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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS (WOMEN)

October 29, 2009

Kevin Borseth

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

KEVIN BORSETH: Good morning, everybody. Thank you for showing up at this crisp hour of the morning. We're excited to be here, excited to get another year going. Got a lot of new faces in our program, and we're looking forward to some good things.
With that I'll open it up to any questions you may have.

Q. What kind of role do you expect red shirt senior Ashley Jones to play this season?
KEVIN BORSETH: Well, right now we've been practicing now for a couple weeks, and don't know exactly who's going to play or where they're going to play at this point right now, but A.J. has got a lot of experience, she's been there before, she understands the urgency level of the game, very good athlete, obviously, and is going to see some court time.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about being into your third year now. Obviously last year wasn't exactly what you wanted, especially after such a positive start in your first year. Have the kids bought into it now, and especially with losing so many kids, do you feel like your style has really caught on with the girls you've got?
KEVIN BORSETH: We've been here -- really we've
recruited two classes that came in, and Courtney and Carmen in the sophomore class didn't really play a whole lot last year, and of course we've got six freshmen coming in this year that we've recruited that haven't really seen the system yet. We're building from the bottom up. I think the players right now that we've got have all adjusted well. I feel this year's team, group harmony is very good. For the most part the first two years went as predicted. First year was better than expected and the second year was a little more difficult because your expectations are higher.
I think the kids have bought in for the most part. They seem to be excited about the year, and the team harmony is really good, and the spirit is really good, so that's important to us.

Q. What will your freshman class bring to the team this season?
KEVIN BORSETH: Well, that's a hard question because what about the upper classmen? I think that's probably an equally important question at this point right now. We need to find a balance someplace. I think last year our biggest problems that we had lay in the latter part of the games, scoring baskets down the stretch, and we've got to find kids that have the ability to do that. We think we've got some younger kids that can do that, but any time you bring in young kids they're wet behind the ears and it's a little more difficult.
So there's going to be some growing pains that go with it but you're going to see some kids with some court time. Not sure exactly who and in what capacity, but we're sure we've got some kids that are going to be able to contribute to our success.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about where you're at right now with recruiting in terms -- you've got Jenny Ryan and Nya Jordan mostly in-state. Talk about that and what the battles have been like on the recruiting trail with battling Michigan State and some of the other regional powers.
KEVIN BORSETH: Well, we really feel good with the kids that we brought in. We feel very good. We think we had a very strong recruiting class. We represented ourselves very well in the state. We think we've got a good, solid base of kids that's going to help resurrect our program. We're being very selective of the kids we're trying to recruit for the upcoming season. We're doing well. We've got some verbal commitments obviously that we can't make comment on and our 2011 class seems to be coming along very well.
To be perfectly honest with you, I'm happy when the Michigan kids stay in Michigan. I really am. I think for a long time, I think the state of Michigan because they had basketball that was being played in the fall where everybody else was playing in the wintertime, kind of made us an open state where a lot of people came in and evaluated and took our talent out of state. So if we get them, Michigan State gets them, I'm happy, because at least our kids are staying at home.

Q. What are your team's goals for the season?
KEVIN BORSETH: Somebody asked me that yesterday, too. Team goals. I don't know that we really sit down and talk about goals. You know, you've got to go through and you've got to condition your kids for just about everything -- every imaginable scenario, from bench decorum to last-second heroic plays that will develop a shot to win the game for you, and we're so busy doing those kind of things that we don't necessarily sit down and say, okay, we want to win 20 games, we want to finish first place in the conference, we want to get to the NCAA Tournament. I just think there's goals inside of you every year that tells you you want to get into the NCAA Tournament. I think that's really what every program wants to do, get in there, represent their conference and kind of go from there.
I don't know that we really talk about it, but I think deep down inside, each one of us wants to have a good year obviously, we want to have a harmonious year, we want to get into the NCAA Tournament and see where we can go from there. Without saying that, I believe the players feel that.

Q. What kind of force do you expect Krista Phillips to be this year for you?
KEVIN BORSETH: Well, KP, I'll tell you what, defensively, she's solid, she rebounds extremely well, she understands what we're doing on that end of the floor, and that's a very important end of the floor for us.
Offensively she's one of those bigger statured kids that likes to play with her face to the basket, and I think that frustrates fans when they watch because she's not one of those kids that gets down around the basket, and plays a lot of straight up-and-down stuff. KP has to do well, she does. She's been around for two years, we've been around each other. I think she's learned a lot in the two years that we've been here. Obviously everything that she sees is not going to be new to her. I think she has to do well if we're to do well.

Q. Can you survey the conference right now as it is, what you see in terms of who's going to be strong and who might be surprising? And also, on top of that, can you talk about the last year of the 18-game schedule, and do you like going back to a 16-game conference schedule after this?
KEVIN BORSETH: I'll try to address your first question. I think Jim has done a great job at Ohio State of making a national recognizable team right now. Jim I think is going to be able to compete. He's got a great squad. Of course with the big kid in the middle and the Prahalis kid at the guard spot, he's got just a great squad and he does a great job. Jim's program, Ohio State, is probably going to be on the national forefront, and we're excited about that for Jim and his program, for our conference, as well.
I think Michigan State is going to do extremely well. When I first got here and now, I'm seeing the same players. They've been here now for quite a few years, and of course they've been very strong and they made a strong run last year in the national tournament. Those two seem to jump out at me more so than anybody else does.
In terms of who's surprising and upcoming, I'm too busy mowing my own grass and mending my own fence to worry about who's up and coming, but I think the two schools that jump out at me are those two.
With regard to the conference schedule, I really felt like our biggest concern wasn't in terms of scheduling, was our inability to fit enough games in the timeframe that we had from the start of the season to the conference tournament. For those of you that don't know, our conference tournament is a week earlier than the men's is, so we take away some scheduling date opportunities. Our last two years we didn't play a full slate of games because we couldn't fit all of our games in. So they were squeezed together.
Going back to 16 games in our conference makes sense. I don't know that you realize how strong the Big Ten is until you get in here and you have got to compete night in and night out and you grind it out with these people. And after listening to Jim and some of the veteran coaches here, you beat each other up. I think when you beat each other up, it takes to take your records and put them down, and maybe makes your conference not look as strong. I think being able to go out and play against two extra non-conference games against obviously non-conference opponents and being successful will help you on the national stage hopefully when it comes time for getting picked for the NCAA Tournament.

Q. I was wondering, what are your plans to improve records on away games?
KEVIN BORSETH: I want to tell you, I think for the most part every school in the country struggles when they go away from home. I think that's pretty much the norm. I'll tell you, we work with our kids, one possession at a time. That's what we do. I don't know that we look at game scenarios and try to count ahead or try to get too much ahead of ourselves, trying to break that down each halftime down into five-minute segments and playing. If you can get through the first five, try to get to the next five. When you go on the road, teams play better at home. I think it's true with us, it's true with Purdue, it's true with Ohio State, it's true with everybody.
I don't know that we're really looking at that as being a primary concern so much as we are trying to get all of our kids into the mix because we've got so many fresh kids right now coming in that don't have any game experience, and I've felt the thorn of experiences worth a lot more than the wilderness of warning, and we don't have a lot of experience at this point. We're looking to just try to get that in. That's our first concern before we get to the away games, but that will be a concern when we do play on the road.

End of FastScripts

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