Jan. 11, 2015

Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery

2014-15 University of Notre Dame Women’s Basketball
Notre Dame vs. Boston College
January 11, 2015
Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center – Notre Dame, Indiana

Notre Dame Head Coach Muffet McGraw

Opening statement…
“I was really please with everything really. The first half was phenomenal, I thought we executed on offense, we shot the ball well. It was a game we really needed after the last game where we just couldn’t seem to make a shot. I thought everybody felt really relaxed today, I thought we did a nice job sharing the ball and shot it pretty well too. Defensively, in the first half we were pretty good. In the second half we gave up too many threes, but that’s the type of team Boston College is. They’re a great shooting team, they move the ball really well, and they really worked for the perfect shot and they got it. But overall, really good game with the freshmen doing a really nice job for us.”

On Taya Reimer…
“She’s back. We’ll expect her to be at practice tomorrow. She just took a few days off. I offered it to her to take some time off to think about some things and she took me up on it. We felt that she was always still part of us, just away for a couple days. She was not happy with the way things were going on the court and we talked about some things we could fix or work on and she was concerned because she wants to play well. She’s a really good player and she has a lot of talent. We had a really good conversation about how we’re going to get there.”

On the challenges freshmen face…
“I think it is difficult. It’s been a long time since we’ve really relied on freshmen. We’ve had really good freshmen coming in but there’s always been the burden on the upper classmen. I think we’re asking these two (Brianna Turner and Kathryn Westbeld) to do a lot. They’re doing really well, but it’s a lot to ask of freshmen. It is complex; there are a lot of different things that they have to learn. It seems like every day they’re learning something new. We try to slow it down and keep it simple, but it’s hard to do that because there’s just so much.”

On needing this game after Thursday’s loss…
“I thought it was really important for us to get our confidence back. We were really just shattered after that last game. There were so many things that we didn’t do well, so it was really great to come out and be firing on all cylinders.”

Brianna Turner – Freshman – Forward

On the first half today…
“I think the difference was coming out strong. The past few games we started out sluggish but today we came out ready to play from the tip and we just tried to control the game.”

On playing well with Kathryn Westbeld…
“It’s just a freshman thing. She’s a really good shooter and a really good driver.”

On Taya Reimer returning soon…
“Since Taya is a sophomore, she’s been here so she’s a really good learning tool. At practice if I’m lost I’ll ask Taya to help me out. She’s just a good role model to look up to.”

Kathryn Westbeld – Freshman – Forward

On coming off the bench… “My main goal is to bring a lot of energy. I don’t want to lessen the energy that’s already out there and if anything just bring it up the intensity even more.”

On developing over the season…
“It’s just a lot of practice. It’s hard coming in as a freshman with the expectations that Coach McGraw has for us. My teammates are helping me out every day, they’re being patient with all the freshmen. It’s just a team effort that has helped me come along.”

Boston College Head Coach Erik Johnson

Opening Statement…
“Thanks for having us here. It’s tough to take a loss like that, but I think when you look and analyze your team, you have to look at the context of who you’re playing. I was very impressed with Notre Dame today. I know they’re coming off a tough loss. Obviously, we watched that film carefully; Miami played a phenomenal game against Notre Dame and Notre Dame didn’t have its best game, and they came back with a vengeance tonight. We just got back out of our locker room and it was a very, I think, pointed lesson for our players of how much intensity, how much toughness makes a difference in a game; so the credit needs to go to Notre Dame’s coaching staff and its players. They cut hard. They made it very difficult for us to run our offense. They rebounded extremely well; they ran the floor, and you know we got exposed on some things. It was a great learning experience for our young team. We’re coming off a really hard battle against Georgia Tech, and we made a lot of huge steps forward. But again, Notre Dame took the game to another level tonight and again the credit needs to go to them. I just can’t wait to get back in the gym with our team and build on some of the lessons that we learned tonight.”

On whether he thinks Notre Dame improved after Miami…
“Yeah, you know you’d have to ask Muffet and her staff that. I tend to be a lot more focused on our team, but look, they played very hard, but Notre Dame plays hard consistently. There’s a reason that they have the record that they do. Some of the things that we’re trying to learn are that even though we are a young team, we’ve been inconsistent. We’ve had games when we played excellent; we’ve had stretches when we’ve been excellent. We just haven’t been able to put together enough consistency, and that’s again a credit to Notre Dame and their players and staff. Their lapses are small and their stretches of excellence are long. Right now, we are still kind of in between on that, and that’s the difference in a game.”

On playing Brianna Turner and the lob passes…
“We’ve been watching a lot of film on them and clearly, well you know we had a 6’6″ player a couple years ago, when I was, you guys remember Carolyn Swords, when I was an assistant at BC and we really had to teach our guards, because it’s different throwing to someone who can catch the ball up there. You watch the NBA guys get used to just throwing some of those drive and dish passes up here, whereas in the women’s game, we’re so accustomed to just throwing bounce passes. And I think again Muffet and her staff have done a great job of teaching their guards and their forwards to drive and to just put the ball up, and you know she’s tipping the ball in, and you know she’s done it against lots of other teams other than just us. What makes it hard is that if you hop off at all, and she gets space, it’s really difficult to recover to a point that high. That really means you can’t help as much and when you do, they make you pay. So again, the credit goes to them. She’s an excellent player; she’s not just an athlete, she’s a smart player. She gets herself in position and her teammates do a great job of finding her.”

On what they’ll take back to the gym…
“Nicole Boudreau, actually is our captain, and she was just really admonishing our team in exactly what you just said. A loss like this can be devastating to confidence; it can be a real negative when people can start pointing fingers and things like that if it’s not handled by a team with character. Again, the woman sitting to my left here, is an extremely high character leader and she made for absolute sure in that locker room that we took absolute responsibility that we needed to do better, that we look specifically at the things that got exposed, that we had a real plan for coming back to practice in the next couple of weeks and work on improving those things. And that’s all that I can ask from a team. The last thing I ask is to recognize what can be better and do it. And again, credit to her for where she’s got this team moving to and I have no doubt that she and with the help of our staff, will get to where we need to be.”