March 6, 2009

FLORIDA STATE QUOTES

THE MODERATOR: I'm joined up here on the podium by Florida State head coach Sue Semrau as well as student athletes Mara Freshour and Tanae Davis­Cain. Coach, when you are ready an opening statement and we will take questions.

COACH SUE SEMRAU: That's a very good Boston College team and obviously when you have someone like Carolyn Swords on your team, you have to figure out how to guard her, it's tough. She is a tremendous talent. I think that Sylvia has done an amazing job of making them just really understand where their strengths. For us, that's a really big win. I thought that our balance again was really critical, to have 4 kids in double figures. That's been a staple for us throughout the year, and I think that's the difference in our basketball team.

THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. Mara, can you explain how you knocked down two 3's in a couple of minutes, do you think that set a tone for the way this thing would go, 11 out of 18 for the game?

MARA FRESHOUR: Of course, I think anybody for any shooter or for any team when you come out and you knock down one 3, or two 3's, it not only sets the tone for yourself, but I think it gets your team to follow right behind you.

Q. Tanae, you made that shot that beat the buzzer at half time.

COACH SUE SEMRAU: No, that was Courtney Ward.

Q. Can you explain the emotional impact of that basket?

TANAE DAVIS­CAIN: Well, when it comes to Courtney, her clutch shots, you always expect for it to go in. When she through it up, I knew it was going in. She has a knack for hitting stuff like that. It just fired up everybody at half time and ready to go in the locker room pumped.

Q. Coach, you jumped off early, and were you surprised or was it just great execution by your kids that you never allowed them to make a real run at you during the course of the game?

COACH SUE SEMRAU: I wasn't surprised that we were able to jump out. I felt like I was holding a horse in the stable today. It was just like, they were so anxious to play and I thought we would either come out, or hit a lot of shots or we'd throw it off the backboard. Even if you throw it off the backboard, it's a lot better than coming out flat. I thought we would be in a great situation coming out. I was pleasantly surprised with the way he were able to defend Swords, and I thought that's one of the reasons why they had a difficult time making a run.

THE MODERATOR: Any other questions?

Q. How about tomorrow?

COACH SUE SEMRAU: How about it? Play at 3 o'clock, see you there. 3:30.

Q. Any preference as to who you play?

COACH SUE SEMRAU: No, they are both great basketball teams. I have seen Virginia on two occasions, and I seen Duke one time. We will be happy to play either one.

Q. Can you kind of talk about just how the impact of getting this team in the semifinals for the first time since 2001 helps your kid's confidence for the rest of the tournament and going into the NCAA?

COACH SUE SEMRAU: I think their confidence has been coming along the way. I don't think that this game really is any bigger than it was beating LSU back right before, right after Christmas. I think every game we've really said we're going to get better. We're going to take it game by game, and I think we have a solid core now and this can add to the strength of that. I think unlike a lot of years where you have to have something that's going to give you momentum, this team is not like that. I think that's why they have been so solid.

MARA FRESHOUR: I would second exactly what Coach Sue just said. This one game would not give us anymore momentum, just because, like she said, we gradually progressed. We've taken ever game, game by game, and that's something that we've really taken pride in our team and focused in on this season.

And I guess one part, if we would have lost, I think that would have been a real downer going into the tournament. But we've been cooped up in the hotel for a while, and like she said, we were horses ready to go. We were sitting there. You can only sit for so long. We were really ready and excited to go. We are ready to go and continue this momentum into the next game tomorrow.

Q. Coach, congratulations first on your first place finish during the regular season. Was this when you thought about it in the preseason did you say, well, this is a year, or did this team surpass what you thought they might be?

COACH SUE SEMRAU: Well, I will tell you at the beginning of the year I thought this is going to be our best team ever. And the way we played at the beginning of the year, we wondered what kind of year we were going to have. I just have to credit these kids, because we played bad. I don't know what it was. We were trying to find ourselves. We went down to Cancun and we had an awful game, and we came back and played Connecticut close, sent them home for Christmas and they've lost twice since. It's them. They just said, this is what we're going to do. It starts with these two. They've been phenomenal leaders.

Q. For the players, can you guys talk about defensively how you guys performed. They struggled shooting tonight, I want to get a sense of you guys, how that looked from your end.

TANAE DAVIS­CAIN: Well, I thought our defense was pretty good. We executed what we did in practice with Swords. They just wasn't hitting, I was surprised. They don't hit, we got the ball, rebounded, went down the court. Our coaches preach to us defense. Defense wins games, so that's what we try to go out and do.

COACH SUE SEMRAU: David, I heard you had a great article today. Thank you very much.

Q. There was also a point there where Picco, she started to hit her shots a little bit, can you talk about what you did there after?

COACH SUE SEMRAU: She is a really great shooter. She can get space. We put three different people on her. We were intent to do that and just made sure ­­ I thought that our kids did a great job of executing our game plan with they knew what was coming. They were able to chase her off the screens, and when we got caught a couple of times she made us pay.

BOSTON COLLEGE QUOTES

THE MODERATOR: I want to introduce Boston College head coach Sylvia Crawley as well as student athlete Carolyn Swords. When you are ready we will take an opening statement, then we will take questions.

COACH SYLVIA CRAWLEY: I'm extremely disappointed that we lost the game especially by so much. I thought we put our young kids in and they pressed and they trapped, and they started to make a comeback and I think we got within 11 points at one point in time, so I just made the decision to kind of let them play. It was just really pleased with how they fought hard to the end.

THE MODERATOR: Questions?

Q. Coach, you know what it is to play for a championship team, what is the team that you're coaching now, where do they have to improve to move up to that level?

COACH SYLVIA CRAWLEY: I think tonight we needed to improve on adjusting to the flow of the game. You know, some things happened and we just needed to make adjustments, as the game went. We do a good job of preparing before the game. But during the game we just needed to adjust as to how the flow of the game was going, I'll say that. And just mental toughness. Really this is the young team. We start 3 sophomores and 2 juniors, so I think as this team continues to mature, the mental toughness will come. I'm very big on mental toughness. We work on it every single day. They're going to get tougher. And I think as that happens this is going to be a very tough ball team, ball club.

Q. Can you talk about the defensive scheme that Florida State put on your players for us tonight, how it affected Swords and Picco played?

COACH SYLVIA CRAWLEY: I thought they were extremely physical tonight, and we just needed to, at times, we tried to fight back, and that didn't quite work out on our end. So that's where I was saying that we just kind of need to adjust as the game goes on.

But I thought that they were intense coming out. They obviously had a bye so they were ready to play. We started out flat. I think emotionally they had a lot of intensity. They hit some big shots early. I think they shot like 75 percent or something crazy like that. They were shooting well from the 3. They shot 60 percent in the first half, they were 33.3 percent, but they hit the first few shots and I think that kind of deflated us a little bit. Their offense really got them going and that turned into their defense I thought.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

COACH SYLVIA CRAWLEY: I just wanted to say I thought Carolyn played well when we did get the ball inside. We really had to work hard to get the ball inside to her tonight. We had a couple of seniors that we were trying to play hard for and hopefully this is not it for them. We are hoping that we can still get into the NCAA tournament. I'm trying to encourage our team not to shut their minds down after this game.