March 4, 2002

North Carolina Head Coach Sylvia Hatchell:
(On the difference between the first half and second half):"We were missing shots and rushing things. At halftime, what we talked about was taking our time and concentrating on putting the shots in, a little more penetration and basically the people that normally score for us, who are Nikki, Coretta, Candace. Also, defensively we were trying to make them speed up the play and not let the ball go into the post as much. So we started trapping half-court, and that let us get some momentum going and we were able to create some offense off our defense. And they were not able to get the ball into their posts and runs their plays."

(On what she told her players at halftime): "I tried to stay positive. I told them, 'This will be your half, and you will win this game.'

State was really on a roll and just did a great job. The way we played in the first half - it was like a nightmare, but the way we came out in the second half, we showed a lot of character and the chemistry was there. They really wanted to win this game and play for the ACC championship.

There's a lot riding on these games. You're playing for a very high honor in one of the best conferences in the country. I just think the chance to play for the ACC championship is so big. We've been there, and it's something very special. And we might have been thinking about that a little too much in the first half. We were tight... short-arming shots, but I felt like when we got our defense going, it would loosen up our offense a little bit."

(On the championship game): "We've got to play 40 minutes of good basketball. Duke's an excellent team. We're the underdog coming into this. The pressure is on Duke. Today I thought Virginia played a great game against them. We're the underdog and we're just going to go out there and play like we did in the second half. We're going to give it all we've got to play for an ACC championship."

Nikki Teasley
"We started trapping a little bit. We thought we had a height advantage over Bell and Rivers, and we just took advantage of that. The coaches did an outstanding job for making the adjustment and putting me in the high post.

Congratulations to Coach on her 600th win, and we're happy to have this win but we're not satisfied. We've got some work to do tomorrow. (On the ACC Tournament title): I want this as bad as anything. Duke is a great basketball team, and they're very well coached. But we just have to come out and play 40 minutes of great basketball. I'm confident in my teammates and in myself."

Candace Sutton
"During halftime we knew we were down but we weren't out. The second half, we just had patience and we ran our offense and played good defense."

NC State Head Coach Kay Yow:
"We really did have two different halves. The one thing that was consistent was our turnovers. We had a much more difficult time scoring in the second half and continued to turn the ball over. I think turnovers, in the end, cost us the game because when we did turn the ball over, we gave up easy baskets. In a game that was decided by just six points, you can talk about a million ways you could have won the game. One of the things we have focused on is taking care of the ball. Our season high in turnovers was 28 [the 25 turnovers tonight] - that's getting close to that. I thought we were stronger on the inside tonight and perimeter-wise we could not get a flow going. We were unable to produce from the perimeter the way we needed to. We needed at least one person to have a big night for us offensively on the perimeter. We gave great effort, and we battled really hard. It was a very physical game, but we came up on the short end."

On game plans... "It really did seem to affect us. Traps are something we really worked a lot against during practice this year. It's been this way almost all year. We almost needed to be able to go against some of our practice guys today, against a trapping defense. There for a moment, we really didn't provide the outlets that we needed early and threw the ball away a number of times before we started providing outlets for the person being trapped. We just weren't sharp at that time. We weren't moving the ball quickly enough or attacking them aggressively. That was a very effective thing against us. It definitely seemed to slow us down, we got cautious, we were hesitant. We just moved out of a real attack mode. There's not a lot the inside players can do about it at that point except to provide outlets and to help us with the passing, because the ball was in the perimeter players' hands."