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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 28, 2010

Matthew Mitchell

THE MODERATOR: We'll start with Coach Mitchell. Coach, we'll open it up to you.
COACH MITCHELL: I appreciate greatly this turnout today, you coming out and being interested in what's going on in our program, covering our program.
We are having a good time with these players on the court trying to prepare for what will be a very challenging season. It's been really good up to this point. So we are excited about what lies ahead, have a lot of work to do. Think that the 2010/2011 season could have a lot of possibilities for us.
So we're looking forward to that and I'll answer any questions that you have.

Q. Talking about the schedule, most challenging schedule you've ever had to work with?
COACH MITCHELL: Certainly at my time at Kentucky, the preconference portion is the most challenging. We feel like we've always tried to tailor the schedule to the team we believe we can have. It's always important to prepare for the Southeastern Conference. We feel like we've done that.
We had an opportunity with the Duke game to get on ESPN. Those opportunities haven't come around all the time, so we felt like we needed to take advantage of that for the program and also for the players. Have some good games against some very good opponents, so we're excited about that.

Q. Last year you were rated pre-season 11th and now it's kind of a different story. What about that?
COACH MITCHELL: Well, I think I sat here around a year ago and said that it didn't really matter that we were rated 11th in the pre-season. My attitude hasn't changed a whole lot on that. I just don't think it matters one bit where we're rated. It's certainly not anything that crosses my mind as I think about what we need to do to prepare this particular group of players and what we need to be doing in practice, in team sessions, all the different ways you try to get a group of young women to come together as a team. The pre-season rankings don't factor into that at all for me.
So, you know, I think that we are, as a coaching staff, seeing a lot of possibilities that this could be a very good team if we work hard and do what we need to on the practice floor. We could be a very mediocre team. I guess that's why we'll play the games and see where that shakes out.

Q. Being ranked like that signifies you're a team to be reckoned with. How is that not a distraction for the team?
COACH MITCHELL: The way it's not a distraction for the players is you create an environment every day where ranking doesn't matter. That happens on the practice floor. The most important job I have as the coach of this program is to make certain that the environment is such for our young women to become their very best. So you don't become your very best if you're not ready to roll every single day you hit that practice floor, you're not prepared when you go to the classroom, you're not ready to do the right things off the court.
If anybody thinks we have a chance to be good, that's fine with me. We certainly want to be respected as a program. That would be very nice. But as it pertains to this team, none of that will help us a whole lot.

Q. What are your impressions of Jennifer O'Neill?
COACH MITCHELL: I think she's a very talented offensive player at this point in time. I think she is a player that wants to be at Kentucky, which is so exciting for me, because that's what we've been trying to find, are players of that caliber, that are highly rated in this country, that Kentucky's not their second or third or fourth choice, but their first choice, and that's where they want to be because they believe in what we're doing. I think she's fully invested there.
That excites me greatly because of her attitude. Has a long, long way to go defensively right now, as most of our freshmen do. But her possibilities are extremely great here at Kentucky. If she will do the right things, I think she could be a very, very good player for us.

Q. How do you convince a kid from the Bronx that she wants to come to Kentucky?
COACH MITCHELL: I don't really know the answer to that. I have no idea (laughter).
Matt Insell and I, who arguably in women's college basketball probably have the two most Southern accents, were walking down the street in Manhattan one day getting ready to go over to her school. I said, How in the world did we get here? I think we're about to get this kid and I don't know how that happens.
Seriously, I think what we were able to convince Jen was in our sincerity about trying to help her become a complete person here at Kentucky. That's our goal and our vision for all of our players. Some kids that interests and some kids maybe it doesn't. But for Jen, I think she felt like she could come here and have a group of people, not only her coaches, but all of the tremendous support we have, that could really help her develop as a person, a basketball player, a student.
So I think all of these recruiting decisions and everything generally comes down to people, are we the people she wanted to be with. I think that's what happened.

Q. With so much distraction in terms of social media these days, have you said anything to your players about Twitter? I know there's been some controversy.
COACH MITCHELL: Well, we have a very simple formula for how we handle the way that we do our business with women's basketball at Kentucky. It's not always easy, but it's very simple. There's not a lot of confusion. We want you to be very honest. We want you to be hard-working. We want you to be disciplined.
We do talk to the players at the beginning of the year. We try to be mindful at all times of our responsibility of how we want to carry ourselves and the message that we want to send as members of this program. So we consider it a great privilege to be at Kentucky. We know that it's nothing that we've done, so people admire Kentucky athletics because of what it means to the Commonwealth, not necessarily because of what we personally do. So we feel like we have a responsibility to carry ourselves in a way that will reflect positively on the university.
So I think the way that you handle that is you try to set a tone in your program every single day and you don't talk about it once a year or you don't have a meeting here or there; you're constantly trying to help these young people understand what's the right thing to do. Sometimes they do what they're supposed to and sometimes they make mistakes and you try to help them from that.
So it's a crazy world with all that. It's just very foreign to someone like me that all of that is going on at all times. As far as social media goes, they seem to share every thought that pops in their mind. I was just thrilled there was no social media when I was their age because I wouldn't want anyone to know those things.

Q. We had Blue Madness, and now you're on YouTube. How does that feel?
COACH MITCHELL: It feels great. It's one of the crowning achievements of my career (laughter). I know my parents back in Mississippi are extremely proud of me.

Q. How did you learn it?
COACH MITCHELL: I'm just a naturally talented dancer, first of all (laughter).
I get into these situations. I know you'll find this surprising, but I'm pretty laid back, nice guy. I don't cause a lot of fuss most of the time. So when people bring these ideas to me, maybe I'm just dumb, but they say, This is going to be great.
Amber Smith and I got up in my office a couple days after practice and we went on the YouTube. If you don't know this on the YouTube, on the Internet, there's a site there on the Internet, YouTube, and we looked at the Duggy. If you don't know this, there's lots of instruction on the Duggy out there on the Internet. So we just rehearsed a few times there. We had a big laugh. It was funny.
I said, I'm going to do this when I get out there. She's like, No, you can't do that. We just had a lot of fun with it. That brought me to standing underneath those bleachers before I walked up those steps. I was thinking, You idiot. Why did you think it was a good idea? I don't know exactly whose idea it was. Maybe it was (indiscernible) or somebody's. I don't know.
Amber Smith, to answer your question, was my instructor.

Q. Bad knee and all?
COACH MITCHELL: Bad knee and all. That shows you what talent she has. She just pointed. She didn't actually have to do it yourself.

Q. So you're coachable?
COACH MITCHELL: I am, very.

Q. Amber has a future as a choreographer?
COACH MITCHELL: I don't know if you call that a future of what you saw of me out there.

Q. If she can choreograph you...
COACH MITCHELL: I think she wants to be a college basketball coach. She needs to stick with that possibly.
I was very, very surprised at the reaction. Of course, it's not a real tough crowd. They're so excited. The people that come to Big Blue Madness are ready to cheer for something. So I just have the good fortune of going first. The bar's not real high when I go out there.
But I was surprised at the aftermath is what I was surprised with. You know, I was in Commonwealth the next night. 70-year-old women said they enjoyed the Duggy. College kids said they enjoyed it. Everyone in the spectrum in Commonwealth Stadium seemed to have seen the Duggy.

Q. You mentioned defense.
COACH MITCHELL: Thank goodness we're on to some basketball now (laughter).

Q. You mentioned the freshmen are maybe still catching up on defense. Do you still see that as being kind of the signature of this team?
COACH MITCHELL: Well, we'll see. I've found it interesting. You know, last season's team had such a great run, were so aggressive. I would go out and speak at clinics. People want to know what you're doing. It really hit me. People would say, Your defense this, your defense that. It really was not mine, it was those players. We're really not doing anything complicated or anything new or innovative. Just that team decided that they were going to do the work every single day.
So we'll find out. This team clearly, this edition has the athletic ability to do it, and they have shown early that they'll work hard. So I think that we can play that way, and we're going to try to play that way. I think it's fun and exciting. I think the players feel really good about themselves because they actually go into practice and have to work extremely hard. If they can make it work on game day, it's a great payoff. You see the confidence grow in the team as the season goes on. At least that's what we saw with last year's edition.
I would like to play that way. That's our plan. But the players will ultimately decide whether they have the desire to actually do it. I mean, you really have to do it all out, give everything that you have on the defensive end. We'll just see if they're interested in doing that.

Q. Do you have the personnel to do that?
COACH MITCHELL: Yes, we definitely have the personnel. I'm not concerned about the personnel. We don't have a lot of slow players that can't move laterally that you need to arrange in a zone defense or something like that, that you're asking them to play an up-tempo style. We're built for it.

Q. I know the expectations haven't changed, but when you reach the point where you did last year, how difficult is it to do it again?
COACH MITCHELL: It's very difficult. It's difficult to do it one time. I mean, what's so funny is the way that it all unfolds. We started the season as a team that was not even supposed to be competitive. Then we get to the point in the season where we have a shot at the SEC championship. Then you get into the NCAA tournament, but you're still a 4 seed, so no one's expecting you to go to a Final Four. I don't think anyone in this room was thinking we were a Final Four team or anything like that.
So now that team just puts it together and does a great job. The matchups were great on how the committee seeded the tournament. All those factors go into it. I think it's all very difficult.
I think there were a lot of very good basketball teams last season that didn't make the Elite 8, didn't make the Final Four, maybe got upset in the first round. That is just college basketball. It happens all the time.
So to answer your question, it's extremely hard to do it anytime, much less follow it up another year. So that's why my vision is really not far off in the distance. We definitely set down some goals for them to shoot for, but it's really about trying to get this bunch to become the best team they can become. Then they have some great possibilities. Then maybe you have a chance to do something like that.

Q. What is it you don't know about this team that you would like to know or maybe not like to know?
COACH MITCHELL: With every team, at this point in the season, there's a lot of unknowns. So you can't pick out just one thing.
What we've discussed a little bit before, just the uncertainty of the young ones being able to come up and play defense at the level they need to, being able to think on their feet when you're moving very fast. All those things I think we'll figure out.

Q. When you were talking about not looking back at last year, did you talk a lot in the off-season about, Everybody talked about this was a first for the program last year, but last year was last year? Did you have to kind of remind them at all that was a year ago and this is a new year?
COACH MITCHELL: I think possibly what helps with that as far as not resting on your laurels or looking back. I think that's the question. Victoria Dunlap, Amber Smith, Carly Morrow are now seniors. They've heard the same approach every year. And I believe this just through experience: this is the only time that this group of players will ever be together. So it's a unique opportunity. It's the only opportunity they have.
You know, I always want to try to make it about the players and make it about their opportunity. I don't want to make it about our program. Of course, our program doesn't have a tremendous amount of history anyway. So I can't say, Well, we've been doing this for over... Even if I could, I don't think that's what I really need to be doing. This is Vic Dunlap's only senior year, this is Bernisha Pinkett's only redshirt freshman year. Keyla Snowden, who is a junior now, is hopefully a different person. As a sophomore, hopefully she's growing and changing.
You know, I don't know if I'm idealistic or what, but I'm not worried about if they look back and think something 'cause I've already told them that has no bearing and we're not going to be good at all. That's my fault if I let it be that comfortable in practice.
They need to be thinking in practice, How am I going to get my next breath here? How am I going to be able to get through this next drill? How am I going to be able to earn some playing time? That's how you control that, in my limited experience that I've had as a college head coach. That's my plan how to control that, if I can.

Q. What has impressed you most about this new batch of players?
COACH MITCHELL: They're athletic, talented. We continue to get more talented players into the program. I find myself needing to stop talking all the time because right when I'm getting ready to instruct the next pass, sometimes coaches, as coaches, we can try to inject ourselves too much into the situation. I found if I'll just sit back a little bit, I'm not saying just get totally out of it, but I'll notice they will just make some plays because they're so talented that we used to maybe have to point out 14 or 15 or 16 hundred times to another situation. Talented players make a big difference. They help you tremendously. So I've been struck with that.
Another thing that I just thought of is their ability to get into condition. We have run a tremendous amount, not only just in sprints that most normal teams do for conditioning, but our practices have been very run-heavy with getting up and down the court, trying to work on transition defense and offense.
I haven't seen them get to a mental breaking point. Maybe that speaks to their athleticism. Other freshmen, I can't get through this practice today, we have some meltdowns, have to work through them. Today if you guys show up, this will be the day all freshmen fall out and don't get through practice (laughter).
But those kind of things I've noticed with them.

Q. Victoria is going to be a marked player now. How much will it help her having A'dia on the floor at the same time? In other words, people can't just throw everything at her.
COACH MITCHELL: A'dia helps everybody on the court. Whether you're a marked player or not player, A'dia Mathies is unbelievable. A'dia Mathies is out of this world. Yesterday we got in the office after practice. I'm like, Man, did you see A'dia Mathies today? It's just incredible. So she helps tremendously.
She and Victoria are obviously very good players. So if we don't have a good season, it will be all coaching (laughter).

Q. What's different with that? What's she done different?
COACH MITCHELL: You know, I think maybe she has some more confidence in herself. So now if she had any tentative moments last year, I don't know that she did, but clearly now she knows I think what she has at her disposal as far as it goes to her skill set and what her skill set can accomplish.
She just is a very, very talented player. She defensively plays hard. A'dia and Victoria are both very special because they work as hard on the defensive end as they do on the offensive end. That, in my experience, hasn't always been the case with players, with really talented offensive players.
But A'dia, she and I have had conversations. A'dia's challenge right now is to figure out how good A'dia Mathies can be and that be her measuring stick because it would be very realistic for A'dia just to operate probably at 75% or 80% of capacity and be one of the better players around. Now the challenge for A'dia is to try to figure out how good A'dia Mathies can be because I think the best she can be would be one of the best players in the country.
That's really what we're trying to encourage her to do now. Don't take a day off in practice. She doesn't do that. Step up and be a more vocal leader, all these things that could really contribute to her putting it all together.

Q. You talk about the freshmen, the more talented program. As you get more talent, it creates battles, competition in practice. Does that make the returnees think, I got to get better now because she'll take my spot?
COACH MITCHELL: I would think that competition's healthy for any team that's trying to be very good. You know, it poses another challenge as a coach on how you figure all those things out, how you keep a cohesive team when there's so much competition.
What we're trying to do now is to put a high value on practice. The better we perform there, we just think that's going to show up in games. So no matter where your minutes are, if you play a lot of minutes, you play very few minutes, or if you play very few minutes, you're really contributing to us winning because we have to practice so hard. When you have 12 able-bodied players to get up and down the floor, that's just making your team that much stronger.
I think competition is good for this particular group.

Q. You spoke highly about the talent of your team. Does that also speak at the same time about the basketball IQ? How high is it?
COACH MITCHELL: That varies. So not every athletically talented or talented basketball player has a high basketball IQ. So that's not a great measure. You can have a player that's less talented that has a very high IQ that makes up for some things. Or you have a player like A'dia Mathies who is off the charts athletically, off the charts IQ-wise. So that kind of varies from player to player.

Q. What's the medical update on Amber? While she's not playing or if she doesn't play, what will you miss the most?
COACH MITCHELL: Well, the medical update first.
She has had a very productive rehabilitation process up to this point. She is I don't want to say ahead of schedule. That's not the right word. In our discussion, it's not a medical term, but she is doing everything she needs to do and doing it better than we would normally expect. The doctors are very pleased with her effort at this point.
She'll start jogging in a couple of weeks. She's in our hydro works now, which is she's doing some running, jumping, swimming, kicking her knee. She's very active right now in her rehabilitation.
We are not even talking about her future even beyond just day to day. We're just trying to get the knee as strong as it can be. Amber will be able to make whatever decisions she wants to make as far as trying to finish this season out, as far as coming back. Whatever that looks like, we'll make that decision when the knee's well.
What we will miss from her, it's just amazing how tenacious she would be at starting both our offense and our defense. So the defense, we're trying to teach a freshman, Jen O'Neill, how to start the defense. That all starts with ball pressure. So Amber was just relentless. She would pick it up, dog the ball all the way down the floor. She was always in the right position. She was always in denial. She was always talking. She was the catalyst of the defense. She started all that. I think that came from experience. I think that came from her being a junior, being able to embrace that role.
Crystal Riley is doing that better than Jen right now. Neither one of them are doing it as well as Amber has been able to do it. If you think about a healthy Amber Smith, we're just probably further along defensively right now. She also was great at pushing the ball. Jen and Crystal are a little bit closer to that offensively. So they are a little bit closer offensively.
Then Amber has done a fantastic job of staying engaged, being on the floor every day, talking to those two players, being really unselfish and spending some time and not thinking about her injury and how bad this is for her, feeling sorry for herself. So I've been very proud with her progress as a leader through all of this.

Q. Can you talk about the post options you have this season, how they're going to help?
COACH MITCHELL: Well, we have some interesting options there. Clearly Victoria is going to be big. A player that I am just blown away by her progress is Brittany Henderson. It's unbelievable what this kid has done from her freshman to sophomore year. It speaks to the hard work our people are doing. Tracy Simmons, our strength coach, has just worked so hard with this kid. She is so much more explosive and athletic. So she's a very good option for us.
Samantha Drake is extremely talented. She has matured physically. Most of the time when we recruited her, she was sort of a skinny kid. She has filled out and is strong, incredible hands, very high basketball IQ. Good option for us in the post.
Sarah Beth Barnette I think has grown a little bit, probably legitimately 6'2", 6'3", good sized, unbelievably versatile, can stretch the floor for us because she can shoot so well.
So those are the four traditional type posts that we'll try to rotate.
But then you have the ability to swing some kids in there like A'dia Mathies. You could go four guard lineup and A'dia just knows all the positions on the floor. So A'dia, there's some power forward matchups in the league, around the country, where the way we play defense, she could guard a power forward. I don't know how many power forwards could guard her. That's an interesting thing we'll have to see.
You know, coaches talk about wanting to experiment with different lineups. I don't know how realistic that is for us. But A'dia would be that. Then Maegan Conwright from Dallas would be another one. She's not very tall, about 5'9". She can jump out of the gym, very strong, get out in front on defense which would allow her to guard some taller players. Again, has perimeter skills.
We'll figure that out. But that's where my mind would be right now.

Q. When A'dia was in high school, she was a really good player. But something happened her freshman year. Were you expecting that from her? Were you expecting to see this kind of development so quickly?
COACH MITCHELL: Well, that's interesting. I was standing with Amber Smith on the sidelines yesterday. I said, Can you believe what all I've done with A'dia Mathies' development? The coaching I've done with A'dia Mathies, does it not blow you away, Amber (laughter)?

Q. Did she agree?
COACH MITCHELL: She had a big laugh like we all just had right here. I was saying that in jest.
It's hard to say exactly what happened. We tried to give her a supportive environment. We tried to make her understand that we believed in her. We tried not to make her totally come out of her comfort zone. She's sort of a quiet, shy kid. We didn't just jump down her throat the first day. We tried to bring her along slowly.
If any of those things helped, I don't know. I just know that probably more than anything she just got onto a college court and she started playing, and our style of play sort of suited what she wanted to do. We sort of gave her the ball and allowed her the freedom to go make some plays.
I think more than anything, she got on the court and said, Hey, I can do this. Also in high school, you get frustrated. They'll guard you with three or four people, they don't guard one or two of your teammates, maybe your coach doesn't push you as hard as you'd be pushed here because you can get away with more things. All those factors that go with high school. So maybe a combination of all those things.
But I think more than anything, she just probably found some confidence in herself that she could be good.

Q. Should she be mentioned in Player of the Year discussions, in your mind?
COACH MITCHELL: In my mind, and I don't make the decisions on who is Player of the Year, but yes. I mean, she's an incredible player.

Q. I want to ask you about Victoria, how has she grown over the course of the summer. As far as leadership, are you getting what you want out of her?
COACH MITCHELL: I hold her to such a high standard, there's days when I'm frustrated with her when I'm in that day-to-day. Then I have someone like Coach Insell or Coach Elzy or Coach Pillow or Pam Stackhouse say, Hey, Victoria did this as a leader, Victoria did that. You look back where we started. So she's done a great job.
She has progressed unbelievably while she's been here. She looks amazing on the court right now. She's really been slowed with a strained hamstring that slowed her down so I didn't have a good feel for her as far as how she was fitting in five-on-five because she hadn't played a whole lot. She comes out the first day she's cleared. You're like, Wow, she's a really talented player.
I think she feels like she's a better shooter from the perimeter. She made some perimeter shots the other day she wouldn't have made 365 days ago. I would say that's a source of improvement for her in her basketball game. She's definitely improved as a leader.

Q. Last year your team accomplished a lot. Anything in getting to the Final Four you think they should have accomplished?
COACH MITCHELL: No. When I look back at that team, could we have played better against Oklahoma? You can go through that story all you want to. That's basketball. When you lose, there's always reasons you could have won.
But that team became a team. What I mean by that is they had a bond with one another that let all personal accomplishments fade into the background. It was all about them being together and accomplishing something together. That's a team.
That is what this group that we have now. I tell them all the time, Don't get confused because you dress the same means you're a team, because you're wearing the same uniform means we're a team. That is something that is going to happen between them probably on an emotional level where they care about each other so much that they're not going to let each other down, they're not worried about what I do. I'm not worried about my stats, I'm worried about weather Kentucky wins.
As a coach, I need to try to create the environment where that kind of behavior is valued. That's what we're trying to do every single day.

Q. How has the fan reaction and expectations changed since when you came here several years ago? The crowds are more into it, and also in the off-season.
COACH MITCHELL: We've always been fortunate here for the last seven or eight years that we've had a very good core group of fans. We've been in that top 25 area of attendance. That's a real compliment to how much people care about Kentucky and women's basketball here.
The success, you know, when you win, people want to come out and watch a good basketball team. I've always told our marketing people who do such an unbelievable job, cover the town with promotions for our team to try to get people in, that the best marketing plan is to win, to win games, be exciting. So that last day of the year when we had a great, great season up to that point heading into our last home game, you have 7700 here, the place is packed, it's just electric. It's an incredible thing.
So then you go to the Elite 8. People just get more excited when you're successful. As you walk through the grocery store, things like that, you can tell that more people notice than when you were 16-16. So that and $1.59 will get you coffee over at Magee's where I go every morning. So it doesn't really matter.
But it is great for your people to be excited about what you're doing, the program. For the players, it's a lot more fun to play in front of 7700 than 700.

Q. How much disbelief were you in as things started unfolding last year?
COACH MITCHELL: Well, I was just excited for them. I don't know if 'disbelief'. My dad always raised us to say if something was too good to be true, it probably was. I have a little bit of that in me.
I'll be honest. When things start unfolding, as a coach, you're worrying: When is the disaster going to strike? It just didn't strike last year.
It was just a great, fun season to be around a of much kids that cared about each other, pulled together, had an amazing year.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach.

End of FastScripts

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