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NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCE

April 1, 2009

Sherri Coale

RICK NIXON: We'll begin with opening comments from Coach Coale.
COACH COALE: Well, obviously we're very excited to have an opportunity to go to St. Louis, and I think, for all of us, as you go through tough conference play and into post season, sometimes the Final Four can seem so far away.
But I have to credit our kids for their resiliency and their continued focus. We've had several injuries, off and on, as we've gotten to the final stretch of this season. And our guys have just pushed right through it and really been unflappable in the face of it.
And I'm proud of that. And I'm really proud of our young kids and our guard play, and that coupled with the seniors' experience and presence in the paint has been a nice combination for us.
And we feel very, very fortunate and very humbled by the fact that we get to complete in the Final Four against three great programs such as Louisville, Connecticut and Stanford.
RICK NIXON: Questions for Coach.

Q. I want to ask you, and I'm sure there will be other people asking about this whole guarantee thing with Courtney Paris, Coach Walz raised a real good point earlier today talking about the fact this is what seniors do, they put the pressures on themselves and it kind of takes the pressure off of the other players. He mentioned the fact that Whitney's played really well since this all happened. I want to ask you about how the other players have reacted to everything that's going on with Courtney and the guarantee.
COACH COALE: There's been much less reaction from our team and our players than there has from you guys, I'll guarantee you.
Really, I've said this all along: There can be no greater pressure placed on our guys than the pressure that they place on themselves. When they come to the University of Oklahoma, they come knowing that they're expected to win Big 12 Conference championships, get into the NCAA tournament, go deep in the NCAA tournament and fight for a chance to go to the Final Four and compete.
(Audio interruption.)
RICK NIXON: The question had to do with the guarantee.
COACH COALE: I was talking about our players and the expectancy they feel and the amount of pressure that they put on themselves to perform. It's always about our own expectancy of the accomplishment of our goals and I think our guys appreciated the vote of confidence that Courtney has in them.
I think more than anything, it was a statement delivered in an intimate Senior Night Ceremony, just talking about the impact of her education, her experience here, and how much it meant to her. She was searching for a way to quantify it.

Q. Let me ask you this: We talked about this in Oklahoma about the team and the responsibility that they already have and they already feel. Is that unusual, or is that something you've seen with all of your teams? Because you've talked a lot about this team and the responsibility that they take on themselves for stuff like this.
COACH COALE: If you do this thing right and you build a program that has success, and I think certainly those kids who fought their way to the national championship game in 2002 deserve a great deal of credit for the mindset that our players come in with.
But what you do when you put on that Oklahoma jersey is you are expected to win. And our guys get that. It's part of the culture at the University of Oklahoma. I think it extends beyond the women's basketball program and throughout the athletic department here.
When you come to Oklahoma, you're supposed to win. And I think the guys feel that and I think they take personal responsibility for it.

Q. Talk a little bit about what the twins -- the impact they've had on this program, when they first came here for the fans' sake it wasn't so much if you get to the Final Four but how many. And kind of correlate that into how this program has grown since the last Final Four.
COACH COALE: I think for anyone to say it's not when, it's how many, you probably don't know how hard it is to get there. And I know that that's -- perspective from the outside is sometimes limited for obvious reasons. You can't know how hard it is unless you're in the middle of it.
But I think it's important to note, too, that in the 2002 season, we were averaging around 5,000 fans per game. So it's not like nobody was coming to watch women's basketball. And in the season following the Final Four our attendance actually grew, even though we had graduated six seniors and had only one returning starter in our six man off that team that went to the championship game in 2002.
Our attendance grew that year, and I think that's important to point out because that's a reflection of our fan base and the loyalty that these people feel to the uniform and to the name on the front of the uniform, and that following year after the 2003 season and Courtney and Ashley came in, and we built on that fan base and have grown it and obviously there's been tremendous excitement.
People have been watching women's basketball at the University of Oklahoma for a long time.

Q. That said, though, the anticipation of the twins coming in here was pretty high, wouldn't you agree?
COACH COALE: Well, sure. They were the highest-ranked nationally ranked players that we had ever signed. We went to the 2002 national championship game without a single high school All-American on our roster. We had never signed a high school All-American much less the number one ranked player in the country. So, yes, excitement was very high.

Q. How has the program grown since the last Final Four? Talk a little bit about how it's changed, and you just said nobody knew who you guys were at the last Final Four. Now instead of being one of the hunters, you're one of the hunted.
COACH COALE: Like I said earlier, if you do it right, that's the way it's supposed to stay. Expectations are incredibly high. I've said for several years that the kids with the toughest assignment were those kids on the team in 2003 because everybody in America was watching them. For the first time for our program ever, everybody was watching what happened in women's basketball at the University of Oklahoma and not only did we graduate six seniors but then we promptly lost three kids to season-ending knee injuries; two of those were starters, one of them our only returning starter.
So that group of kids, I think, deserves a great deal of credit too. We got to the tournament that year. I still look back at that one and go, How did we do that? We got to the NCAA tournament.
And that was just the heart and the sinew and the will of a great bunch of kids. And when Courtney and Ashley came in, they added a mystique factor: Everybody wanted to see, first of all, twins, second of all, post guys of their size. We had not been necessarily a post-dominated team at all; we had been a guard-dominated team. And to have true presence in the post, people were excited about that.
You top that off with, oh, yeah, high school All-American status, best player in the high school coming into the University of Oklahoma. So there was a huge buzz about that and people were excited to see them, and when they did they weren't disappointed. Courtney had maybe the most phenomenal freshman season of any kid in recent years to come into the NCAA basketball. The only one that rivals it might be Maya Moore. So there was a great deal of excitement generated and our team capitalized on it and won some championships and has continued to press forward to where we are right now.

Q. I know you're not worrying too much about who is in the stands cheering you on, but, as you know, not only was Coach Bubba Paris there but Coach Stoops was there last night. Does that play any role in the growing legitimacy of your program to have that kind of star power in the stands?
COACH COALE: I tell you, the biggest role that Coach Stoops' presence plays is one of respect, and that's one of the great things of being a part of the athletic department at the University of Oklahoma is the mutual respect that is displayed coach to coach.
Jeff Capel may not have been seen on the big screen last night, but he's been with us every step of the way as the men's coach here. So there's lots of folks there. I'm sure if I go back and watch the film Toby Keith will be on the screen somewhere. He comes whenever he's in town. He's on the sidelines supporting our sport.
And I think it probably does play in. Maybe most especially with recruits and their families who are watching and understand how we're appreciated and supported here in our own state.

Q. Following up on that, Ben Roethlisberger is obviously a big name right now. What kind of contact does he have with the team as a whole, if any?
COACH COALE: Not a lot. Not a lot for basic reasons. He's kind of busy during most of our season. He comes down when he can. He came to a game earlier this year. And for obvious security reasons there's not a lot of contact with anyone.
But he is incredibly proud of Carlee and what she's doing here and her mission, and speaks so highly of that. And they have a nice, close relationship. They have a wonderful family. And we've all become huge Pittsburgh Steeler fans as a result.

Q. Do you expect to see him at the Final Four?
COACH COALE: Oh, I expect we will.

Q. I don't know how much you've seen Connecticut play since you guys saw them back in November. But just talk a little bit about what your impressions were of them then and do you think they've improved or do you think teams have generally closed the gap on them a little bit?
COACH COALE: Well, I think the night that they played us, I searched and searched and searched and I couldn't really find a flaw. They defended. They rebounded. They took care of the basketball. They made shots.
There wasn't really anything that they didn't do well. They were almost flawless that night in Storrs. I've seen them be human a little bit since then but never for 40 minutes. And I do think they're different. Caroline Doty was in the lineup when we played them in November. Obviously she is not now. That means Hayes plays more.
And they are a little bit different in terms of how they attack you now. But no less lethal. I don't necessarily see anyone closing the gap. I think their senior leadership continues to be outstanding with Renee at the point. They're going to keep moving in the right direction.
But, you know, basketball is a game of nights and anything can happen and that's why there are four of us going to St. Louis.

Q. I'm curious about your past as an English teacher. I was wondering if you import any of the methods you used as a high school teacher as a collegiate coach. And also I'm curious what books you like to teach.
COACH COALE: Great questions, both of them. It's kind of funny. I do this little exercise with my team. We call it post-game thoughts, in which following a game they respond to what happened in the game. Not a synopsis of -- we all know what just happened in the game, but what did you learn from the game, what do you need to do better next time, what did you struggle with, what did you see that you would do differently if you had to do it over again.
In other words, an analysis. And they turn those in to me and they're helpful to me because I can see how a kid's feeling as a result of that. It's not so much what they say sometimes but how they write it. It's interesting that I have to read those with a pen or pencil far away from me because my tendency to jump in there and put an extra O on T-O when it's supposed to mean "also" instead of a preposition. It's hard to fight that grammatical urge sometimes.
But as far as strategies go, I think as a basketball coach I often apply many of the strategies I used as an English teacher and that everything reverberates back to life. Everything is a life experience if you look at it through the right lens and you can learn from it and it can teach you many things about how to be and how to be successful and happy in this world and be a functional piece of this great action.
As far as books that I like to teach. I love to teach Pat Conroy. I absolutely love to teach The Prince of Tides. If I were in an English classroom right now I would teach My Losing Season. One of my all-time favorites. I love Emerson and Thoreau and Chaucer, and I have a lot of favorites. And Anna Quinlan is my hero -- or heroine, as I should say.

Q. Just wonder what you thought of Renee Montgomery.
COACH COALE: What I think of her?

Q. As a player and a leader.
COACH COALE: I think she's probably the best point guard in the country. I wouldn't trade my Danielle Robinson for anyone, but we talk a lot about Renee Montgomery and how she plays and how she leads and how she has grown as a player and a leader over the course of her career at Connecticut. We talk about her demeanor and ability to manage and control games.
So in many ways she's kind of been a mentor for Danielle and with her development as a sophomore. I think Renee just plays at the right speed. I think she always goes at a speed at which she can be successful and the speed at which her team can be successful. And one of the most important traits of a point guard is to have the best game of her teammates in her eyes at all times, and I see Renee Montgomery doing that.
RICK NIXON: Thank you, Coach.

End of FastScripts

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