Post Game Press Conference vs Clemson

Virginia Head Coach Tina Thompson

Opening Statement:

“You guys might not know this, but I’m not a really good sleeper. So tonight I’m predicting that I’m going to sleep a lot less. 17 free throws [missed], this game was very much in our control, and we did not make free throws when it counted. We can go through different moments in the game or even execution in the fourth quarter. The lack of making free throws lost this game for us. There is no excuse for missing 17 free throws.”

On the team’s fourth quarter woes:

“Absolutely. I mean, it’s something that we talked about and we work on every day, our execution. At the end of practice, especially when we’re tired, we shoot free throws throughout practice to make sure that we’re shooting them when we’re tired and we do offense towards the end of practice for that same reason because going into the fourth quarter it’s important to execute and we just haven’t we haven’t done that.”

Forward Eleah Parker:

On her mindset and what she looked to provide coming off the bench:

“I think coming off the bench I was trying to be aggressive, especially on the boards, and try to keep my team encouraged, especially when I was on the bench. Referring to the previous question, I remember one point where I looked at one of my teammates and I’m like, ‘this one’s ours. We got it.’ And that was in the second half. So I don’t think there were ever really times, especially early, where we were feeling down or feeling like we were giving up. I think we fought to the end.”

On her emotions following the game:

“The past few games have just demonstrated how hard and how bad we want to get our first ACC win. We’ve been fighting and then, like you’ve pointed out, we have had the lead in the first half and then the tables kind of turned; so [I’m] frustrated, [it’s] frustrating for sure. Especially when there are things that we can control such as our free throws. I think frustrating is the overarching word.”