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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS (WOMEN)

October 27, 2011

Joe McKeown

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

JOE McKEOWN: Well, I think first of all, I'm just really excited to be going into our fourth year at Northwestern now. It seems like the other day we just got here, and just the way our players have adjusted to things that we try to do to turn things around, to win 19 games and 18 games and just have back-to-back winning seasons. I think it's given us a foundation that we're looking for. Just a real exciting time to be at Northwestern with what Coach Carmie is doing and Pat Fitzgerald, and on the women's side, to try to keep up with our lacrosse program, who just won their sixth national championship in a row. The bar is set really high. Like I said, we just feel like we're on the right track.

Q. With two back-to-back successful seasons and a postseason berth, what's your reception like when you're out recruiting, especially in the Chicago area and Illinois, which is a pretty good hotbed for basketball?
JOE McKEOWN: Yeah, that's a great question. I think my staff has worked really hard. We've tried to have a lot of people -- I think Northwestern was really an untapped, undervalued athletic program to begin with, and now I think just being able to get people on campus, on the lake, and just understanding what it's like to be a student-athlete at Northwestern, I think recruits have been really receptive to that, not just in the Chicago area but nationwide.
Obviously like any coach, you want to keep the best local players, you want to keep them at home, so we're -- that's our number one goal every day.

Q. What kind of an impact do you see Morgan Jones making this season?
JOE McKEOWN: Morgan Jones is a freshman from Orlando, Florida, and 6'2", and what I like about her is she can play all five positions. I think her impact will come as we just get on the floor and start playing. She has a great basketball IQ. Like any freshman, I think you're going to go through some ups and downs, but I love her attitude and she's a really competitive kid. I'm trying not to throw everything at her in November, but we're real excited to have her in our program. Really gifted and a great kid.

Q. Obviously when you lose a big presence like Amy Jaeschke, you have to kind of regroup. Who are you developing in that spot and what is your mindset on the inside game this year in terms of the personnel you have?
JOE McKEOWN: If you're Amy Jaeschke, who was an incredible player in the Big Ten and All-American First Team All-Big Ten the last couple years, drafted by the WNBA, she just kind a contract to go to China. So we're real excited for her and hopefully the future playing basketball for her a long time.
It's hard to replace anybody that could just bail you out of a game, a possession, a half, all those things. Had she not been there when I took the job, I don't know -- she kind of bailed me out, too, when you really look back over the last three years. I was really fortunate to coach her.
But we have -- what it does, it creates opportunities for other people, too, and Kendall Hackney, Dannielle Diamant, I think Morgan in some respects, are all going to have places to step in and more pickup scoring loads. Amy was an unbelievable scorer, but she was really unselfish, too.
Yeah, I think all those guys just need to get used to playing without her, too. I've got to get used to that, too. It's hard on me.

Q. I want to ask you a little bit about two players in Kendall Hackney and Brittany Orban that showed flashes of talent were a little bit inconsistent at times this year and I wonder what you expect out of them in terms of increased leadership and performance?
JOE McKEOWN: Yeah, I think Kendall and I have had great conversations. She was one of the All-Big Ten teams last year as a sophomore, and I think she benefitted a lot from playing with Amy. I said, Kendall, now it's your time. You have to step up, create your own shots. I think the biggest thing for Kendall is to be there every night, be consistent. But she has a great attitude, great work ethic. She's had a tremendous summer. Yeah, I think she'll be ready. And Brittany Orban is -- there's nothing about her that ever changes. She's the most consistent person ever. I think she has the same thing for breakfast every day, her whole life. She ran a marathon, she just takes on challenges as they come.
She'll go through a wall for you and just a really tough, hard-nosed, glue-type player that coaches love to have their players on the floor.

Q. You inherited Amy Jaeschke, but what that meant was that's the style of play you were going to play because she was going to be in the ballgame, and now even at year four, it's your thing, what you want to make this team. From a flow, from a look, more GW like? What's it going to be?
JOE McKEOWN: I'll tell you, that's a great question. I would love to say yes. I think we'll be a hybrid, a little bit of both, just because we have players used to playing a certain way. But we're going to run and try to press. One thing with Amy in the low post, this year we don't have that, so it'll open up the floor. We want to really try to attack the basket.
We put it on the floor a lot better this year than we have in the past, and we have not been -- I think one of the greatest stats we had every game was we led the league, might have led the country, in assist-to-basket ratio, which meant every time we scored, it came off a pass. I'd like to see us just take the ball and go to the basket this year. It's a little deceiving. And we would like -- we're going to be a lot deeper. The gap between talent on our team now has really closed, so we weren't able to play enough players the last couple years.
So those two things will help us. We would like to press and run and go back to the days at GW we could turn people over and get easy baskets. I'd like to lead the nation in scoring again. I think we did that one year. That was 1987 or so. We were first or second.

Q. You kind of answered my question, but I'll regroup. When you start to consider what the league looks like this year and what your team specifically looks like this year, what is the one strength you see that you have where you can really, really possibly elevate above other teams in the conference?
JOE McKEOWN: You know, I think you can't just focus in on one player defensively against us. I think we'll have seven or eight players that can score. That's what I'm seeing in practice. Hopefully that will continue throughout the Big Ten season.
But to me, probably the one difference for us is we're a little more balance in our -- so far in practice, and again, that may change as we get into the season. But that's probably the one thing. We've got more weapons I feel like.

Q. We all know about Amy Jaeschke being gone, but the significance of losing Beth Marshall at the point guard position, how much does that impact your team, as well?
JOE McKEOWN: It does. She on and off the court was a great leader, really helped me try to rebuild a program and just had a toughness and a certain energy that she brought every day to practice. And then in games she just had that attitude that every time she shot the ball it was going in. When it didn't, she was surprised.
There's things you can't teach, and I think our players -- it just gave them some confidence just having her on the floor every day. So we'll miss that. We have some young players that I think will step into that role, but again, you can't replace experience with youth. It has to -- you've got to go through the process.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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