April 30, 2006

ACC Women's Lacrosse Championship
Championship Game - Sunday, April 30, 2006
#1 Duke vs. #2 Virginia

Virginia Head Coach Julie Myers
Opening Statement:
Our team played a really impressive game today against an incredible Duke team. It was great competition. I think every minute we were sharp and we really made sure that we got the next ball so that Duke couldn't get into its game plan. But I thought our team, across the board did a good job of coming up with defensive stops, coming up with big saves, transitioning well and really making our scoring opportunities count. I give my team a lot of credit for doing what they set out to do against an incredible, talented team in Duke.

On why the Cavaliers match-up well against Duke:
We play Duke so often, when you play Duke two to three times a season, you know you must be doing something right. They are such a great team. We also cross recruit, so we know each others players pretty well. A lot of the players on our team are related to players on Duke's team and good friends with them. But I think we are really familiar with their personal. It's always a great match-up, an ACC rivalry, where Duke's gotten in some really good games against us and taken some wins. We just know that it's always going to be competitive. On the field, they pressure out a lot which plays into our favor in terms of what we offer offensively. We love when people come out on us because it opens up the middle. We can generate some free players by driving hard to the goal and forcing some pretty long slides. I think that kind of defense matches well with the offense that we offer.

Senior, Defender - Nikki Lieb
On defensive game plan going into today's game against Duke:
We were better prepared. We had more of an opportunity to practice defending their plays in practice. And we executed much better in this game, this time around.

On what Duke does well:
They are very good at drawing down and one-on-ones. And we are a team that likes to slide a lot, so we knew if we were going to slide we had to win the double team.

Senior, Goalkeeper - Ginger Miles
On defensive game plan going into today's game against Duke:
We just stepped up our game. They played a lot like they played the first time out. We knew what to expect coming in, so it really played into our hands.

On wearing down Duke:
They kept coming strong at us. They were not going to give up at the end. We just kept playing our game and pulling away. It's hard to stay tough.

Senior, Attack - Tyler Leachman
On maintaining possession:
Possession was very important; we talked about it a lot before the game. We knew we needed to control the ball. Our offense did a great job of being patient and waiting for an opportunity to open up. When we needed to hold the ball, we did a good job of handling their pressure and being able to hold it in our end. So when the ball actually did get to them, I felt like they were a little flustered because the ball hadn't been down in their end very often. We did a great job all over the field of pressuring them and making them fight to convert their opportunities.

On winning and how this will help in the NCAA tournament:
It was great! We have seven seniors who been to four ACC finals, three final fours and we are ready to go to another one. We have two weeks to prepare for the tournament and we are really going to work hard and be ready for it.

On how this championship compares to the one the Cavaliers won in 2004:
They are both great! This one might mean more because this is our last time here at M&T Bank Stadium, which is a great venue for this tournament. Our class and our team are so close. I am just so proud of everyone. I thank everyone today, everyone did a great job!

Duke head coach Kerstin Kimel
Opening statement:
First I'd like to congratulate Virginia for winning the 2006 ACC Championship. I thought they played a great game, and I think it's a really special win for them, considering that people didn't expect much from them this season. My hat's off to them, I thought they played a great game and we would love to see them again down the road.

On what Virginia has done to give Duke trouble this season:
I think that it's a combination of the things that they do well defensively, meaning they pretty much swarm ball-side, and it's a combination of that style of defense that they play and I think our inability to execute our game plan offensively. We didn't think we handled it very well against them the first time we played and our plan this game was to do something that was different to combat it, and we never really got there in our game. I felt like we forced shots, we definitely didn't have the quality possessions that we wanted to have. What's very disappointing is I thought our defense played so great. The last time we played them we didn't have a great defensive game, and today I thought our kids did great, but you can only play defense so much with what they have and you're going to give up goals.

On why Virginia was able to control the ball on its offensive end and Duke was unable to clear it:
If we put the ball on the ground, we weren't necessarily the first to get there. I don't think a lot went our way this game. I just think the ball kind of bounced their way a lot, but you create those opportunities for yourself. And I just didn't think that we combated it well. We certainly had, I think in the beginning of the second half, we had two nice situations where either Meg (Huether) made a save, I can't remember specifically, or we created a turnover and got the ball out, only to throw the ball away and really never have possession. So that was tough.

On Duke only being able to score four goals in the first half:
We weren't patient. We weren't patient at all. Again, that was part of our game plan to make sure to anticipate that we were going to get those early slides and they move the ball around to find the open people on the weak side. And there were smaller parts of that game that we didn't do very well today. Unfortunately we forced I felt like a lot of bad shots and a lot of high outside shots, which is not necessarily what we do well. There obviously were some physical parts of this, but I think more than not it was an inability to execute our game plan. Knowing what we were going to get from Virginia, we got exactly what we expected from them on both ends of the field, and I thought our defense did an awesome job of reading what they were giving us, taking things away, coming up with big caused turnovers, so we'll just get right back to work. We've got a big game against Dartmouth a week from today.

On the ACC Championships and perhaps seeing too much of the other ACC teams:
It's a really good question that I think we've all asked ourselves over the last couple of years. Last year to get to the Final Four, we had to beat Carolina three times to get there. Again, I think we've played Virginia 18, 19 times today in our 11-year history. That's almost double any other team we've played. I do think that that's hard. You know each other so well, and you end up beating each other up and in some cases maybe even hurting each other's opportunities in terms of seeding for the NCAA Tournament. However, with that said, as a former ACC athlete who didn't have an ACC Championship, this is something special. So I think as coaches we really struggle to weight the positives and the negatives of having a championship, and I think that for us as coaches, maybe for (Virginia coach) Julie (Myers), (North Carolina coach) Jenny (Levy) and I, because we all played in the ACC and we coach now, maybe we tend to see the redundancy a little bit more, but our kids come and go. So for them, one of the things we talked about after the game was that this was just a phenomenal opportunity that we didn't take advantage of. And I think to potentially not have it, there would be a void. This is special. And I do think in the long run, you could argue that it prepares our teams for a Final Four that other conferences maybe don't get. We're in a huge stadium, with a very professional atmosphere, with something big and important that means a lot to us on the line. You could argue that there are a lot of kids that play on this level that don't have that opportunity, and that makes us more prepared for the NCAA Tournament.

Senior attacker Katie Chrest
On not being able to maintain possession:
I think that winning the draws was the key to the game, and we didn't do, especially that in the second half. Anytime Virginia has the ball and they're holding it, they're very skilled players. It's really hard to get the ball back from them. They handle really well, they do the basics well, so it's frustrating.

On avoiding similar pitfalls in the NCAA Tournament:
I think we need to really bring both parts of our game, our offense and our defense. It's been the same all year. One group shows up and the other one doesn't, and the one does is the one that saves us most of the time. With a team like Virginia you can't have that. Also, we just need to come ready to play. We didn't come out of the gate strong like we usually do. They wanted it more than we did, and that was the bottom line.

On Duke only being able to score four goals in the first half:
I think Virginia did a good job of anticipating what we wanted. They always do. Like Kerstin said, they swarm ball-side, which is something that we're not used to. They have really good first and second slides, and even third slides, so we just didn't do a great job of reversing the ball and finding the open players.

Senior goalkeeper Megan Huether
On whether the team's morale suffered when Virginia went on a 6-0 run to open the second half:
Quotes from Duke 19, Maryland 9 I think it was tough, but think that we stayed focused and we kept fighting. I'm really proud, especially of the defense, because the ball was down there a whole lot. I think that we did a great job of still playing and not letting up at all.