Quotes: Duke 79, North Carolina 51

Duke Head Coach Joanne P. McCallie

Opening statement:
"Just a great basketball game. I'm very proud of our team, our fight, our effort, our hustle. We faced some adversity especially early on with Jas[mine Thomas] and Joy [Cheek] getting in foul trouble and sitting most of the first half. I was really pleased to see just incredible leadership by KJ [Keturah Jackson]. She played a whole lot of minutes, first of all, and had to make the most of them and had to do a lot of work handling the basketball. Allison [Vernerey] was very strong for us, very aggressive especially early. She got us off to a great start and played very physical. Shay [Selby] plays with a great deal of confidence, came off the bench gave us a huge lift looking for her shot and looking for her minutes. Really it was a whole team effort with six people in double figures. This is the kind of game we'd like to have more often than not. 52 rebounds to 28 is something that we're very proud of especially considering our last game out and this game, what a difference. Great learning for us and great growing as a team."

On different players stepping up:
"I just think we're getting better. I think we're getting better, we're getting deeper, people are beginning to understand what it takes. We're a better defensive team 1 through 11 now, and I think offensively people are relaxing and realizing what they can do on the floor. It's great to see this kind of balance with 21 assists, obviously we want to reduce those turnovers a bit, but the bottom line is everybody made a huge contribution. The crowd was fantastic, a great, vocal crowd, what a great environment. It was excellent."

On Duke's strong second half:
"No particular message [at halftime]. I think again, our leadership, when you're looking at our team and it's always 40 minutes, and I think we've learned. I think we've grown over the past week a little bit. We felt we gave a game away. That's a very painful feeling. That takes a long time to settle. I think our team understood that, and everybody grew together and was hungry. So, 20 minutes wasn't enough, and on top of that, we didn't play Jas[mine Thomas] or Joy [Cheek] much in the first 20, so we were excited that they would have energy and the ability to really impact the game. And then Joy [Cheek] ends up with nine rebounds after not playing that much."

On Duke's outstanding rebounding:
"Definitely hustle plays. The team deserves all the credit. There's no x's and o's to that. That's players getting after it and totally controlling the game from the board end and getting 17 offensive rebounds in one half. Our team really needs to think about this game a little bit in terms of what are the possibilities. How good can we be? How can we grow from this experience? Because we sure showed some numbers and that's very, very important."

On the zone defense:
"Foul trouble was an issue for us tonight, as you know. Our man-to-man was outstanding. We played a lot of it. Mostly the whole first half, but there were some issues cropping up getting people into three or four foul situations, and that game had a long way to go. So, the team did a tremendous job whatever defense we played they responded, adjusted, and did whatever we needed to do. We did what we felt we had to do. I just think the team getting out there playing hard-it's the players. You give them formations and things to do, but the bottom line is they were everywhere they needed to be in locating [Italee Lucas] and in locating some of the other players like [Chay Shegog], she was doing a great job. I just think again in the second half there was just great intensity on the floor, and the players just brought that intensity and executed. There weren't many second chance shots. People were hitting people, and, as you know, when you're matching up you've got to hit people and box out. The team did a great job there."

On playing Shay Selby so much early in the game:
"Just confidence in the team. We're changing and we're evolving. It's never a static situation. It's always something that we believe in is mixing and matching and getting different players in there. Especially now at this point in the year, that's what makes this time of year so special. And, Shay has a lot of confidence, and I think that she's learning the game at this level. She has a very high IQ for the game, and I think that helps her attack early and right away. She doesn't have to settle in as much. I think she's pretty much ready to go."

On the difference between this game and the game against Boston College last week:
"You can't compare. The readiness, the focus, the intensity, and I could tell in the locker room. They were just ready to get out there. And again, you've got to get to this position to understand it, and then to repeat it over and over again, that focus is the challenge. That's what the great teams do. The great teams find a personal reason to play every game. Great teams find that connection. The reality is we're going to enjoy this tonight. The players deserve to enjoy this, but then we just move on to the next game, next opportunity. This doesn't carry unless you make it carry. There're no automatics, and I think that's so important for us to learn as a team. I think we have started to really get that lesson. But, the leadership of our team and the focus of our team has been very clear. It was in practice and it was in the game tonight, clearly."

On the game coming up on Thursday night:
"It's another rivalry in a lot of ways, as you know. But the bottom line is, I want us to be us. Whoever you're playing next game; I want that to feel like something regardless of who it is. So, we have a one-day prep. This will be a great challenge for us. We have a one-day prep into NC State. We'll be very urgent on Wednesday as we get ready for Thursday's game."

On winning by 28 points without much playing time from Jasmine Thomas and Joy Cheek:
"That's the power of team. That's the power of everyone. Everybody on this team can offer something, and we've got to dig it out of ourselves every game."

North Carolina Head Coach Sylvia Hatchell

On what she was most disappointed about:
"Rebounding. At halftime it was 17 to 16 and in the second half they outrebounded us 35 to 12 so I thought that was a big key. To start the second half their one possession they got five or six rebounds on one trip down the floor so that was big. I knew rebounding would be big and taking care of the basketball. We've got to get Italee Lucas and Cetera DeGraffenreid playing better or they're going to have to go to the bench. Bottom line is that those two are our veteran players and Cetera was 0-for-8 and Italee is 2-for-8. Those two players have to play better. It was extremely physical and the rebounding was major."

On the youth of the team being part of the team's struggles:
"A lot of it is [our team being young]. We are just very very young. We don't have a four player. If we had Jessica Breland to put in the middle of that zone they would probably come out of it because she is so good in there. That's her spot where she can shoot and plus she's really good at passing the ball too. She would have collapsed the defense some and been able to find players. We put Tierra Ruffin-Pratt in there and I think two or three possessions in a row we scored when we had her in there. But we really don't have a four player. They were spread out really big in their zone and you have to be able to get the ball in there, especially into the gut part in the middle and then have a player who can do something in there. We tried three or four different players in there. We have to keep working on it and find some answers."

On what is leading to the inconsistency of Italee Lucas' play:
"I wish I knew. I don't know, but you're right. When she's in a zone and hitting she's making every shot she puts up and she's playing really well. But she hasn't played well lately. We are trying to encourage her and give her confidence but the biggest thing she's still been doing is turning the ball over. She had six turnovers tonight and last game she had eight. She's got to do a better job with that. We're doing basically a lot of the things that we've been doing and we've one five of the last six ACC's and been to two Final Fours and two Elite Eights and a couple Sweet Sixteens. We're doing the very same thing that we've been doing. I don't know it's like we got a little plague or something over there in Chapel Hill right now. I don't know what it is. We'll keep working until we find the right buttons and the right answers. And a lot of it is the youth of the team and how young we are."

On where the team is right now:
"We had the next morning [after the Florida State game] a rebounding practice. The next game we had 61 rebounds, but we lost that game. We had 61and I think Miami had 34 or 35 and you're supposed to win games when you almost double the rebounds on somebody. But in that game we lost because of turnovers so those are two things we have to get better at. It's not like we don't have some experienced guards, but they're just making really poor decisions. We'll keep changing things up until I find something that works. Pretty much everything we've been doing we've done with teams in the past but we have different players so we have to keep going until we find something that works."

On the play of She'la White:
"She'la shot the ball good. She was 3-for-7, had 10 points and only two turnovers, three assists. She played okay. But one thing that probably hurt us this week is that we have a small lineup with all of those little guards down there. I'm probably going to have to put a bigger player in there. That might help us, but again rebounding is not all size. Well it is size, but it's not the size of your body it's the size of your heart. That's probably pretty much what it's all about. Sometimes it's the physical size, but I've seen small players who are tremendous rebounders so it's probably more the size of the heart. We'll keep working on that. We'll get it figured out."

On getting stops when Duke is getting three or four chances:
"Second-chance points, they had 22 and we had six. I think we had those six at halftime. I don't think we had any second-chance points in the second half. Then they had 25 points off of turnovers so those two things right there were major and they shot 42 percent and I think that's the best they've shot in the ACC this year. Like we do with all the games we'll go back and watch the film about 10 times and try to figure things out. Sometimes instead of trying to figure things out so much you just have to go out there and go to war and stop trying to do so much strategy. We'll go back and keep on working."

Senior Keturah Jackson

On it being the last chance to play Carolina at home:
"I thought that once before the game and Joy (Cheek) also mentioned that to me before the game, but I just wanted to be a leader for my team and help us to bounce back from our loss to [Boston College]. I just felt comfortable in the flow of the game and [I] just let it come to me."

On what went through her mind when Jasmine went out early in the first half:
"It's my turn to step up. It's just an opportunity for me to be a leader for my teammates and show my abilities."

On limiting Carolina's two leading scorers:
"My mindset was just to shut them down. I think that's how you have to go into every game; wanting to shut down go-to players. They're gonna score throughout the course of the game, but you want to limit that as much as possible. And if we can completely shut them down, then that's just great. We had great team defense and everyone was aware."

On what was going through her mind while playing defense:
"It just gives me great confidence to know that I have four capable, very capable players helping me. So, it allows me to play freely and play defense like I love to play defense. It was fun because our team, we were in tune. We were talking, we were communicating, so that made the game very easy."

On whether this was the best the team has communicated on defense this year:
"I think so; I think we are growing and I think because of out loss to [Boston College] that helped us to go back to the details; just talking, communicating, doing the little things that make us great."

On what her team's performance says about future games:
"Well, it gets me excited about our potential. I think it helps all of us to realize that if we come and we commit to playing as a team, then the sky is truly the limit for our team. So it shows our potential and gives us an incentive to keep working hard."

Freshman Allison Vernerey

On her thoughts about the rivalry between Duke and UNC:
"Well that's really impressive, especially when you look at the crowd. The way it is, it's really impressive. But I think that's great, that's what makes the game fun because you have all this intensity and all this energy around you and that gives you energy to play better than you could do usually."

Sophomore Shay Selby

On scoring soon after entering the game:
"I was just playing within the game, letting it come to me. I had an open shot so I took it, [I] wasn't trying to force anything."

On the confidence she received from making that first 3-pointer:
"Yea, it did because I've been struggling in practice and in games with my shooting. So it gave me a lot of confidence."