Feb. 6, 2011
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Head Coach Brenda Frese
Opening Statement:
"I thought it was a tough win. Obviously within ACC play, everytime you step out on the court you are going to face great competition. I give NC State the credit that they came into the first half with a lot of intensity. I think we had a lot of adversity in the first half, playing through foul trouble, Alyssa [Thomas] with her back and just our flow in general during that half. Credit to the second half. Our leadership by our three juniors who used their voices, confidence, swag as they like to call it, was the difference. They did a great job in leading us and holding a team like NC State and dominating the glass. I thought we did a good job at bounding the glass and getting the ball inside. That was a big difference for us."
On Alyssa Thomas' injury:
"She is day-to-day. She took a hit in the Georgia Tech game and has been doing therapy in result of that. The past two days, she felt comfortable going into this game. She thought she was going to be ready to go. It's just day-to-day in terms of how she is doing."
On Alyssa Thomas' play:
"As you can see she is one of those players who is active on the glass and when she's not able to pound the glass and get in there, you can tell by the way she was moving today. I credit her at halftime making an honest assessment on what she needed to do. She understood she couldn't give 100 percent and our upperclassmen like Kim Rodgers, who really stepped up as well as every player on the team, with her presence there. That is what you do when you are a selfless team."
On Kim Rodgers' play in the second half:
"You could start to see our team relax. We feed off of it and it gives confidence to the rest of her teammates. You then start to see other plays start to attack and get aggressive. Kim's threes were so timely. She loves the pressure. That's what players who are extremely successful want, they want the pressure. Kim is stepping up and doing great things for this program."
Junior Center Lynetta Kizer
On team's improvement in the second half:
"Picking up two quick fouls, I knew I was going to go to the bench. I wanted to keep my voice coming from the bench. Kim [Rodgers] and Anjale [Barrett] spoke with me at halftime and they were going to give me the ball and they did a great job at that. I just wanted to finish for them and that is something I really wanted to focus on for them."
On aggression during the second half:
"Our coaches tell us when we pick up those fouls, we just need to play that much harder. That's something I wanted to do coming into the second half. I wanted to fight hard to get this win. Everyone stepped up, Kim hit some threes and we all started to just roll from there."
On the crowd's excitment:
"Swag, that's what it is. It is so much fun playing in this atmosphere and the fans are so great. I want to bring the life back into the building. We felt that we didn't play Maryland basketball the first half and we came out for the second half, we really stuck together. There was so much energy in the building that made it so fun to play."
On not playing 'Maryland basketball' in the first half:
"That is just from communication on the defensive end. As a young team, that is something we need to keep working on. Communicating and defensive transition, the little things we need to do to continue to get better. As long as we put forth the effort out there, we are going to be a good team, a great team soon."
NC State Head Coach Kellie Harper
Opening Statement:
"I thought our team played really well for about 15 minutes. Then our lack of depth and lack of size made it tough on us to continue to play at that level. we have to fight, scrap and claw for everything we get and you have to play a smart game to be able to compete with Maryland. Unfortunately did not do that today."
On talking to her players at halftime:
"Well I was disappointed we had given up on offensive boards during that time. We knew that they rely heavily on their offensive board play. That was an emphasis for us prior to this game. At halftime, we had talked about playing well for most of the game. We just needed to keep doing what made us successful which I thought was playing aggresive at both ends of the court. We completely lost that in the second half."
On slowing down Maryland's post players:
"I thought we got after their guards. They couldn't find their post [players] so easy. We did a better job starting the game, keeping the ball out of the paint. Then as time went on, we were a step slow and couldn't get there."
