|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
BIG 12 CONFERENCE WOMEN'S MEDIA DAYSOctober 25, 2012Sherri CoaleDALLAS, TEXAS THE MODERATOR: Coach Coale, welcome, and your opening thoughts? COACH COALE: Thank you so much. Great to be back. Great to be in Dallas. Very excited about Dallas being the host city for the conference championship tournament this year. Looking forward to a unique year in the Big 12, welcoming two new members who I think will add a different twist and a special flavor to the competition this season. I really like my team, and I can't wait to get started. Q. Based on the coach's vote and what we saw in the national tournament last year, Baylor is the big favorite. But you've had teams in the past that were preseason big favorites going into conference play. As you look at it, is Baylor vulnerable? Is there a way to take them down? You have everybody coming back on your team, for example. COACH COALE: I think obviously they're the favorites. Obviously, Griner makes them special and unique. They come off an undefeated season last year, and certainly they're the team to beat in our league. But they're human. We all put on our jerseys every game, and we play the game. If we had to play five out of seven, it might not go our way. But you have to be better for 40 minutes one night, so, yeah, yeah, it's possible. Q. You talk about TCU coming into the league. A couple years ago Gary Blair said that TCU was the best team in Texas, not in the Big 12. Now they're in the Big 12. Do you have any specific thoughts on what TCU and West Virginia will bring to the Big 12? COACH COALE: Yeah, I think it's awesome that you can pull out one thing that Gary Blair said because he says so many things. I don't know how you separated it all. We miss him, don't we? Less lively today with Gary being in the SEC. We've had a nice rivalry with TCU, just because we've tried to play home at home with them in our preconference schedule, because we love playing in the Dallas‑Fort Worth area. Jeff does a tremendous job with his kids, and they always find a way to find themselves in the NCAA Tournament at the end of the year. West Virginia, Mike Carey does an incredible job with them, very tough Big East conference, and have a great reputation as a very tenacious basketball team. They have talented kids, and that will be a tough place to play. I just think there will be a different flavor and different twist to league play this year. Q. You talk about different twists. One of the things this year is the tournament being separated from the men. How much do you like the idea that the women will get the highlight and get their own separate venue? COACH COALE: Well, I think it's a positive move. I think if you factor in all the things our league has done for the past 16 seasons, we've led in RPI, we lead in attendance. 9 out of 10 teams last year in the NCAA Tournament, and the other one in the NIT tournament. You just think about where we stand on the global landscape of women's basketball, and we can stand on our own. I think it will be a period of growth as the media and the public gets accustomed to having those two tournaments separated. But at the end of the day, I think it makes a lot of sense. I think we'll be able to build some equity in what we do as a group and a specific brand being the women's basketball portion of the Big 12 conference. Q. Coach, were there any facets in the off‑season that you guys identified as maybe we have to get better here? COACH COALE: Yeah, there were about 20. I'm not sure you have time for me to list them all. We were young last year. Sometimes the best thing that can happen to youth is it just gets a little bit older, and that will solve a lot of your problems. I think we'll take better care of the basketball. I think we'll have a stronger inside game. I think our interior guys have probably improved the most, and maybe it's because they have the furthest to go. It's hard to see great leaps of improvement in a kid like Whitney Hand or a kid like Aaryn Ellenberg, but those guys have gotten better as well. I think the big jumps most quickly perceived by the public will be production from the inside, and just our sense of sureness with the basketball because we're older, more confident, more experienced, more relaxed, all those things that happened when you play aid few games in Division 1. Q. You've got all your perimeter players back, led by Whitney. Talk about the confidence that gives you by having three scorers that come back with a chance to play again? COACH COALE: Yeah, I'd put my guards against anybody in America. I really would. They're talented, they're earnest, and they're conscientious. I think our groups always have strong chemistry, and this group has an extraordinary vibe about them. They understand one anotherÂ’s strengths and weaknesses and how to play off of those. Any time you have a kid with the intestinal fortitude of Whitney saying, "I'm coming back as a fifth‑year senior and leading the team," you have to feel pretty good about things. Q. What do you think of Geno's suggestion that the rim should be lowered? COACH COALE: Oh, my heavens. I really do think his team must be so good that he didn't have anything to rant about, so he just started talking about lowering the stinkin' rim. Here's what I think about it. I think a basketball goal is a basketball goal is a basketball goal. One of the unique and fabulous things about our sport is you just need a ball and a goal and nobody else, and you can get better. You can walk out to any neighborhood park and take that ball and shoot on that goal and get better. You can go to the rec center, and can you go to an elementary gym, a high school gym, you can go to an arena like American Airlines and the goals are ten‑foot‑tall, and you can shoot on them and get better. I don't think we want to put ourselves in a situation where we have to find a women's goal so we can get better as players. Q. You touched on Whitney Hand and what she's done. Obviously, it's been a long Odyssey for Whitney since coming there. She's had to overcome a lot of things. Can you just expand on what you've seen from Whitney, and what it's been like five years with her? COACH COALE: It's been a blessing to be able to coach her for five years now, as you say. She came in as such a high‑achieving freshman that I think sometimes it's difficult to see maybe from an outside perspective how much she's grown. But from inside, which is the view I get all the time, her growth and maturation has been remarkable. It is her attention, her diligence, if you will. I think that's a word we don't count as a virtue quite as often as we ought to, but that diligence to daily get better at everything. Whether it's going left, or a defensive dig step, or a blockout, or leading her team, or holding people accountable, whatever it is. She just has and continues to have an intense diligence about her, and I think that makes her special. I think it separates her in ways that words are difficult to describe. Q. Following up on that, is she any different since she's married that quarterback up there? COACH COALE: Yes, she's changed so much. No, fantastic as always. Q. Most people thought this conference was the toughest in basketball last year. With the addition of TCU and West Virginia added to it, will this make it even more of a gauntlet? COACH COALE: You might have rivaled him right there with gauntlet. There is a race. I think it's just a different kind of race, if that's possible. There is a nuisance there because we're very unfamiliar with West Virginia particularly. But as I've said before, West Virginia will play a style of basketball that is a little like A&M, so it's not going to be that much of a culture shock for anyone. Though going there to play in Morgantown might be. But I just think again, we're going to be sitting here next year talking about 9 out of 10 teams were in the NCAA Tournament. That is the story for this league. Every night, you better show up. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
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
|