Transcript: Coach Bryans previews Big Ten Championships
May 11, 2015 | Women's Rowing
May 11, 2014
MADISON, WIs. -- Wisconsin women's rowing head coach Bebe Bryans spoke at the season's final press conference at Camp Randall Stadium this afternoon to preview the conference championships.
THE MODERATOR: Head coach Bebe Bryans is here. She will make an opening statement, then we will take questions.
COACH BRYANS: At last we have had a race, and it was successful up at Devil's Lake. It was a great, beautiful venue and our racing was successful. We won the Border Battle, brought the Burning Blade back to the boathouse, so that was exciting.
This week is finals week. It's also Big Ten Championship prep week, so we are looking at it as the "icing on the cake week" because all of the work has been done. They've studied for their finals, now they just have to take them, and they've done all the work they needed to do on the water, and now they need to continue to have confidence and be ready to go, but we're really excited.
The rankings came out today. The seedings for the Championship. We're seeded second, and there weren't any surprises in the seedings.
We're ready to go, I'm confident of this group's ability to go out and fight hard for the win, and I can't wait to see 'em go. I'm really excited about it.
Q: Can you beat Ohio State?
COACH BRYANS: Um, yes! I think we can. We're going to give it a go, for sure. They're really good! They're really well coached, and they're a team that's used to winning.
So we know they're not going to do us any favors, and we might need a little bit of help to actually pull it off, but, yeah, we think we can win, and they're just one of the teams that we have to beat, which is a pretty exciting thing to be able to say.
I don't mind if that ends up on anybody's locker room wall. I think they know we're coming and I hope they are, too.
Q: Bebe, does the fact that you've dealt with them before, maybe a message has been sent somewhere along the line, not only to them but to your team that that's helped.
If you hadn't competed against one another this year, the unknown might be there, but the fact that you know what they're about and they know what you're about, I would think, would be a big part of this and how you feel about your team going against Ohio State.
COACH BRYANS: Absolutely, and we have raced most of the Big Ten teams, but we raced them first and, again, we didn't have very many races this year, whether that worked in our favor or not we had to wait and see.
We're very confident that it was the right decision for this group, this year, and the fact that we got to race the Big Ten Champions and the National Champions first and raced 'em hard and close, it gave us a lot of confidence, absolutely.
They have been able to maintain that.
We've been able to win some races by some pretty big margins, and that means they're going for it. They're going for the time, they're not just going for the win, and that means they're training to go against the fastest boats in the country, so because of that and the fact that we've already seen some really fast teams, we will be ready.
We also have heats and finals this year, which we haven't had for a number of years, because Rutgers came in and we don't have an eight-lane race course, so we're going pack to the heats and finals format.
In the varsity 8, Indiana is seated ahead of us. We have not raced them head-to-head yet, so we will race them in the heats, and I like that, just because it gives us a chance to get one more race under our belt before we have to do it in the finals.
So I think that definitely works in our favor, and I'm excited to see that happen.
Q: What was the feedback like from Devil's Lake?
COACH BRYANS: It was really positive.
The only wind that is potentially "bad" at Devil's Lake is a south wind, and that's what we had, and we had it at a lot.
In rowing anything -- it depends, but like on Mendota, if it's north at 5, you can't row out of the boathouse.
It was south at 20 with gusts up to a lot more than that, and the course handled it well. It wasn't great, but it was rowable, it was raceable, everybody handled it just fine, and that showed it at its worse, which I think for a trial run is a good thing. And it was beautiful, oh my goodness, it was beautiful, it was a beautiful day.
Q: You have Ohio State that's ranked, and you guys are ranked, and Michigan and Indiana are ranked. Is this the best preparation you can get looking forward NCAAs?
COACH BRYANS: Absolutely. When we formed the league -- and most of the coaches that are coaching in the Big Ten are the ones that started it, back in the day. I moved schools, but I was there in the beginning. We fought hard to show we were a force to be reckoned with, and it took a while.
It took a while for the more established conferences to accept the fact that we were a real deal. We had to travel all over the place.
Now, Ohio State helped us out by winning a couple of times, that was certainly helpful but we are one of the strongest, if not the strongest, at any given moment conference in the country.
If you can make it through the Big Ten, you're going to be -- you're going to have a really good shot at being competitive at the NCAAs. So, yes, there isn't anybody we are afraid of.
Q: It's the 40th anniversary of the 1975 Championship team. Can you talk about them?
COACH BRYANS: Yes. There is a great book out there, everybody has heard of "Boys in the Boat" but there is a book about the early days of women's rowing called "The Red Rose Crew" and there were a lot of women Badgers in that book, and it goes back to here when the Badger women as huge underdogs won that championship that year.
We've talked about that, not a lot, but enough that we know that has our history and we want to create our own legacy to build on to that history. The women are aware of it.
They're proud of it, but this is about what we're doing now that we can make those women even more proud of us.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Bebe.
