March 20, 2005

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Virginia Tech Postgame Quotes versus DePaul Beth Dunkenberger, Virginia Tech Head Coach

On effort of Virginia Tech: I'm extremely proud of how our team battled tonight. We lost the first half pretty bad (trailed by 17), but we came back in the second half and won by 16 and played with so much heart and determination. Just one break here, one break there and it's a different game. I think we left everything on the court. We gave it our all and when you play with that much heart and that much determination I can't be disappointed in them. They left everything on that court and I was proud to be a part of that group that came back. This is what March Madness is all about. It's about the best teams in the country going at it and you saw a 12 seed and a 5 seed go down to a one-point game. That last pass, we catch that and make a layup and we're all up here with smiles but that's not the way it worked out tonight. Still I'm very proud of them.

On last possession of the game for Virginia Tech: We just knew that if they scored we didn't want to give their defense a chance to set, so we talked about getting the ball in quickly and moving it down the court and that was exactly what we needed to do. We've practiced that a lot the last week of practice and its looked really good. I think we got the exact look that we wanted, but that pass was just a little out of her reach.

On what defensive plan was for DePaul: I think a big part of our game plan for transition defense was taking care of the ball and taking good shots on offense. And defensively, DePaul was a lot more physical than we anticipated. We had a hard time just making entry passes because they were so physical. In the locker room we talked about changing that around in the second half and being more physical on defense. And then being ready to make some backdoor cuts and attack off the dribble when they were being physical with our wings in particular. We stepped up on defense and made them work a little bit harder. A big part of our defensive transition game plan had to do with our offense.

Senior Forward/Center Erin Gibson
On second-half comeback: We discussed three things: playing hard, playing together and playing defense. I think in the second half that is what we did.

On what turned it around: I think we calmed down on the offensive end. I think we were out of rhythm in the first half. We were rushing things and getting frustrated. We got a few scores early in the second half and stopped them. We couldn't just score and let them score back because obviously we wouldn't have gotten back into the game.

Junior Guard Dawn Chriss
On second-half comeback: We've kind of been in this predicament before and we didn't want to get down on ourselves. We went into the locker room and talked about some things that we needed to adjust. We just tried to keep a positive attitude. We played a whole lot better in the second half. I think if we had played the same in the first half as we did in the second it might have been a different outcome. Everyone played hard in the second half and we gave it all we had.