Albright Addresses Media Monday
December 30, 2002 | Women's Basketball
Wisconsin women's basketball coach Jane Albright spoke to the media on Monday during UW's weekly news conference. Albright addressed various issues about the team.
A transcript of the news conference follows. The news conference video is available by clicking on `multimedia' on the red menu bar.
Congrats to the football Badgers: 'First thing I'd like to do is congratulate our football team and their bowl win. I think that was a real exciting thing for all of us ' the way the game was won. I was actually out recruiting and didn't get to watch it, but I made a couple phone calls and it really sounded like they executed down the stretch. Congratulations to Barry and those guys, they certainly prepared well for that and that was a big win for everybody at this school.
Opening Statement on overall team situation: 'As far as my team, we've got a challenging game for us tonight. We 're playing a team that's lost seven in a row I believe, but they are much better than their record. The thing that they do that really poses problems for us is ' the biggest problem that we have is turning the ball over ' and they 're very good at pressuring the ball and forcing teams to turn the ball over so that's something we'll have our hands full with tonight. They have similar scoring averages as our team and then they've got a junior, [Carey] Sauer, who averages 15 [points] a game, who is a first team performer in their conference, so she 's very good player and someone to contend with.
I think you can tell from scores all over the place that records are very deceiving this time of year for everybody. You can go back and watch film; we 're three minutes from being 6-2. [But] we're 2-6. San Francisco can do the same thing. They've lost very close games; they lost to Stanford, who is one of the top teams in the country, by just a couple. So, you don't really look at records this time of year, you just try to keep improving and getting better statistically. Our statistics started out this year looking like a team that was not going to be a team. Actually in most categories we're very respectable now and I think our assist-turnover ratio is something that ' when we change the calendar year we 're going to ask Tam [Flarup] if she can start that statistic over again at 0-0 because I'm not sure we'll ever be able to catch up and make that a positive ratio, but we'll start from scratch in the Big Ten, at least they 'll print different Big Ten [conference only] statistics in that area. But other than that I think we've seen steady improvement.
Tonight we'll go with Lello Gebisa in the starting lineup. Kristi Seeger is not cleared to play tonight. So, we're going to go with Ebba [Gebisa] in the three-spot and in a way a young team just got younger because you insert Lello in the lineup who sat out last year and played very sparingly at Duke for two years and you put Ebba in a spot that she really never played at last year. Kristi hasn 't practiced since Drake and so Ebba has got a lot of time at that three spot. We 'll see what her quickness can do at that spot for us and take it from there. '
It seems like you practice well. How do you carry that over to games' 'I think you just have to play the games. I agree with you. We practice with confidence, we execute well, we bring the practice squad in, you watch us practice and you see that. I don't know if I know enough people I could ask to come in and watch us. I don't think that's it.
The thing I'm most concerned about this team is their ability to play with a home court advantage. That's something as a team, regardless of how young you are, you've got to understand that on your home territory, you defend it and you play with a passion and you don't let people think that they can come into your place. And then you look all over the country and upsets are normally on the home court. I think that's something that we just have to grasp with this group and hopefully, we're at a point in our season where five of our next six games are at home, if we can get that concept we can start turning the season around.'
How do you think you'll perform in the Big Ten season' 'I think we'll be respectable. I think that 's a real hard prediction to make right now. The Big Ten is totally unpredictable. Last year, we go through the first eight games undefeated, you would have thought ' we were ahead of people, but there are a lot of things that can happen. You 've got injuries, we don't know how long Kristi Seeger will be out, Leah [Hefte] hasn't practiced but three days in the last month.
It's still a three headed monster in the Big Ten as far as I 'm concerned with Penn State, Minnesota's still undefeated although if you check their strength of schedule it's not looking really good so they 'll certainly have some challenges in our conference, I know Purdue has gone through and done another job as they always do to really carry the power rankings for us. I don't really know yet, I just know we'll try to keep improving and trying to get better. I'm not trying to evade your question ' usually, on my refrigerator on my house I've got the schedule and I can predict what I think is going to happen. I'm not predicting that this year.'
Any surprises in the Big Ten this season' Thoughts on teams' good non-conference records: 'I'm really not surprised at that. I thought it would happen. I think the conference is really tough and I think that as a whole, people schedule very good. It's panned out. There have been a couple of upsets. I think Ohio State has had a really good preseason, but we knew they would.'
Thoughts on Kelly Mazzante's performance at last year's Big Ten tournament. What impresses you about Mazzante' 'Her quickness and the way she can come off the screens. You know, when I went back and watched that tape in different moments ' in the second half when she would come off so many feet behind the line you'd have somebody chasing her and somebody showing and she can still catch it and shoot it. She's just incredible. '
This year Penn State is using four guards. How will you defend against that' 'Well, we're going to try some different things against it. We actually felt like we had kept Kelly in check pretty good, but the other times when it really mattered she was able to do a lot against us. We haven 't really made that decision yet, but we're going to have to do a lot of things well to contain her. And then Wright has gotten a lot better so they've really improved and now you've got two players right there in the backcourt. Either one of them can kill you. In talking to different coaches, you pick your poison. Some coaches say let Kelly get her points and try to hold the other ones down and another one I talked to said `when we played them we let Wright score, we're going to try and get on Kelly's nerves.' We haven't made that decision yet. '
How serious is Seeger's injury' 'I don't know. You'll have to speak to our trainers about all that.'
Thoughts on Marquette: 'Haven't even looked at Marquette yet. Don't really know anything about them. Just that I know that we'd still like to have some type of bragging rights in our state and so far Green Bay is ahead of everybody so we'll see what we can do there. '
On the four-straight and six out of seven home games coming up: 'Again, it's a homestand for us and I think we've got to pay more attention to how we execute our offense, our ability to rebound, our intensity. We've got to get more deflections; we've worked a lot on our different zones, just being able to cover the floor. I think in looking at our eight games, we've played pretty good defense but in our zones in particular we haven 't been able to rebound the ball as well. Our guards have got to rebound the ball better when we go to a zone and only give people one shot. We've done a much better job when we've been playing man in doing all that. Our ball pressure has not been what it should have been too so that's something we've really worked on since Christmas.'
