Feb. 1, 2015

Recap | Box Score | Notes | USATSI Photo Gallery

Notre Dame Head Coach Muffet McGraw

Opening statement…
“I thought Madison Cable played as well as she has played all year long. That was a phenomenal game. Defensively, with 5 steals at halftime, she did a great job in the passing lane and she was good on the press but she was really good at half court and took a coupe of charges that really saved us. I thought Lindsay (Allen) was equally good, she was great offensively and defensively, she did a really great job. She had a huge play when [Dearica] Hamby was about to make a layup and she came out of nowhere to block it and steal it and drove down the court for a layup at the other end. Then Maddie [Cable] has a four-point play followed by Michaela’s [Mabrey] three-pointer, which was pretty much the nail in the coffin. We were sloppy at times. [Dearica] Hamby is really a tough matchup for us, she is really a phenomenal player. She is really, really talented and she played well.”

On Markisha Wright…
“She was our plan B for guarding [Dearica] Hamby, we thought she could guard her away from the basket and be physical with her inside and we would be able to bring the double team. She played well. She is always ready, she is someone that we can really always count on to be ready at any point. I thought she gave us good minutes at both ends of the floor and I thought Mychal Johnson did as well, she had a very good game.”

On appearing frustrated…
“We were so careless at times. I think we had 19 turnovers, which were unforced and were a lot of bad decisions. We missed some wide-open layups, we settled for three’s when we could have driven the ball, and defensively we had some little problems with our thinking, like when we were supposed to double and when we were supposed to leave people. We just didn’t look focused, I thought, at the beginning of the game.”

On the Pink Zone game…
“It is a big day for us, for a lot of reasons and for a lot of people. For me, my mom is a breast cancer survivor, our cheerleading coach (Jo Minton), who is someone we see quite frequently, is a breast cancer survivor and Markisha Wright’s mom, who has been battling cancer for a while. I think it touches so many of us and we are just happy to give back and especially to raise a lot of money that we can keep here in St. Joseph County.”

On preparing for the difficult upcoming stretch…
“I think it’s a very difficult stretch for me. It’s much harder than preparing for Tennessee and North Carolina back-to-back. There is a lot more psychology involved in how we are approaching each game and we rely on our veterans to come out and take care of business. I thought we did that at Clemson, and against Virginia Tech at times, and at times tonight. But I don’t think that this was the 40 minutes we wanted.”

Lindsay Allen – Sophomore – Guard

On her performance…
“I tried to provide a little energy for us in the beginning, we were a little slow to start off, so I tried getting some easy baskets and layups and forcing the issue a little bit.”

On gaining control of the game…
“I think it’s slowing down a little bit and calming down. We need to make sure we are confident with our passes and that we are ball faking to get the defense to move a little bit.”

Madison Cable – Senior – Guard

On her role in the game…
“It’s the same thing every game, they want me to go in and give some energy and be aggressive and help the team offensively and defensively, whatever I have to do.”

Wake Forest Head Coach Jen Hoover

Opening Statement…
“I was really proud of our players for our intensity and our focus coming into this game. We talked about being fearless out on the court and I think at different times you saw that out of several different players. You have to give them a lot of credit. [Notre Dame] is obviously a very good basketball team, an extremely good offensive team with a couple of extraordinary players, but I can’t say enough great things about our team. We have a great player here in Dearica (Hamby). We just have to take care of the ball better. We’ve become too careless with the basketball. You can’t give a team 42 points off of turnovers. Those are freebies. We can’t beat ourselves in that situation.”

On Notre Dame scoring with Hamby on the bench…
“Dearica fresh is pretty much a handful for anyone in our league. When she gets tired sometimes it gets a little more difficult, so we try to get her a couple of subs. But we just need to be confident and our young players need to take care of the ball and trust the offense. If they can do that, they can get some good looks.”

On what stopped their comeback after closing the deficit to 10 points…
“I think we came out and had a couple of turnovers. We were rolling pretty well there. Momentum was going our way for sure but then they were able to get a couple of turnovers and a couple steals. We had expended a lot of energy getting back and maybe that was the case. We’ll have to take a look at that and we just need to continue to work every day to get better.”

On Milan Quinn’s game…
“That was one of her best games. She just continues every day to work to get better. She is a quiet kid, but she came out with 14 points for a career high. We’ve got other players that are capable of stepping up and again they have to be aggressive. We’re growing up a lot. Every day we are growing up a little more.”

On what the team will take away from the game…
“I think our kids come away knowing that we really kind of beat ourselves. We felt like we did a pretty good job in our half-court defense. We did a pretty good job taking away some of their “A” options but they scored so much in transition that, you just can’t do that. So I feel like we got a little confidence there, knowing that we can score against them. We ran some good stuff and we executed at times. We made some big plays but we just can’t give them those runs and those runs are usually sparked by turnovers.”

Dearica Hamby – Senior – Forward

On how Notre Dame defended her in the second half…
“They had a defender on the high side as well as one helping on the low side. Throwing the ball was just a little difficult. They weren’t doing that in the first half. “

On what she will take away from the game…
“It’s obviously disappointing that we lost but in all of our losses, except the last two, we have been right in the game with them. It’s tough that we were right there and like coach said, they had a lot of transition points, but in the half court we were able to stop them.”