Wes Moore was blunt about the first half against Liberty and much more pleased with what the Wolfpack showed after the break. With Zoe Brooks out, the Pack had to find other answers, and the head coach talked through the second-half turnaround, the freshmen who stepped up, the free-throw issues, and what the group still has to clean up before the road trip to Seton Hall.

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Coach Wes Moore:
The first half was ugly. There’s just no other way around it. I thought Liberty was much more physical than us and really took it to us. At halftime they had 11 offensive rebounds and we had six. We were struggling. Obviously we miss Zoe, but we have other people who can play and they just have to step up right now. It’s a good experience for them.

I was really proud of them in the second half. We outrebounded them on the offensive glass 12-2 in the second half, which was a great turnaround. We outscored them 43-22 in the second half, and they didn’t score for the last 8:48. Defensively we did a much better job. Cadence had 11 rebounds, which was big. Kamora was just in here and went 3-of-5 from three when we were struggling to score. Camille gave us scoring punch inside and stepped up. Anzy also did a really good job on the offensive end—seven offensive boards and 4-of-5 from the field. A lot of people contributed when we really needed it, and hopefully that gives us a little confidence before we go on the road this weekend. It’s a tough game up at Seton Hall.

Reporter: I covered it all. Profound words of wisdom. Wes, you had a young lady hit three three-pointers there. If you could speak a little more to Kamora Pruitt and her skill set—she seems to be able to play both the guard and forward spots.

Moore: Yeah, definitely. She can play the guard or the forward for us some. For a freshman, she’s got ice water in her veins. Even Sunday she did a nice job when she went in and hit some jump shots when they took the three away. That’s what we saw in her when we recruited her—her ability to knock down threes and stretch the floor a little bit. She’s got good size. Defensively she needs to learn to stay focused and locked in, but we really needed her tonight and she hit some big shots for us. I’m glad we had her out there.

Reporter: How important is a game like that right now for her early in the year as she makes this transition?

Moore: Hopefully that helps her confidence, although I don’t know that she’s ever struggled with confidence. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her hesitate to pull the trigger. Still, it’s good for her to see the ball go through the hole, and it’s good for Ansley to make some plays. They both have to learn to defend better, but our whole team does. I’ll be honest—in the first half they just blew our doors off. They got downhill to the rim almost anytime they wanted. It was really frustrating. We had a couple of left-handed kids who are really good at attacking the rim and we let them go with their dominant hand. We have to learn to pay attention to the scout and take away strengths.

What turned it around in the second half was that we defended better and we rebounded. They were a lot more physical than us and competed better in the first half, but I’m proud of our team for at least turning that around.

Reporter: Update on Zoe—she didn’t play today. Was that a precautionary thing?

Moore: We’ve known it’s her hamstring. We got an X-ray, which was clean, but an X-ray doesn’t show you a whole lot about the muscle. She’s scheduled for an MRI tomorrow, and hopefully we’ll get results quickly. Hamstrings are tough, so I don’t really know for sure what her status will be.

Reporter: When she’s out, is this an opportunity for others to find themselves and shine?

Moore: Yeah. Poor Dez had to play 40 minutes tonight, so give her a lot of credit for doing a great job running the team. We’ve got to weather this a little bit. We need Kashi to also be able to run the point for us right now, especially with Zoe out. They’ve got to step up, but we also need other people to step up and give us some scoring punch because we lose a big part of our offense when Zoe is out.

It’s definitely a challenge, but hopefully the first half was us kind of working our way through the transition period without Zoe, and the second half we figured it out a little better. That’s all we’ve got right now. Hopefully that helped their confidence and we can come out with a little momentum this weekend against Seton Hall. I think we beat them here at home last year by eight, so we know it’s going to be a really tough game up there—Big East opponent on the road.

Reporter: This looks like a team that can swing the ball, play five-out or four-out, and get drives to the basket. You have to play through contact and hit free throws, and that didn’t happen.

Moore: That didn’t happen. I don’t know what to say about the free throws. In practice we’re trying to hit 80% and we’re doing it almost every day. We do those things where you have to hit a certain total or we run a little bit, but I’m probably going to have to amp that up and look at shooting more free throws under pressure. We’ve been doing it, but we need to do more of it. We’re better than that. We left 14 points out there and we’ve got to fix that.

Reporter: Do you see drawing fouls as a weapon?

Moore: Yeah. I thought we did a great job of that Sunday. In Charlotte we shot 33 free throws. We’re attacking, getting to the line, and getting the ball inside and drawing the foul. We got both of their posts in foul trouble tonight. From that standpoint I like that we’re being aggressive and getting downhill. At the same time, we’re standing around a little bit too much, not swinging the ball enough, and staying on one side of the court. We’ve got a lot of stuff to clean up.

We can’t keep kicking it down the road. We have to figure it out in a hurry because all these games are important. You can’t just say ACC play isn’t starting for a few weeks. All these games are big when you’re trying to put together a resume that warrants hosting in the first and second round, or that affects your matchups when you get to the NCAA Tournament. Liberty is a good team and this will be a good win at the end of the year, but we know we’re going to see Power Four teams that have a lot of talent and a lot of depth.

Reporter: You could say Power Five with Seton Hall—Big East. How big is this game?

Moore: It’s a huge game. In the Big East you’ve got UConn, Seton Hall, St. John’s. We’ve got Georgetown next week, so we’re playing the Big East. They’re used to playing UConn, so I don’t think we’re going to intimidate them. We’re going to have to come out and play well.