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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 2, 2013Bobbie KelseyTHE MODERATOR: The women's basketball team plays a pair of games this week hosting Boston College in the Big Ten ACC Challenge on Thursday at 7:00 p.m. at the Kohl Center before traveling to Marquette on Saturday for a 7:00 p.m. tip in Milwaukee against the Golden Eagles. Head coach Bobbie Kelsey is here. We'll have opening comments and take questions. COACH KELSEY: We had a nice trip to Nashville. We had a good time with the line dancing and the honky‑tonking down there, but we had business to take care of as well. We did that in our first game, fell a little short in our second game. I did like the fight I saw in the kids in that Vanderbilt game. They could have folded it up and called it a day, but they didn't. We would have liked to have won the game obviously, but it was a different type of body language in that game as opposed to the Alabama loss. We still have work to do, but we're going to get ready for Boston College on Thursday. Q. What is the significance of the Big Ten ACC Challenge? COACH KELSEY: It's always significant when you can play a school from a conference that is known for basketball, has done really well nationally, on the national stage. ACC teams always compete well in the NCAA Tournament and also throughout the year. So for us to be able to play the caliber of team that's from the ACC, it helps us to get ready for what we're going to be seeing in our own conference, and hopefully we learn something from those games winning as opposed to losing. It's always nice to play one of the power six conferences‑‑ five, and play some of those teams. It gives you a good understanding of what NCAA teams look like. Q. How is Dakota Whyte coming on as a point guard? Just looking at turnovers and assists, 13 to 10 or something like that through six games. That's pretty good. COACH KELSEY: Dakota has come a long way. She's probably made the most improvement on our team as far as just overall play. We need her to do that. She looked really poised and confident in that Vandy game despite some of the pressure she was facing. She played 37 minutes. It was almost like I would have never thought I couldn't take Dakota out, but it's getting to the point where she can't come out of the game. She's a really quick guard. She has a really quick first step, and she can get to that basket pretty much when she wants to, but she has to do a better job of reading the defense sometimes and not forcing passes. I think the more she plays against that type of competition, the more confident she is. She wants to do well, and she has done well, and we need her to do well. All those things are coming into place, and I'm very happy for her because she's worked very hard to get to this point. Q. Bobbie, if we could go to the end of the week for the Marquette game, the men's side, Marquette‑Wisconsin, that rivalry is pretty well defined, pretty heated, pretty intense. How would you assess the rivalry on the women's side? COACH KELSEY: The women's side is not as heated as the men. You always want to beat Marquette just because they're right down the road and they're in your backyard. And in your state. We want it to be as heated as the men's. I think they gear up to play us and we do them. The games have been really close the last two years. They beat us by, I think, two my first year, and we beat them by, I think, two or something last year. It's been a little back and forth. We always look forward to playing the in‑state schools, just the state bragging rights. Marquette is a very seasoned program. Terri's done really well there with the program. But we expect to do the same here. They've just had a little bit more time to do it than we have here. But it will be a good game. Q. Taylor Wurtz had a good game. Granted, you're only six games into the season, but how much of a difference has she made from last season to this year? COACH KELSEY: Well, just getting healthy is obviously a big key to her success. Taylor is the type of player that, when you need a basket, Taylor can get you a basket. She can make very difficult shots, ones that you don't see a lot. She just has that talent. I always tell the kids a Taylor shot is not your shot. She can make those that everybody else can't do on the team. So we look for Taylor to attract a lot of defense and make that extra pass. But if she feels like she has a shot, she has the green light to shoot it. By evidence of her play this weekend, she's really shown that, despite the back injury, she's come back really strong and ready to lead our team. Q. One of your mentors reached a milestone of late, 900 wins. Can you put that in perspective? Can you see yourself getting to 900 wins as Tara has? COACH KELSEY: No. Did everybody hear that? Tara has been coaching for over 30 years. She's never been an assistant. That gives her some years to collect a lot of wins, and she's been winning from the beginning. But that was a different time, a different era. Anybody that coaches 35, 40 years, they need to probably get their head examined. Especially in this day and age with all the media and all the social media and everybody critiquing everything that you do and don't do. We see it in every sport‑‑ football, women's basketball, men's basketball. So I really can't see myself coaching that long. If I do, I mean, it's good. I love it. But those legends, Tara and Sylvia Hatchell and different ones that have been doing‑‑ Geno and Muffin McGraw, they've been doing it for a long time. I try not to compare myself to those folks because, again, they're legend. One day you'd like to be a legend, but if it doesn't happen, I'm enjoying my time now coaching. But I always tell Tara, and I've told her this through the years, I don't know how she's done it this well for this long, with the academic standards that Stanford has and trying to find those players that are not just smart at that level, but also talented enough to help her win at a national pace year after year after year. It's astonishing, it really is. She's a legend. Kids want to play for her. The weather's not bad in California either. So what's not to love? Q. Vandy shot, what, 50 percent or whatever it was the other day. But defensively, do you like what you're seeing? I'm sure there's room for improvement as well. COACH KELSEY: Oh, yeah, I'm liking it. We've held most of our opponents to a low shooting percentage, particularly from the three‑point line, teams that are relying on that three‑point shot. We had allowed them to beat us that way. Vandy is just a different kind of team, one we don't see a whole bunch. They took advantage of their quickness and their shooters as well. They're a well‑oiled machine. Melanie Balcomb is a great coach. And it shows with her players; that they understand their roles, they fill them, and they get the ball to where they need to get it very efficiently. We're a younger group and different roles‑‑ every year is different. Like Nicole had to play a little bit more last year, but now she has to help at the point. Dakota wasn't where she is last year. Taylor is coming off the injuries. We don't have those pieces quite year after year in the same spots doing the same things. Sometimes that redundancy really helps because you know exactly what you're supposed to be doing. Again, that program has been very storied for a long time. We'll get there. It just takes us a bit longer. But our kids are willing and they work hard to try to do what we ask them to do. We're very proud of them, and they're going to continue to work hard and make Badgers proud. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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