Nov. 21, 2011

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NCAA Championship Game
Maryland 3, North Carolina 2 - OT
Post Game Quotes
November 20, 2011

Maryland Head Coach Missy Meharg

Opening Statement:
"I cannot express what an amazing team North Carolina is and they have been all year. They were so far above us in the first half - the way they started the ball on restarts to their team defense. At half time we spoke about competing and taking our restarts fast and playing with intangibles. We couldn't be more proud of the Maryland team."

On what she thought the team's chances were down two with five minutes left:
"I don't really look at the clock too much. When the whistle blows I know that we either lost, won or we are going into overtime. I always believe that there is a chance and I have been fortunate enough to have players who believe that. I wasn't really thinking winning or losing, I was thinking how can we and what can we do to put our selves in position to score a goal. We were confident coming in; their goalkeeper is a very good goalkeeper. I think she was a bit unsettled on Friday and she is young and fabulous but she doesn't have the experience like the rest of that defense does. It's just a matter of us making shots and getting plays on the ball. The small opportunities we did have in the first half we did not make plays on the ball. We were just going to go for broke on anything in the circle."

On what she changed with she pulled goalkeeper Melissa Vassalotti:
"We played completely bumped up we had no cover in the backfield. We played man-to-man, four forwards against four backs and we really stifled them and made the space really small. The women did great with that, but unfortunately as you saw playing North Carolina without a cover will result in a goal. That is the gamble that you take so at that point it wasn't a great strategy but we had to try it to get back on the board. We just stayed with it and even though we were down 2-0. We had been talking recently about getting a penalty corner with no time on the clock and when we played Duke in the ACC we actually didn't have people all the way around and you can play defense off the end line once it's pushed out so you can hold the ball in the semicircle. We have talked about it and it is kind of ironic that we found ourselves in that situation. Jemma's (Buckley) drag was spectacular. It was set for Colleen (Gulick) to deflect and I think the goalkeeper actually had deflected it."

On the rivalry with UNC:
"It is a very respectful rivalry. Karen (Shelton) is a dynamic coach and the way that those women compete... it's a history. One thing I have found though is that they are very systematic and they do not make a lot of mistakes. For us to get on the board against that backfield would really take a miracle. I think we have had a couple of small ones. The rivalry is there, we have a lot of respect for each other, the players do and it is fun. Without North Carolina, Maryland would never be doing what we are doing."

On preparing for a team they know well:
"Friday night after Old Dominion, I said to my staff `yeah, we're not going to have to work as hard,' because we really didn't have to tactically prepare as much as we would have. We had plenty of footage on Connecticut, but really hadn't started to study it yet in preparation for today. It was nice to know that we were very familiar with. It was also nice to play against them with Katelyn Falgowski. She's a tremendous player. She's a sportswoman and a true Olympian. It was an honor for us. We'd rather play with Katelyn on that field. She's has a tremendous career, the first time we played them this year she wasn't there, she was at the Pan American Games."

On the team's perseverance:
"There were times in the season when we hadn't given everything we had. In fact, we probably didn't put 70 minutes of hockey together until right before the ACC tournament. We actually played a good game with Duke. Duke had a fabulous team. We'd been playing patches of hockey, so we were ready to play good hockey for 70 minutes and we got very fortunate with the time of the season we did that. The morning of the ACC finals we trained on the field and you could see there was definitely a whole other level for this group of women to play and they did that."

On Jill Witmer's game-winner:
It is nice to give a player like Jill an opportunity to play in seven a side. It's hard to sub when there's seven, especially against a really good team because they'll pick up the space that's vacated. I held her for a second and kind of waited. It worked pretty well. Jill's got tremendous perseverance and speed to get through, so, great job."

Redshirt senior goalkeeper Melissa Vassalotti

On if it seemed to her like she was doing most of the work in the beginning:
"It was definitely a team win today. I knew if the defense would keep working hard, eventually the offense would come out and get those goals we needed."

Sophomore forward Jill Witmer

On what was going through her mind as she entered the game and immediately scored the gamewinner:
"Nothing was going through my mind. I just wanted to get a goal and I got around some players and shot and it went it.

Senior midfielder Jemma Buckley

On the penalty corner goal at the end of regulation:
"As I was going in, I just had a feeling we were going to score. We've been in that situation before. We just kind of have the attitude that we never give up and with no time left on the clock it was our last chance. We knew that this was the last time we're going to play together as a team so we wanted to finish it the right way."

On the corner play they scored off of at the end of regulation:
"Tjerk does a lot of tactical stuff with corners. He called it, he knew that their flyer is so fast out that I wouldn't have time to have a straight hit, so we went with a drag and it paid off."

Coach Missy Meharg - "And the other piece is, we were hitting high and the stick handles were wet, so it was better to use drags or sweeps rather than full lever hits."