Virginia Tech Women's Basketball head coach Kenny Brooks, junior center Elizabeth Kitley and graduate student guard Aisha Sheppard met with the media following the Hokies' 82-60 win over Clemson Thursday in the second round of the 2022 ACC Tournament. Read some of what they had to say:
KENNY BROOKS
(Opening statement) Just to set the tone this time of year, as well, everyone wipes their slate clean and everyone has new-found life, and Clemson came out and they played well yesterday against Syracuse. And for us to get off to a good start was big for us. Very happy with the win. I thought we played well during stretches. I thought we got a little bit lackadaisical. Part of that was my fault, part of it was you're trying to coach for that game and you're trying to coach for the next one. That's what tournament play is all about. Just trying to be disjointed and we got disjointed a little bit. Nevertheless I thought some of our kids stepped up and did a really good job, and now we'll get ready for UNC.
(On what he liked about Tech's defense today) Yeah, when we played and we were locked in, we did a really good job. We didn't do a good job of keeping them off the line, the free-throw line. I thought that really kept them hanging around. This very well may be the longest game I've ever been associated with right now. It feels like it's 8:00 at night right now and the game, it just drug on and on and on. Part of it was because she took a couple time-outs early and it kind of threw off our rhythm as far as the media time-outs. Then there were maybe two or three times they had to go to the monitor to see if it was a common foul or intentional foul, and it was just a long game that was drawn out.
You know, we were looking forward to getting back and getting some rest.
ELIZABETH KITLEY
(On Clemson's approach to guarding her and why she was able to score effectively) I think it was pretty similar, their mentality going in, but they were missing one of their biggest players. And also I tried to look at the film from that game and then learn from it, and I think I adjusted better to what they were trying to do.
(On maintaining energy despite the early tip-off times) Now we're used to it. We'll be ready tomorrow at 11:00. We had practice at 11:00 on Tuesday to prepare for this game, and now we have this 11:00 a.m. game under our belt, so we'll be ready for it tomorrow.
AISHA SHEPPARD
(On what allowed Tech to be effective offensively in the first half) Clemson's MO is to get you out of rhythm and to kind of speed you up, so we were determined to make sure that we stayed the course and did what we were supposed to do and what we practiced, and we ended up being able to find the open person and knock down shots early.
(On the importance of getting off to a strong start in the tournament) I think that we have a lot of confidence. There's obviously a lot of things that we need to shore up, but the fact that we were able to play today and get a game under our belt, get ourselves out of the way, I think that we're prepared, and we'll go back and rest and get ready for UNC tomorrow. But I think that we're very confident.