Latest / Coaches Corner / Seg 3 - WBB Show Oct 29

Transcript

Seg 3 - WBB Show Oct 29 · Coaches Corner

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Gino's asking, we're getting questions in the break here. Gino's
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: ask about you know, the targets on your back every year.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: We all know that, but when you win the national championship,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: that target gets even bigger, right, And that's not necessarily easy,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: all right, Which leads me to my next question, because
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: you mentioned this first week of practice. One of the
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: great things about going to practices you get to see
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: what Sarah Strong is going to do each and every day.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Where have you seen her growth in her game? She's
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: obviously had a phenomenal freshman year, but where have you
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: seen her game go up?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: By not your two?
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: I think she spent the majority of her freshman year
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: looking for who to pass the ball to. She and
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Page had a great accombination together. They worked off each
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: other so well. Yeah, actually, most people in this room
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: could work well with Sarah not hard you know by that,
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: She is so.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Unbelievably in tune and has a sense of where everybody
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: is on the court, so very rarely does she make
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: the wrong decision about who to pass it to, or
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: when to shoot, when not to shoot. But her early
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: in her freshman year, you know she would get the
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: ball and have a wide open shot and would decide
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: to throw it to you because she felt like, well,
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: who am I to take every shot? You know, I'm
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: only a freshman. You know they got easy, they got paid,
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: they got all these guys that were really, really good.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: So every time she caught the ball, she will be
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: thinking who am I going to pass it to? Kind
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: of like Paige. Did you know when Paige was a
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: freshman when I would get mad at her all the time.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: So you know, you ask, what's the growth in Sarah.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: She still passes the ball to anybody who's open. If
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: you get open, she's going to give you the ball. Hey,
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: I mean she threw a pass today that only Diana
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: could throw.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: This pass.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: You know, it was just unbelievable. So she's still going
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: to pass the ball, but now it's after I try
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: to get a shout off. So she's looking to score
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: way more than she did last year, and she's scoring
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: way more different ways because we're putting her in different
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: more different positions. You know, today we had a segment
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: in practice where she scored in the lane against somebody
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: on the post up. Then she scored in the middle
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: of the lane on like a little step back. Then
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: she knocked in a three from the corner. Then she scored,
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: you know, from the left elbow, and then she got
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: the ball and she backed the guy ine and dribbled
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: by him and scored. So like, there's a lot of
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: different places on the floor that we can put her,
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: and she feels comfortable in all those places. So she's
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: grown because she's much more assertive and not deferring as
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: much as she did last year.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I talked to Asy at Big East Media Day and
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: finally she was able to get in the weight room
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: and not have to rehab from an injury, just work
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: on her body and she looks fantastic. But one of
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the payoffs she mentioned to me was she feels now
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: that the right knee is equal with the left knee
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: as far as her development goes. Now, Yeah, she got
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: cleared last year, but she notices a difference. Do you
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: notice a difference with her on the floor with all
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the work she put in the weight room? And how
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: have you seen that payoff?
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: The crazy thing about Easy is even when it wasn't
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: one hundred percent, she always gave you this feeling that
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: it was because she just tremendous work, habits, she has
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: a tremendous sense.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: You've always said, sheesus as good as one on one
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: player as you had.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's a great one on one player. And
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: she's great in every drill. Like if she has to cut,
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: she cuts better than everybody else. If she has to,
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: you know, get open, she gets open better than everybody else,
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: you know she has to.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: If she has to.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Shoot it, she shoots it as good as anybody ever.
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: So there's never been a doubt about that. It's about now,
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: can I do I feel like I can sustain this
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: for five months? You know, and if there's any doubt
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: in your mind, it's going to show up.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Is that a big reason why she came back.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: I think she came back for maybe a number of reasons.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: But the conversation that I had with her was I
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: asked her if she was ready to leave, and are
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: you tired of kept playing college basketball? And do you
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: think of yourself as a pro and are you one
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: hundred percent confident that you're where you're going is where
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: you want to be at this point in your life?
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: And she said, no, I don't feel like I've done
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: everything that I could do at Connecticut, and nor do
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: I feel like I've put myself in a position where
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: I like, I don't question myself anymore. And my thing
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: too was people haven't seen enough of you to make
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: a decision about who you really are. It's always been Wow,
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: who Aisy could be if she wasn't injured? Wow, I
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: wonder who Aisy could be, you know, if she didn't
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: have to rehab all the time. Oh So there was
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: always could be, should be, could have been? Oh that
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: I said, So, who's going to draft you? Whoever does
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: draft you, it's not going to be legit. The people
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: will pass on you because they don't they don't know you.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: They haven't seen enough of you, you know, and it's
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: not gonna you know, it's not going to reflect exactly
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: who you are, you know. So you know, I knew,
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: I kind of knew she was coming back, you know,
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: but I didn't know for certain, but I kind of
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: I kind of knew, you know, that she wasn't finished.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: She had a lot of them finished things. But then
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: you know, after you win the national championship. I didn't
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: have a conversation with her obviously, because the conversation was
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: before the NCAA tournament, And I said, I need to
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: know this before the tournament starts, because I'm not going
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: in the tournament having to answer questions about you coming back,
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: and you shouldn't either. You should just concentrate on playing ball.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: So one way or the other, let's get it over with.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. When it was the day after the second round
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: one where she announced she was coming.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Back, more with do you know the U kind of
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: women's basket will coach the show coming up in a
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: minute here on their field.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Stay with us,