Oct. 30, 2008

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UNC Women's Soccer vs. Florida State 10-30-08
Coach Anson Dorrance

On FSU's late first-half goal:
"It was a horrible goal to give up. We could see it from the sideline but then Chris Ducar confirmed it, looking at the tape it was just a complete lack of energy closing out the half and that's just unacceptable. We've got to focus; we've got to figure out a way to close out that half. We close out that half and it's a completely different game. They score like that and all of a sudden they're revived at halftime because that goal sends them in with momentum, and I just don't feel like that is characteristic of the way we've played most of the season. That was like a junior-high team assuming that there were only a couple of minutes left on the clock and we were fine. That wasn't indicative of the sort of team that we want to be, which is to focus and close out the half like we could have. That was unacceptable, we chatted about it at the half, and that was a very important goal for FSU."

On Carolina's defensive struggles:
"I think what happened near the end is we were starting to fatigue a bit, we were a bit spread out. It looked like they were playing with their two front runners wide, and so our flat three was being forced to run back and forth and we corrected that in the overtimes by having the flank midfielder sit a bit and then we took the game back."

On the impact of this game:
"We were in a position where we can ride this thing out and get a tie and that still puts us in a pretty solid position. What we would love to get out of this weekend is to stay a top-four seed in the NCAA tournament, and right now we're in pretty good shape. Our RPI was #1 coming in to this weekend. If we can stay in the top 4 I'll be excited because then we get to host all the way, assuming we can have a nice run. But also, I'd love to be seeded first in the conference, and if they had beaten us tonight that would have closed that off. The tie doesn't hurt us. It doesn't help us, but it doesn't hurt us, so I wasn't disappointed at the end of the game when we rode it out in overtime."

On the team chemistry:
"One quality this team certainly has is they work hard for each other. We showed them in the pregame some clips from the UVA match, and they were relentless working for each other all over the field, so that was indicative of us at our best. We have that quality; I told the girls after the game that I wasn't disappointed with their effort. There was some great effort out there. In fact, the one I was happiest with in the overtime was a player who is getting some time now, Rachel Wood. We were fatiguing a little bit, Allie Long was fatigued a bit and we're still trying to replace Allie Hawkins' hamstring issue. And so for Rachel Wood to come in during those overtime periods and play so well put us in a position where we could close out the game with a tie. I was very happy with several performances and hers was certainly one.