Post Game Quotes
3/5/2005 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
March 5, 2005
WAKE FOREST DEMON DEACONS
COACH Mike Petersen: It's the best 40 minutes of basketball I've ever seen any team play on any level. I think you got to give a tremendous credit to Duke for how well they played, how hard they played, how efficient they were. They just did an unbelievable job of executing in every single facet and played with great emotion, great energy, at the start of the game and got us on our heels against a team that is as talented and as efficient as Duke. If you get on your heels, you've got real issues and we had real issues tonight.
Aside from the fact that they played as well as they did, we struggled. Obviously we struggled shooting the ball. Part of that was they did a good job defensively. Part of what was we had some shots early in the game that didn't fall, and we had a little domino effect going. I think you've got to give tremendous credit to Gail (Goestenkors) and to those players for the game that they played. It's as good as I've ever seen any team play.
Q. Liz, with all you guys accomplished this year, are you still able to take anything out of this; does it diminish what you guys accomplished this season?
Liz Strunk: I don't think there is any way you can let one night diminish what you've done for the past six months, ever since the first day of practice. We don't think our season is over. We are still ready to play. We are ready to go to the NIT. We really want to get a bid and continue playing. We are not ready for it (the season) to be over with.
Q. Mike, not to be cute but in the first half did you kinds of feel like General Custer?
COACH Mike Petersen: You know, it's funny, because that thought crossed my mind. I've been to Custer battlefield. There is a cross that marks every spot where a soldier went down and I remember standing on that hill and there was two of them way off in the distance and thinking, you know, those two guys almost got out of here. And at one point I thought we could make a run for it, but they would probably lock the doors on us. But they were really good. And we didn't play well. Let's not kid ourselves. It's one thing if we would have played well and had that happen to us. We were not as good as we could be tonight, and they were just, you know, outstanding. They were outstanding. It's disappointing because ?? not to take anything away from Duke, because as I said, it's the best game I ever seen a team play. This was easily our worst effort of the year. We did not respond. When they came out and got us on our heels we kind of stayed there.