Stone addresses media Monday
December 15, 2009 | Women's Basketball
Dec. 15, 2009
MADISON, Wis. – Wisconsin women’s basketball coach Lisa Stone addressed the media Monday as her team (9-2 overall, 0-1 Big Ten) wraps up its non-conference season by hosting Robert Morris (5-3) on Tuesday. Tip-off is at 7 p.m. from the Kohl Center.
The game vs. the Colonials will wrap up a five-day stretch in which the Badgers will have played three games. So far, Wisconsin is 2-0 during the stretch. UW defeated Marquette 56-49 last Friday and SIU Edwardsville 68-38 this past Sunday.
Following Tuesday's game, Wisconsin breaks for finals week and the holidays. UW takes 13 days off from competition before returning to action on Dec. 28 when it hosts Michigan State at 7 p.m.
A complete transcription of the news conference is available below or you can watch the news conference here.
Opening Statement: First of all, I’m proud of our basketball team. We’ve weathered a very tough non-conference schedule in terms of travel, been to some tough places. (We had a) nice win at Oregon in the Pac-10, at NC State and at Marquette most recently. Those are three pretty significant victories for us on the road. And having completed a six-game road stand and to play at home yesterday was certainly welcomed. I’m looking forward to finishing off our non-conference schedule tomorrow prior to taking a break for finals. But again, I’m very pleased with the growth of our young team. Our bench has been very significant in terms of stepping up each game and we’re looking forward to tomorrow’s game with Robert Morris.
Can you tell us about this Robert Morris team? I know their athletic department continues to get better in all sports. Is this a pretty good basketball team?
They are a very good basketball team. They lost last night to Marquette and I had the opportunity to have that tape after our game yesterday. They’re led by Angela Pace, their point guard. She averages nearly 17 points a game and doesn’t shoot the 3. She’s taken maybe two or three 3-point attempts all year, so everything’s to the basket. We’re hoping that feeds well into our defensive concepts, but their Coach Sal (Buscaglia) is very fiery. He’s very excited. He likes what is happening with his program.
They’re off to a decent start. They’ve played some tough teams. Their Duquesne game; that was a very good win on the road for them. Last night, Marquette couldn’t put them away. It ended up being an eight-point game and they cut it to one a number of times, second half tied it up a few times. They’re a team that, again, it’s a short turnaround for them, as it is for us. This will be our third game in five days, but we’ll see a very aggressive zone defense from them defensively.
Offensively, they’ll spread you out five, five out and really try to get to the basket. We have to play defense without fouling, move our feet, stay within our principles, get back on defense in terms of transition and make sure that we have a wherewithal about Angela Pace. She’s a very, very good player, one of the top players in their league. Again, they’re well coached and they’re going to come after us tomorrow, so we need to be ready.
Last year, you guys went 10-1 in nonconference. This year is very similar. What’s different about this team as you head into conference play?
The difference this year is our commitment to getting better every day. It’s something that you have every single year, but it’s been visible. I like the fact that we have somebody off the bench, a different person off the bench giving us a nice lift. It’s been Anya Covington. It’s been Jamie Russell. It’s been Jade Davis. It’s been Taylor Wurtz. The list goes on and on. And that’s important for us right now. We need our bench when it comes to Big Ten play. We need them the entire season.
And whether its fatigue or just a difference, tomorrow we’re going to see a zone. We’re going to need … Jade Davis is a prolific three-point shooter. We’ll probably need to have her into the mix. Depending on how the game is going, defensive match-ups, depends on who gets in. And the fact that we’ve had players be able to come in off the bench keeps practice competitive. Emily Neal is another name, a player that it’s her first year after a transfer sitting out for a transfer.
All of our players understand that if they work hard in practice and they have an opportunity to make the best of it in games, they’re getting an opportunity to play. So we’re rotating pretty consistently about 10 players, and the game will dictate how long that player stays in the game. But that’s been, I think, in my opinion, the difference between last year and this year.
Are you a good zone offense team?
I would like to say we are, but I think you throw caution to the wind when you face a team that plays a zone, because what a zone wants to do is take you out of your rhythm, out of attack, slow you down a little bit. And what I’m going to caution our team to today, certainly, is the fact that we don’t want that to have a direct reflect on our defense. Our defense has to be aggressive in attacking, as our offense does as well.
We need to be aggressive punching gaps. Lin Zastrow is one of the best passing post players in the league and we utilize her a lot in the zone because she becomes a perimeter passer as well as someone that can drive and step out and shoot the 3. So our movement, our ability to touch the post, not live and die by the outside shot, be aggressive punching gaps, I’ve seen us be very good. I’ve always seen us be stagnant, to be quite honest. And we have to be moving tomorrow and aggressive in it so it doesn’t have a negative effect on our defense.
To follow up on a question a moment ago, the fact that you had the start last year and a similar start this year record-wise, do you think that that benefits this team or this team has that knowledge of what happened last year, whether it’s not getting too high, too low and knowing that, really, the season ultimately is defined by what happens from this point forward with the team?
There’s absolutely no question about it. I think last year is a great example of how you don’t want to get comfortable. You don’t want to be softened by success. That we stay as strong and as tough and improvement on a daily basis as our main goal has to be in our mind. And that we don’t allow a slow start to the Big Ten season. We have to carry over what we’re doing right now. We talk about it as a team and communication has been very big, having players understand exactly what their role is, that we can carry over what we’re doing right now. And we’re nowhere near playing a perfect game, nor will we ever play a perfect game. We still have to continue to get better and we’re looking forward to having this be a season where we can carry over the nonconference into the Big Ten. Offensively the numbers are good.
Are you a better offensive team this year, do you think, than last year?
I’d like to say so. We have more options. It’s not just Alyssa Karel. Actually what was neat last night is by the first media (timeout), the entire starting lineup had scored except Alyssa. And she still finished as one of our top scorers, but that we’re getting scoring from other areas. Obviously, we want more production out of our post in the paint. We want to score more points in the paint, but I also think that Taylor Wurtz adds another lift for us.
Our players have worked a lot with my assistant coaches outside of practice improving their ability to put the ball in the basket and I think we just have a lot of different scoring options. Rae Lin (D’Alie) has been a more consistent shooter. Teah (Gant) is getting to the rim a lot better. Tara Steinbauer right now is one of the top free throw shooters in the country, she’s shooting about 93 percent from the free throw line and is aggressive inside, so we like that, but we got to get her the ball and have her get an and-one. Lin Zastrow is always an X factor, trying again to get her to continue to be aggressive inside and score for us. But I think we just have more options, and the more options allows us, you know, in my opinion, hopefully to get more balanced scoring, three, four in double figures and put more points on the board.
Does your 100th win at Wisconsin mean anything different than maybe your 99th or your 90th? Is it significant to you or is it just another win?
It’s another win, but it reminds you of how fortunate you are to be here at the University of Wisconsin, as well as have tremendous assistants. In my time here, they’ve been very, very valuable to our success. And this is not about me. This is about the players that I’ve coached and about the assistants that I’ve been blessed to work with.
