|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
WNBA ALL-STAR GAMEJuly 9, 2010Geno AuriemmaUNCASVILLE, CONNECTICUT THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. Are you a little more chilled than you would be if this were a typical Connecticut type of situation? COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah. It's a much different scenario for me coaching this team than if I was coaching my team at Connecticut. One is the age factor. You generally don't have to say things more than once, twice, and they get it, and then they do it. They're not young kids who don't know what you're saying or why you're saying it. So it's easier to coach them. They're very unselfish. The best players are the most unselfish ones. You have Sue and Dee who handle the ball a lot who are very unselfish. So that just kind of trickles down to the rest of the team. I don't see myself doing a whole lot of yelling and screaming with this team. Q. With the game tomorrow, obviously you have to take it very seriously, but it's usually a showcase type of situation. How do you kind of blend the two? COACH GENO AURIEMMA: It's All-Star weekend for them, you know. It's a great time for them to enjoy the fact that they've been named to the All-Star team, yet at the same time it's not your typical All-Star Game. We're trying to get started here on the process. I've got 11 players here who are, you know, pretty good. They may be 11 of the 12 that we take to the Czech Republic. I don't know that yet. But I do know one thing: these two days we've been together, then tomorrow and Sunday, the next time I have our whole team is the day of our first game, September 23rd. If the WNBA finals go to the fifth game, the fifth game is September 21st, which means that there's a pretty good chance that some of my best players won't be with me the whole month of September training camp. So not your typical, you know, get ready for a World Championship, but it's what we got. We have to deal with it. Q. (No microphone.) COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, today wasn't ideal. Only two baskets. You got 19 people. Felt like you were back in high school with varsity down one end and JV down the other. But you have to have that many people involved because you're always trying to identify who it might be that fits in the most. And you don't know going forward. Tamika Catchings didn't practice much because she's nursing a bad knee. You don't know what's going to happen going forward, unforeseen, if there's an injury or something. So you got to keep a lot of people involved. The hard thing is keeping people involved and you can't promise anything. So that's a big commitment for them to make without even knowing if they're definitely going to be on the team or not. So you got to admire the kids for wanting to do that. Q. Talk about Swin Cash reemerging. She's banged up physically. COACH GENO AURIEMMA: I'm really happy for Swin. I am really, really happy for Swin, that she's involved in this process up to this point right now. She's played her way into it, and it's taken a lot for her to come back to this point. When they graduated from UConn, Sue and Swin, they went immediately to the World Championships, I believe, and then to the Olympics. Swin was part of all that. Then she has all that success in Detroit, then she gets the injury, then the back. All of a sudden it's like she becomes irrelevant for USA Basketball. It's like they move on. Sometimes there's no getting back. Sometimes once people move on, they forget about you. She deserves a lot of credit for putting herself in this situation where now she's extremely relevant. She's on a team that, if you ask Brian Agler, every time Lauren Jackson doesn't play for whatever reason, Swin just picks it up and plays at a whole 'nother level. That's something that I've known all along about Swin. When the lights come on and it's a big game, Swin is going to play her best basketball. She's perfect for this team, perfect, because she can do so many things, so many things. Q. I know USA Basketball is going to take the 12 best players. There's a chance that four or five could be UConn players. COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that would be the case regardless of who the coach was, you know. I'm sure there's people out there who think, Well, you know, Coach Geno is the coach; they got all these UConn people. I would venture to say, it doesn't matter who the coach is. Dee and Sue are going to be on the team. Maya has a great chance to be on the team. Tina is probably the best center in the WNBA right now. So I think no matter who's coaching... As far as having that many out of 12, they were the best players in high school and everybody knew it. They were the best players in college and everybody knew it. And they're the best players in the WNBA and everybody knows it. They're the best players in the world, so they deserve to be on the team up to this point. Q. In the national championship game, did you know how bad Jayne Appel's ankle was at the time? COACH GENO AURIEMMA: Did I know? Q. Yes. COACH GENO AURIEMMA: No. End of FastScripts |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|