Albright Addresses Media Monday
December 10, 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.
What do you take from the Ball State game' 'Anytime, early in the year, with a young group of players, when you get good film and you get good minutes, you always take 40 minutes and some of our players played in the high 30s so the opportunities are there. I think that defensively we've got to keep improving and we've certainly showed that. I think we got a little bit of confidence from our ability to score, we made better offensive decisions. I think we turned the ball over 14 times, had 21 assists. That was our most efficient offensive outing. I thought we did a lot of really nice things. Also, we certainly proved that we still have some places to improve.'
Talk about Emily Ashbaugh. Has she taken some ownership in this team' 'I think she certainly has shown that since [the road trip] and on the road trip. I think really, that's just a transformation from becoming a role player to becoming a player who's going to get a lot of touches and who really has decided that a lot of this is my responsibility and I'm going to step up and do what I can and I think that's a natural for players to evolve like that. She certainly has. Those of you who saw us play at Northern Illinois that first night and then saw her play the Ball State game, she really has improved tremendously. '
Is Ashley Josephson in that same category' 'Any guard that plays 37 minutes and has zero turnovers and 17 points has had quite an outing. I think Ashley definitely is learning what Division 1 is all about and we 're learning how to coach her. Ashley can't be all things to all people on our team. We need to figure out what we need her to do and ask her to do that and not say you've got to guard this person, score this, take care of the ball. I think we 're guilty of asking her to do too many things early, but I think we're getting that figured out.'
What do you envision Ashley doing the best' Is she a scorer, a ball handler' 'One of the things that happened was Leah Hefte got hurt. We are not very deep at the one spot, Ashley is our only true one. Leah is a true two, Stephanie [Rich] is a two, we've played Kristi [Seeger] somewhat at that off-guard. When Leah got hurt all of a sudden Stephanie was our only true two and we were using her as a one. When we got Shawna back on that trip, that helped but we actually started playing Ashley at some two on that trip but she had never practiced at two. You hear Bo [Ryan] talk about Devin Harris or you hear Devin talk about the difference between going from a two to a one or a one to a two and players talk about that. With us it was a different type of thing because it wasn't at the end of a season saying now you need to work on this; now this is in a game we're going to play Shawna at some one, you'll see Ashley at some two, you'll see a lot of different combinations with our guards because we don't have Leah and we do miss that 40 minutes [she plays]. We've been able to practice that now so hopefully it 'll work a little better. It depends on what position she's at. We 're putting in some definite plays for her to come off screens and shoot. She 's proven she can do that. It's a lot easier for a two guard do to that than a one guard.'
Rich has been hot and cold. Can you talk about her and your offense' 'I think it's an oxymoron, but I think that I can say that Stephanie's numbers are clearly confusing. I see her at practice everyday and see what she can do. I saw her at Washington when she barely missed, I saw her 0 for 12 game. As a coaching staff, we try to go back and figure out things that can help her get better looks. The things that don't show up on the stat sheet, she played really good defense on Goff from Ball State. She has to guard some people; we think she 's doing a decent job there. We're going to keep playing her and know that she's a young person who is one of the most coachable people we've ever had in our program. She keeps putting in the time and we'll keep getting better and when she has her nights that she doesn't score as many as she wants to we'll know that she'll have some other opportunities to do some things to help us.'
Because of Ashley picking up some of the scoring duties, have you shifted your offense at all due to Rich's off-nights' 'Basketball is a game of numbers. If Stephanie keeps shooting like that in some situations, Ashley will be a two and Shawna will be a one. Shawna played very well. Again, I think she had three practices by the time we went to California. Our games on that trip really served as our practices. Shawna had one really good game out there. She was kind of sore for the next one. If she had a little more experience, you would have seen her at the one in that second half against Ball State and Ashley at the two because numbers and science and you have to go with what you see and not with what you hope to be. '
How has Al Brown been a helpful addition to the staff this year' 'He helps us everyday. He's a person who I ask a lot of opinions. I ask `did you think this was right, did you think this was wrong, ' I ask a lot of questions like that. He has a vast knowledge of the game, but more than his knowledge, I think is his experience. He's been at every level of basketball. He was at Ball State as a head coach so he knows that type of team. He was at Tennessee. He's been a good checklist for me. We continue to let him do a lot in practice. He's working a lot on our presses with our team, that's kind of the thing he likes to do and he's very good at that and we're giving him a lot of leeway and I think that will pay off.'
On Jordan Wilson 'Jordan is a very good `pound the ball in on the block, low post player.' What we need her to do is improve defensively. Sometimes the tempo of the game is really hard for a freshman when they don't get as many minutes. If you're going to get 37 minutes you get the tempo and you start to understand the tempo but when you get thrown in and out on the four post rotation I think it's harder for her. I think she's done a very nice job and so we just need to continue to let her get minutes and work on her defense and her rebounding.'
How important is this week going into your break, especially with Drake' 'Drake is a Sweet-16 type of team and they 've got one of the better post players we'll face in Carla Bennett and we can't overlook Eastern Illinois first of all. We're 1-5; we're not a team that can take anything for granted. We'll certainly prepare really hard for the game tomorrow. We know it'll be a tough week, but we've seen a lot of improvement in the last two weeks. You can look at our stats now. We look more like a basketball team. The first night I don't really know what we looked like on paper or on film. We hadn't shot the ball, hadn't done some things well. Certainly we've proven we can be a dominating rebounding team, but'when you're young you pick your poisons. You kind of figure what you're going to go at, what you're going to work on and then you say well, we turn the ball over 37 times, this is a fatal flaw. If this is something that's not corrected, we 're going to be 1-28. So you emphasize this and this and then we kind of go away from something else and we're outrebounded twice in a row. I think we're about to figure out what our identity is as far as the things we can be great at and the things we'll be good at. In the game of basketball I think you work your strengths, you have to get better on your weaknesses, but you also have to figure out what your strengths are and quite honestly that was the hardest thing that we had to do as coaches was figure out what the streaks were on this team because you've got to know what those are in order to get anywhere. And then you try to hide your weaknesses, you work on those too but you don't want them to be as obvious and you try to get the weaknesses to get better. I think now that we have an idea of what our strengths are where we can go to be the team that we need to be to compete in the Big Ten.'
How do you limit the number of turnovers' 'We've done about everything we know how to do. The thing we're trying to teach them is a difference between a turnover that leads directly to a score 'in the game of basketball if you have a high turnover or on the ball or something that leads directly to a score and changes momentum, that type of thing, it's a lot worse than believe it or not, at Washington, dribbling the ball out of bounds twice. [With] Division I ball players you would think that's not something you would do. The court is the same size it's always been, but again it's a lot of things. Obviously one thing is concentration and having to be the people that think through all the 40 minutes rather than the ones that are looking to see what the major players are doing. We think that every time we play 40 minutes it helps us. There's all sorts of ways to teach, you can use negative reinforcement, we've been running a lot more which I think is a coach's last resort, but kids seem to understand that more than they do `you're going to lose if you turn the ball over.' They don 't really seem to get that. A lot of passing drills. Really I think the best remedy is playing time. I was watching the Packer game...the first thing that Mike Sherman said, the difference between the first half, what was it' Turnovers. We all know that as coaches, how to fix that. Brett Favre fixed that pretty well in the second half. We 've got to have individuals that fix that. And it's got to be my fault, it's a problem that's still there and so I've got to do something to get it fixed because we're not going to trade in these players. They 're our players, we're going to stand by them, we recruit them to play here and I think that they can play so we're just going to try to get better. More five-on-five drills. We're doing fundamentals, but then we're letting them play, giving them a lot of five-on-five opportunities because we think that that 's really one of the big things this team doesn't have.'
