a Notre Dame team if we don’t compete in practice. Tonight I was hoping it would just click, but it didn’t.”

On relying on shooting after playing well against Miami:
“They know that if we are not shooting the ball, we can find ways to win games. We stress that, we practice that and that is why we emphasize defense. That is what won us the Miami game, was hustle and defense. We had easy offense because of what we did on the other end of the floor. We did not have that carry over tonight.”

On magnifying the importance of Sunday’s game at Wake Forest:
“I don’t even really want to talk about Wake Forest tomorrow at practice, it is going to be how competitive are we going to be as a team. We can prepare all day for the next two days for Wake, but if we are not going to compete and do the little things that we have been stressing, then the prep is not going to matter. Somehow we have to put them in situations tomorrow to be competitive because that is what is going to win us more games this year that prep.”

On Faith [Randolph] unable to get into a rhythm:
“She played like that yesterday in practice and I don’t know why she reverted back to when she is open not shooting the ball. She was questioning herself and that is not who Faith has been all year. She has been on point all season so I don’t know what got into her head yesterday at practice and there was some carryover of that today. It was out of sorts for her.”

Sophomore Guard Mikayla Venson
On playing such a good team:
“I think it comes back on us. We could have been more aggressive on offense, hit the corners a little more and just played Virginia basketball. We needed to find the open man and create opportunities for our teammates. I think their changing defenses threw us off a little bit, and after that we got stagnant.

On Brianna Turner:
“Brianna Turner is a really good player. She’s a huge presence in the paint. But we just stopped being aggressive. We could have gotten her in foul trouble if we attacked her more. She’ a really good player, and you have to give props where they’re due.”

Junior Guard Breyana Mason
On playing from behind:
“We’ve been down before, but I felt like today we didn’t even give ourselves a chance to come back. If we really wanted to come back we would have been diving on the floor and getting rebounds. Once they got that lead we just weren’t able to do anything to cut into it.”

On playing Notre Dame’s length:
“They were big, but they didn’t score too often on their first shot. It was the second-chance points where they got a rebound and kicked it out that killed us. Even though they’re bigger than us, we’ve faced bigger teams, we know what its like, and we know that’s something we’ll have to face all season.”

On playing Brianna Turner:
“Offensively, they throw those lob passes to her and if she gets a clear look then we can’t jump up there with her, so there wasn’t much we could do about that. Defensively, she’s just a presence down low. Anytime you drive in it might get swatted. But we need to keep going in there and not be afraid to have it blocked.”

On today’s performance following a win vs. Miami:
“It’s very disappointing. The way we played against Miami is the way we need to play all season. The fact that we weren’t able to carry that into this game, even a little bit, is disheartening.”

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