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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS (WOMEN)

October 27, 2011

Coquese Washington

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Q. With so many returning starters and co-Player of the Year preseason and picked as the favorite to win the conference, do you feel like you have a target on your back or do you welcome the position and pressure?
COQUESE WASHINGTON: We welcome the position. Four years ago when we first got to Penn State, this is the position that we hoped to be in some day where we can start off the season truly having an opportunity to compete for the conference title. So I'm excited about being in this position and I'm excited about the challenge that lies ahead of us because our conference is really competitive, and so it's going to be a tough challenge for anybody in our conference to win it. And I'm just happy that we're in a position to do that.

Q. How do you prepare your team psychologically? It's a big difference between being the hunted versus being the hunter?
COQUESE WASHINGTON: You're right, it is, and we talk about that with our team. Last year in some ways we kind of surprised people. We snuck up on some people, and we talk about that, that we're not going to surprise people with how we play, with our style of play, with our talent level. So the challenge is for us to practice and play at a consistently high level every day, so then you don't have to worry about another team elevating their game against you. If we're used to practicing and playing at a high level every day, both as a team and individually, then we should be okay with having -- being a target. We should be okay with being the hunted. So that's the challenge, and that's what we talk about.

Q. If there was one area that you're really saying, we need to get better at to reach a championship level, what would it be?
COQUESE WASHINGTON: Oh, no question, our defense. No question at all. We have to be a better defensive team. We have to be a team that -- sometimes last year we'd do some things on -- it can't be that easy to score against us. We have to have a tougher mentality defensively, have a tougher disposition defensively. And if we can do that, then I think we can elevate our play overall.

Q. You talked about consistency, and with consistency, I think about Alex. Is it key for her to just really start that every single day? She's obviously got the talent but a little bit of ebb and flow sometimes last season.
COQUESE WASHINGTON: Yeah, definitely it starts with Alex. Yeah, she's the engine of our team. She's the heart and soul. Everybody feeds off of her. So she sets the tone, but I think across the board, I mean, individually you look at so many of our players, Maggie Lucas was up and down, Nikki Greene was up and down, Mia Nickson was up and down. It's not just Alex, it's all of our returning players who played big minutes last year have to play at a consistently high level. That's a task for them.

Q. I know you work a lot on the big picture at Penn State. What's the feeling there, and what will the feeling be to be preseason No. 1, have Alex get the honor that she has received, Tori to have climbed up to where you were for so many years with ticket sales and just the energy around women's basketball?
COQUESE WASHINGTON: That's a great question. Penn State has a lot of passion about women's basketball fans. It's an athletic community that really supports our program, and the energy and the buzz around campus over the summer, when we got back to campus in the fall, has been really high. There's just a lot -- a strong buzz, and I think these kind of honors and expectations that are coming from outside, I think that will just continue to help create a level of excitement for us.
And again, it's something that we enjoy and we welcome it, and we're going to embrace it. We're not going to shy away from it. We're going to enjoy it and embrace it and hope that helps us in terms of getting more people in the stands this year.

Q. This conference is loaded with guards. It's like a great big guard picnic. What is the mindset for you in terms of preparing the interior game and in terms of how you can compete there since there isn't the Jantel Lavender's or --
COQUESE WASHINGTON: Thank God she didn't have a fifth year of eligibility. I like our post game and I like what our kids can do. I hate to sound like a broken record, but it goes back to our post players being consistent. Quite honestly, they need to be a little greedy. They're a very unselfish bunch of post players and they're so willing to let our guards jack up all the shots every night. I'd like them to be a little bit more greedy and determined, especially on the offensive end of the floor. But again, it goes back to consistency, them playing and dominating the game inside on a nightly basis.

Q. We talked a little outside, for Alex to get the respect that she's gotten with this preseason honor, I mean, last year we used to talk -- it was like no one even knew she was out there, and suddenly she's got a spotlight. What changed do you think so people understand really how great she is?
COQUESE WASHINGTON: Maybe graduation of other players, quite honestly. I mean, our conference has had some pretty good players. When you talk about Jantel Lavender and Kachine Alexander and Kalisha Keane, you're talking about players who played very well in our conference for a long time. And I think their graduation opens up the floor for us to talk about some of the other good players in this conference such as Alex Bentley and Karisma Penn, Jaime Printy, players like that now can get a little bit more of the spotlight.

Q. Can you talk about the impact of losing a player like Julia Trogele and the intangibles she brought every day?
COQUESE WASHINGTON: We miss her, and we see it every day, just the leadership she brought. And one of the things that Julia did was she was kind of that glue kid; she took the pressure off of everybody else. You know, if Nikki wasn't doing what she was supposed to do, Julia took up the slack for us. Alex wasn't doing what she's supposed to do, Julia took up the slack. If Maggie wasn't doing what she needed to do, Julia could take up the slack. That's a luxury to have one player that can take up the slack for all five positions, and we don't have that. And not having her on the floor, she was a calming presence for us, and so now, again, you talk about the growth of our team, our players have to step up, and now Nikki has to be responsible for Nikki, Maggie has to be responsible for herself. We don't have that veteran who can pick up the slack for you when you don't get things done.
And then her presence in the locker room. Her nickname was the German Sergeant. She kept them in line, because Julia has German decent and they called her the German Sergeant. She kept them in line in the locker room and made sure they were prepared and focused and did what they needed to do. So we'll miss her a lot.
But I have tremendous, tremendous confidence in our captains, Marisa Wolfe and Mia Nickson, our captains this year. I have a tremendous amount of confidence in them and their ability to lead us off the court and in the locker room, and certainly Alex Bentley will be our voice on the floor, and I think her growth as a point guard will help kind of take care of some of the things we'll lose with Julia not being on the floor.

Q. The rest of the conference has selected you as the big dog, so to speak. Who do you see in your mind, a couple of teams that are going to be very, very competitive and maybe be a thorn in your side this season?
COQUESE WASHINGTON: Whoa, again, and I can't say this enough, our conference is so competitive from top to bottom. You know, last year you watched the conference and you see there's no bad games. 11 beats 5 and 10 beats 3 and nobody is surprised. And I think we're going to have the same kind of conference race this year.
But if I had to pick a couple teams, Purdue is going to be really good this year. I think their depth and their strength and the way that they play defensively, I think they're going to be pretty good. I think Iowa, you know, they're returning everybody, and I think they should be pretty good. And Michigan State is a returning conference champion. They'll be pretty good. Ohio State, I think you can't count out Sammy Prahalis, and I know they lost a lot with Jantel graduating. And then Michigan -- really every team I think could be pretty good. You're just going to have to see how teams gel and how they come along.
But the one thing I will say about our conference is we have really strong coaching in our conference, and I think that's one of the reasons that our conference is so competitive. We have good coaches and good game plans, and it's tough to prepare for teams because you know that the coaching and the preparation of every team you're going to face is going to be so high. So I have a very healthy respect for every team in our conference, every single one.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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