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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 4, 2013Bobbie KelseyCOACH KELSEY: We played our first real competition last night, and I was pleased with the kids the way they came out and really jumped on Winona State. It's a good little scrappy team. They gave us fits with some of the shots they were putting up and screening our bigs in and a lot of different things. But that's what you expect in an exhibition game. We don't match up really well with some of the teams and that makes it hard for us. But when we do the things we're supposed to do and take advantage of our size, I think that's what really pushed us forward in the game. So I was pleased with a lot of the play. But there are always areas to improve. Q. What's it mean to bring in state schools kind of like the men's team does with Stevens Point coming to town on Thursday? COACH KELSEY: It means a lot. We have a lot of state schools in the state. Obviously, some are bigger than others. But we always like to play some of the teams that are closest to Madison and there are a lot of good teams. There are a lot of good Division II teams and Division I teams obviously. But it's good because the crowd can come and see the kids that are from Wisconsin. We had a nice little crowd from Winona State. They had a lot of fans. I was surprised I looked over and was like wow, those are a lot of folks. But those are home‑state girls, a lot of them are. It just makes for a good environment for an exhibition game. You don't expect a lot of people to come to your exhibition game, so it was a nice crowd. Q. Why should fans be excited and optimistic about your team this year? COACH KELSEY: We have a lot of depth. We returned a lot of scorers from last year. Obviously, Morgan Paige, and Jacki Gulczynski led our team last year in scoring. Cassie Rochel is in that mix. But the excitement is when you have Taylor coming back from a back injury, and her able to finish her career on the court, you also have Michala Johnson who is a transfer that really showed last night why we all should be excited to watch her play. She can just do some things that we haven't seen in a long time here. You also have AnnMarie Brown that is back from an ACL injury. So we have a lot of kids that are able to step in and help and give us the depth that we need, but also give us a lot of scoring power out there. That was our problem last year, very anemic scoring. But with injuries, those kids were giving their all. But to have more kids that are able to shoot the ball and had that inside‑out punch with Michala being down there. Obviously, you have Jacki getting down there a little bit. But then Malayna Johnson, Little Johnson, she's not so little, but Baby Johnson, I guess, in age. She's going to get better. Malayna's just trying to figure out what she's supposed to be doing. A lot is coming at her. She's done a nice job. She's really improved in the time that she's been here, so we're very excited about her. Just told her run and get rebounds. Don't worry about anything else. Just run the floor and get rebounds and everything else will fall into place. But she's an underdeveloped young player that's going to only get better with time. Q. How does the group you have coming in and the difference in personnel change what you want to do as a team and I guess trying to put your fingerprints on what you want to be as a program going forward? COACH KELSEY: Right. I think that because we can move the ball around and really spread it around, last year we had to depend on just two kids. That's hard when they have to play the whole game. There were no subs. I mean, those kids really toughed it out last year, and I was very proud of them. We showed that we still had some kick at the end of the year beating a very good Illinois team in a Big Ten tournament. I'm not sure anybody picked us except maybe Badger fans. But this is a new year. We have an opportunity to showcase a lot of different lineups, a lot of different combinations. But the anchor is Michala on the inside and Taylor on the outside. But Morgan has shown that she can put up a lot of points. She had 33 points against Penn State who was number 7. She's done a nice job. Jacki in our double overtime game last year at Ohio State, I mean, talking about Ohio State, she had 30‑some points. She played the whole game. They don't have to do that this year. But we're still looking for that scoring power that they have and just combine it with what we have that's now being able to play, it should bode well for us. But the ball still has to go in the basket, in there. But we're looking for big‑‑ I mean, we're just going to keep raising the bar that much higher now that we have those pieces in place. Q. What is the one thing that you look at your team and say if we do X better, we're going to be pretty tough? What is the biggest key for you? COACH KELSEY: Well, if we can stay healthy, I have a couple of them. If we can stay healthy, that falls on the trainers and me listening to the strength coach and trainers, and kind of working with those who may have some little naggy things and keeping them out of certain drills in practice and putting them in certain other ones. If we can take care of the ball, we led the Big Ten in turnovers. That is not a stat you want to lead in any league, football, it doesn't matter, you don't want to lead the league in turnovers. So we can take care of the ball. Those two things to me stand out the most. Obviously, we can't control the health. We can't bubble wrap the kids and put them out there. They have to be out there playing. But we can control our turnovers and taking care of the ball. Then if we run the floor, we've hung our hat on conditioning. I think some other kids from other teams this past weekend at the Big Ten tournament asked some of our kids what do you guys do? They're very intrigued by how we can sustain the energy with what we had last year. Just maybe six solid players that could get out there. So we're just looking to carry that forward with our conditioning. That's a weapon. If you can get up and down the floor, there is not much the other team can do unless they've worked out as hard as you have. We don't know what other people have done in their gyms, but we know we're going to work and get up and down the floor. That's been a weapon of ours. We like to use it, it comes in very handy. Q. What is the status of Cassie Rochel? COACH KELSEY: Right now, it's a day‑to‑day thing. Her back bothered her last year. She just fought through it. But we're not going to put her out there because we have some other folks that can carry the load. So she doesn't have to do what she needed to do last year. I don't know exactly what it is. I just worry about screens and boxing out. I leave that to the trainers and the doctors. But it's a situation where, again, it's a back. We don't want to jeopardize her health in any way just going forward in her life. But I don't know exactly what it is. But we'll see what she can do. She's gotten in practice a little bit. We're trying to figure out the soreness level. If you're sore two or three days after a workout, that's not a good thing. Everybody gets sore, but it should subside and you should come back the next day and be fine. So that hasn't been the case for her in some instances. So we're trying to figure out where she is and what she can do. But we're never going to put a kid out there that can't give us a hundred percent, because basketball's not that important. We want to win, but don't want to jeopardize her health. Q. With this exhibition game against Stevens Point, what do you use that for going into the Drake game, and what pieces of the puzzle still need to be locked into place when things start counting for real? COACH KELSEY: The exhibitions are just that. They give you an opportunity to see where kids are, where your offense is, the defense. Again, the match‑up wasn't great because they're little, and we're kind of big. You have big ones on the perimeter, little ones trying to play post defense because you've got to switch. It was just harder in exhibition games. Going with Stevens Point, they play a little bit more up and down. They have shooters. But they lost quite a bit of scoring and offense with some graduation. So you just want to take them as seriously as you can, and make sure your kids understand that just because they don't have maybe some pieces that they would have had if those kids were coming back. We know how we beat some folks with some less than pieces that we didn't have. So I think that if they have that understanding and we approach it that way, we should be able to score and do the things that we'd like to do. But exhibition gives you an opportunity to see where you are and have some film to show your kids exactly what you're talking about when you say, hey, I thought you could have done this different or this better, because in the game they don't remember. You can say you didn't get down there and they're like, I thought I did. Well, the film doesn't lie. The film is very honest. Sometimes it's hard to see it. But, again, you can do something about it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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