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Women's Basketball
vs Countdown to Craziness
Quotes: Duke 92, Oklahoma 72
12/17/2014 9:30:00 PM | Women's Basketball
Duke Head Coach Joanne P. McCallie
Opening Statement
“I'm just really proud of our fight and great second half push. I thought that we did some nice things defensively and I thought that we were very, very aggressive offensively. I love the offensive boards, the overall rebounding, and obviously Elizabeth's (Williams) performance. I'm not the least bit surprised, but the aggression she showed, I could tell the team could really feed off of that. It was a neat thing. Besides the great double-double there, it was an expression of power. And when you have power, everyone kind of gets excited about that. And Azura (Stevens), as well, I thought was very sharp with her game in attacking and doing many good things to help us. I love that Becca (Greenwell) got 10 rebounds because I think she fought really, really hard out there. It's always great to see that strong rebounding effort. And across the board, 57 to 23 rebounds, that's unheard of. Those are some dominant numbers. We're proud of that. Can we play better? Yes, we can play a whole lot better. But we got better tonight. So by getting better tonight, that really helps us and we're looking forward to trying to do that again Friday.”
On if this is a statement win after the South Carolina game:
“We're very motivated by some things that happened in the past, no doubt about that. It kind of rubs you the wrong way a little bit. I think the team did a great job trying to bottle that and hang on to that a little bit because we did have finals and had bigger things to do with their academic piece. I think that you always have to learn from those situations. And we got better in those instances, as well, but at the same time, it's a motivator when you're outcome doesn't match your growth. That's no fun. You want your growth and outcome to match like tonight, for example. I think everyone was pretty motivated.”
On the pace of the game:
“We definitely expected that. I thought we did a great job controlling it more in the second half, to go when we wanted to go and make them defend us a little bit, as well. I thought we did a good job, particularly in the second half, of controlling the tempo and dictating the tempo.”
On cutting down on turnovers after halftime:
“I think we slowed down. We're very capable of taking care of the basketball and making great passes, but holy cow in the first half. Just too fast. You have to respect the game. You have two people running toward you, so the idea would be to move the ball and not dribble it. I think we had great lessons in the first half. We played too fast in the first half. I think the second half we played a good solid tempo where we pushed it and slowed it down. We did a little bit of everything. The 22 (turnovers) is too high. That's got to come down, and I think it will.”
Duke Senior Elizabeth Williams
On being back to full health:
“I think for one, we're just excited to be playing. Now that exams are over, all we have to focus on is basketball. For me, just being aggressive, and Coach P (Joanne P. McCallie) kept harping on Jahlil's (Okafor) game the other day and saying I was capable and just reminded me to stay aggressive. It's something that I'm capable of doing, so staying focused and keeping everyone on the same page.”
Duke Freshman Azura Stevens
On being an offensive threat and feeding off of Elizabeth's performance:
“I think just coming out aggressive from the start was really the key. Sometimes I can just be laid back, but I just came out this time really aggressive and tried to help my team. And what Elizabeth did was something that I could feed off. I love playing with her. It's awesome having her back.”
Oklahoma Head Coach Sherri Coale
Opening Statement:
“I thought we put ourselves in a pretty good position going in at halftime. We opened the 2nd half with a turnover, which sort of led to a little bit of an unraveling. We couldn't seem to find our way to the free throw line much in the second half, and the one or two times we got there before the end of the game we didn't make it count. We have a very, very young team and this is probably the worst matchup that we could hope for. We're two completely different teams with (Duke's) size and athleticism and our skill. I thought we hung right in there with them for a while, but Elizabeth Williams was fantastic. She just completely changed the game. The job she did on the glass was incredible, so give her credit and give Duke credit.”
On shooting 34 3-pointers to combat Duke's size:
“Our tallest player is 6-3 and Duke was running zone. So it's pretty much the recipe and we shoot it quite well from 3.”
On playing a high-tempo pace against Duke:
“We felt like we had to speed them up. You can't go let them set up in the half-court with all that size on the interior. There's not a thing you can do about it. You can tell by the rebounds, there's not anything we can do. We wanted to try and speed them up and turn them over and I think we had some success with that.”
Oklahoma guard Gabbi Ortiz
On the strategy to focus on outside shooting:
“When you go against a zone, (outside) shots are going to be open. We needed to get it inside to do an inside-out game. We're good 3-point shooters so we're going to shoot the ball and try to get some points up since we couldn't get very much in the paint against them.”
Players Mentioned
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