Duke
Lawson: They aren't afraid of moments and competing
Kara Lawson speaks to the media after a 63-59 loss to UNC.
Love my guys man, like they battled, it was, it was a tough environment. Um, and they, they battled back, they battled back multiple times in the game. If you think about it, you think about the first quarter and, you know, being down 10 and, and they came out with a great first punch and we battled back to take the lead at halftime. Like there, there is good in this for us. Um And, you know, there's also some learning, you know, the bat is like learning and, um, for my group to be in like a possession game, uh, you know, you just don't have a lot of those and I have eight of my 11 are freshmen and sophomores. So like, it's really good for them to be in, ok. Now we need the ball, ok? We need to foul, we need to trap like all that is, is great, um, for them to do it. So hopefully we'll, we'll take these lessons and, and bring them over to the postseason, you know, all of your food for you guys, you know, II I do think we've, we've just like continually grown throughout the course of the year. Um, you, we, we have been playing our best basketball in February. You know, if you've watched this at the start of the year and then you, you look at, you know, just the, the tough schedule that we had in February and how we've been able to navigate that. And so I've been really pleased, um, with, with my young players and, and, and how they've attacked and they're not afraid, you know, that's the thing like they want to play well, they don't play well all the time, but they're not afraid of moments and they're not afraid of competing. And I think that is what I bring into the postseason is that I've got a group that's eager to compete and, and wants to play well, talk about the experience of your team, you know, they're doing senior day out there with some players who've been through a lot with Alyssa and Baja. How much do you think that experience from those particular players impact at the end of the game? Yeah. You know, that's hard to that. That's a hard one. That's a good question, but it's a hard one. I don't know because if we'd have won then would we have said it? Didn't, you know what I mean? Like, it's kind of like a result based. Um, there, there, there's no doubt that, um, you know, I think as a player and I'm speaking as a player, I don't want to speak for their team and their players, there's no doubt as a player, the more that you're in situations, the more comfortable you are and the more, you know how you're gonna respond physically and even emotionally, you know, because even though they're standing out there, there's a lot of emotions bubbling up in players, you know, like there's pressure, you know, on free, we saw people miss free throws, right, like there's pressure that's associated with all that. So I, I'm sure it helped them, you know, I know it helped me as a player. Um, I don't know that it hurt us per se. Um, you know, II, I think like they just, they just executed better down the stretch. I mean, plain and simple and, um, you know, that that's why they got the win. Was it tough for this game? And the first game for you to drive to the hoop against their zone? Did they, did they, did they, uh, do it differently than the first, um, you know, that they were in a different zone, different, there was a different zone tonight than it was the first game. Um, so I think like, as I think the zone they were in tonight was more crowded in the middle than the one they were in, in, in, in the, in the first game. It's hard. I have to go back and look to see if we got the same number of drives. You know what I think hurt us more than that was the turnovers in the second half. You know, we only have four at the half and we ended with 17. So that's 13 in that second half and, and, and missing, missing those opportunities and giving them those field goal attempts, I thought really hurt our offense, like being able to get in there. Yeah. You know, I think if you look at most teams, they're, they're better at home than on the road. Um, and so that's, uh, like a whatever sport you look at. I think that's true. Um, so, you know, we, we've, we've worked really hard to try to, to start better on the road, um, to play, better to compete to the ends. And that's why I told you, like, I'm disappointed, I'm not discouraged because we did do that today in a hard environment. Um, now you're a neutral site. So, I don't know, are both gonna play bad because neither of them at home. I don't know, we'll see in the tournament. But, um, it is different and it is a different backdrop and it is a different ball and it is a different environment and there's more urgency when you play in the postseason because you get one chance. Um, that is what we're gonna hopefully have to work ourselves through. Not after the game, but while the game's going on, because it's gonna be the first AC C tournament for a lot of my players you talked about Turner was a minute ago. Uh North only had two assists in the first half. If you talk about maybe what you thought you guys did. Well, just kind of stopped the ball move in the first half and then what you went not wrong, but what was the president? Well, you know, I thought that they were doing a good job in the first half of scoring one on one. And so that doesn't lend itself to getting assists. Um, and so, uh, you know, they, they, they did a great job in that first half of doing that. Um, in the second half, we, we just missed some assignments and we'll have to be better at that. Um, we had too many missed assignments defensively today and, and so I've got to do a better job as a coach of, of making sure, you know, we're, we're assignment correct. Um, we're adhering to the scheme because we just had to make breakdowns and, um, you know, we'll look at them and we'll keep teaching and, and then, you know, as a staff, we, we just got to do a better job of making sure that we don't miss more assignments. Thanks everyone. Thank you all.