Wes Moore's Thoughts on the Exhibition Win Over Maryland
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GREENSBORO — While the Wolfpack women's basketball team still looked somewhat flawed in the 83-75 win over No. 10 Maryland, the exhibition win showed more promise for the young NC State squad than the first showing against High Point.
Veteran head coach Wes Moore knows what it will take for his team to get back to the NCAA Tournament and make a deep run. Experiences like Sunday's win will only help the team moving forward.
Moore spoke to members of the media following the win, sharing his insights on the team's abilities based on two preseason appearances, as well as what the group needs to work on.
Selection of Moore's Quotes
From Moore's opening statement following the win
- "Good news is we came back, showed a little bit of fight. We've got a long way to go, as you probably all saw... We're not playing great right now, so I knew this was going to be a tough one. Maryland, I know they had a couple players out, it would've been even tougher probably."
- "So luckily, though, the second half we did defend better. Think, first half we gave up 45 second half 30. We still sometimes get a little too one-on-one, but we've got time to fix that. We did have five people in double figures, though, so that's great to see."
On slowing down Duke transfer Oluchi Okananwa in the second half
- "We're not a very good defensive team. I will say, we tried to... Oluchi (Okananwa), she killed us in the conference tournament championship game a year ago. According to my stats, she only hit 10 threes last year and it seemed like she hit all 10 of them against us."
- "So today again, she came out and hurt us again. Second half, we did try to keep the ball out of her hands a little bit. And I thought that helped, because she had 19 points at halftime, so I thought we did a much better job on her."
On what the team needs to improve defensively
- "You'd like to be able to guard individually some so you don't have to help, but when we need to help, we're not doing a very good job of helping. Like you said, I'll know more when I watch the film, but we're kind of sometimes on an island. We're out there by ourselves, and if I get beat, my teammate is not there to help me."
- "Same thing offensively, sometimes we're on an island out there one on one. So I got to do a better job. You know, both offensively and defensively. We only had 10 assists. That's not good."
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Tucker Sennett graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Sports Journalism from the esteemed Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. A former basketball player, he has gained valuable experience working at Cronkite News and brings a deep passion for sports and reporting to his role as the NC State Wolfpack Beat Writer On SI.
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