Quotes: Duke 83, Albany 48

Duke Head Coach Joanne P. McCallie

Opening Statement:
"A good game for us to learn some things, practice some things and to take some good lessons [away]. I think it's really important to play the game the same regardless of who you play. It doesn't matter who the opponent is, it matters what Duke does and I thought, particularly in the second half, we did a little bit better job of that. Again, I thought Chelsea [Gray] did some very nice things on the floor. Her five steals, being aggressive defensively is very important to us to go with her offensive attack there. The fact that Chloe [Wells] could come up with seven assists in 19 minutes to me is significant and also very important for what Chloe is able to do as a playmaker, certainly as a scorer as well. I know scoring always probably feels the best, but when you can do multiple things, that's the thing we're trying to teach our team. It's about a lot of different component parts coming together. So it was a good game for us and we'll go from there."

On all five freshmen being on the floor in the second half:
"I think they were outstanding and I think we went up plus 10. I think when they went in we were up 22 or something and then we were up 32. I think they played. Obviously they hustled and played hard, but I think they had fun playing off of each other. That's what it looked like. You'd have to ask them, they were out there. I was watching."

On the game being a teach game of sorts:
"I wanted to play a lot of people [tonight]. I thought Tricia Liston really answered the bell relative to getting her time and making some points about what she did, which is important. Any opportunity you get to get out there and be productive and help your team I think that's a very good thing. I feel very good about our team. I feel like there's a lot of experience that they've gained, particularly Chloe and Chelsea. They've been in a lot of games trying to figure things out. So I think it was great to just keep building on that. By the time we get past Christmas they'll be sophomores."

On whether Tricia Liston needed to show her something:
"Not for me, maybe for her, but not for me. I know what Tricia can do. I'm very clear on that. There's some detailed things though. Getting in shape, getting in physical shape at this level is really a challenge, but I'm very confident in Tricia. As you saw her, she played the three and the four so I had to talk to her about being a little more versatile so I could move her in different spots and she was very open to that. I think just getting out there and getting the experience. These players can play, it's a matter of playing together. That's the test. She was very active. She rebounded, she played good defense. Four rebounds, had a balanced game, a couple of assists, a couple of steals. I'd say that is good stuff and worth building on."

On whether she coaches differently when coaching against a personal friend:
"No, I don't think I did coach any differently . We pressed and went after it. Katie [Abrahamson-Henderson] just knows me. What's nice about coaching against a former assistant is she knows that we're serious about the game. There's no time for thinking about anything but the game when it's going on. You can talk before the game, you can talk after the game. She's well aware and she's doing a terrific job in her first year. I'm excited for her. That team's got some nice fight. Nice shooters as you saw and I'll be pulling for them. I hope they win the league."

On looking for some specific combinations on the floor:
"Yeah, I had some things in mind going into the game. I wanted to see some things. I believe in playing those three [Chloe Wells, Jasmine Thomas, Chelsea Gray] together. I believe combinations and versatility is what makes us dangerous. I think we have to continue to be patient playing with each other and learning that. Because in the end, that's what's going to make us dangerous, very hard to scout and very frustrating for people to play against."

On being able to play 11 players in a game effectively:
"Well I coached USA Basketball a couple summers and that gold medal in Russia was a group of 12. We played everybody. Nobody was ever out of the rotation and we won a gold medal so you want it to be like USA Basketball. You want it to be like a group of women who all know they can play, but they have to fit in too. That's what it's all about at this level and at future levels. So the answer is: Can you play them all the time together? No, but you can play off each other and you can find people on different nights. It's a very ,very long season so you've got to be able to have different combinations get you through different things."

On offensive's success tonight:
"The second half in particular, just finding each other and ball movement, making an extra pass. Not rushing. When you rush crazy things happen and the other team doesn't have to play any defense on you, because you're actually defending yourself because you're rushing so much. The second half I thought you could just see it. Everybody eased into a flow and made some good plays."

On the upcoming game at Oklahoma State:
"Our whole schedule is tough. This game was a little bit different, but I've seen schedules where people have 10 of these on their schedule. It's what we expect. The team already knows it. They know it playing Texas A&M. They know it playing at James Madison, That was a tough game. You just know they're all going to be battles, but I think that's what brings the best out in our team."

Albany Coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson

Opening statements:
"Well I'm very honored and privileged to come back here, or just come here, and see Joanne again and see her team. You know I worked with Joanne at Maine for two years, her first year as a head coach, and then at Michigan State. That jump off play, that first play of the game. I was like 'how did I not know she was going to run that play?' You know, it was a lot of fun. A lot of fun to be here in her new environment and I'm just very excited and proud of her. I just really wanted our team to come in and play really, really hard, and that was the goal for the game and to be honest and make Joanna proud of me again and that the team [Albany] is going to do well. I think that we accomplished that."

On Albany's schedule:
"Well we didn't do the schedule. The only schedule we put in was Duke. So, actually it was the only time that they [Duke] could play us. You know, it's tough but to be able to play two really good teams, caliber play, and to be able to have our young ladies be able to compete at this level, I think going into the conference, we have a lot of great clips. We have a lot of great ways to make video tapes. If you want to be the best you have to play the best, and we played two back-to-back really good teams [Syracuse and Duke] and clearly Duke is the best team we've played and will play all season long. Hopefully we can make it to the NCAA Tournament and play another team of this caliber."

On team's performance:
"They played hard, they weren't scared. This is a really awing atmosphere. I mean Cameron is just a really neat place to be and we came this morning for shoot-around and the players were looking around taking pictures. I'm about empowering young women, period. To let them have this opportunity and see the place and be able to play on this floor, I think any college basketball player would want to play here. I'm most proud of Felicia Johnston, she's a senior. She had the most points tonight and I said at the point when we were down by 25, 'do you want to go back in? We can rest you.' She's got some sore knees, and she was like 'no coach, I want to go back in.' So this memory for her is going to last a lifetime. She's going to remember this game forever."

On the effects of playing in Cameron:
"Well if you would have had your average fans, it would have been a little bit negative, but it's positive because this is a great shooters gym, because the atmosphere is really tight. Actually we played in the Carrier Dome and it was just so open and so huge that your shooting perceptive is really off. We didn't shoot as well. So this is a great shooters gym. A lot of great shooters have come through here. I thought for our team tonight, we don't usually shoot as well as we did from the outside, but it really helped them."

On Duke:
"They're great. They're fantastic. They have a lot of great players and I actually recruited Kathleen Scheer when I was at Missouri State before she was coming out. So it was really neat to see her, and see her be successful. But, obviously, they have All-Americans on their team. So it's really neat to see and I know that Krystal [Thomas] is just a body that we will never see in our league. And our player, Keyana Williams, 'if you can guard somebody like that, then you'll be able to guard anybody in our league.' Because Keyana Williams, on our team, is one of the tallest people in our league. So to be able to compete against Krystal, and Julie Forester ,our other the post player, to be able to compete against bigger, stronger post players is really important to us because the guards are kind of the same, but the post players, the size of the post players, is just something that we don't come across."

Duke Freshman Chloe Wells:

On having all five freshmen on the court at one time:
"Well, when we first got in there we huddled up and said, 'We've got to make this happen.' Because there's a lot of hype on us and we wanted to show them it's not all hype; we can actually play. Our teammates, they kind of encouraged us in a way to get it done so we went out there and made it happen."

On this game as a confidence booster:

"I think it was a big confidence builder. I thought back to preseason when we worked out with Colonel Tribus and I was on a stretcher and he was talking about dead weight and I just know I don't want to be dead weight on the team."
"I also felt like my teammates, now they know I can do something. I felt like dead weight the first couple games and I was doing okay but I thought I could have done better so it felt good."

On her greatest contribution to the team:
"Coming off the bench and just inspiring everybody, giving energy, giving whatever I had at the time. I think I was coming into the game kind of worried and not sure what to do. Hopefully, I'll get that confidence back."

Duke Freshman Chelsea Gray:

On having all five freshmen on the court at one time:
"It was just excellent to be out there with all of the freshmen. Like you said, we have been getting hyped up, but we try not to feed in to that too much and just play our game so it was good."

On going on a run to end the first half:
"The first half, I felt like, we were in a rush somewhat and we had a lot of turnovers as you probably saw in the stats. I thought in the second half we came out and we were more settled. We just knew what we had to do. Coach told us that we needed to move the ball and everything and get everyone involved."