Basketball Media Day Quotes
11/10/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Nov. 10, 2008
Rice Basketball Media Day Gallery
HOUSTON - Members of the Houston media met with Rice basketball coaches Ben Braun and Greg Williams along with selected players Monday afternoon at Tudor Fieldhouse to preview the upcoming seasons.
Below are quotes from media day.
Women's Head Coach Greg Williams
Opening Statement
"First of all, thank you for being here. It's an exciting day for Rice Basketball - both for me and for Coach Braun and his program - doubly so for me because I was able to play in the old Autry Court. To see the new building is really special. It was something that we heard about and discussed for many years and now it has become a reality. I'm very thankful to our Athletic Director Chris Del Conte and his Associate David Sayler for the hard work they've put in to get funding for the new Tudor Fieldhouse. Our basketball team - we hope that we're not like the silent auction. We do open the season Friday night - that's just the way the schedule worked out. We think we might have a pretty good crowd here for the Friday night opening and certainly followed by the Saturday afternoon game with Coach Braun and his team. Our players are probably more excited than I am. They've been without a locker room for about 18 months. That's probably the thing they'll be the happiest about - getting a locker room; getting back to normalcy compared to normal student-athletes across the country. It's been a unique situation for our players in the last year and a half. They've done a really good job of staying focused and not using the lack of [a facility] as an excuse. But we're certainly happy to have a home court again.
We're a relatively young basketball team with only two seniors and two juniors on our roster. In the past two years we have graduated four 1,000-point scorers, and we've only had 15 in the program's history. We're still trying to establish and figure out who's going to score points for us. We're getting ready to find that out on Friday night. That's where we are and I'll open it up to questions."
On Expectations for This Season
"I knew when I accepted the job at Rice that I was inheriting an outstanding program that had not only a winning tradition but also several outstanding players. That was obvious with four of those players going over the 1,000-point barrier while we were here. Coach Cristy McKinney did a fantastic job of building the Rice Women's Basketball program. We were a little fearful that we couldn't keep that going. We had a glimpse of the future from our exhibition game against Houston Baptist University when we put five freshmen on the floor, who handled themselves very well. My optimism has gone up a little bit from where we were previously. We graduated 65% of our scoring and we were the second-lowest scoring team in the league last year. So my nightmares were who's going to score this year? We have had pretty balanced scoring in our practices. We've been able to score more in practices than I thought we would and we put up 81 points in our exhibition game. Hopefully that will be able to carry on [throughout the season]. It is a new beginning as our two seniors are the only two players left from the Cristy McKinney and her staff's recruiting era. So now it's up to us to try and sustain with the players that we brought in ourselves."
On the Team's Consistency with Five Freshmen
"Well it would have been a lot tougher if our five freshmen had not played as well as they did. But right now on paper I would say they are in our top-nine rotation along with our two seniors and two juniors. As I said earlier that made me sleep a little better since that game Thursday night. The thing about freshmen though, that my experience has been, they still are freshmen. They can follow up a very outstanding performance with [a less impressive performance]. Then you say, well they are freshmen. I really think our team could be a lot like the Dow Jones; hopefully it won't dip as low as the Dow has for those of us that have money that is dwindling away as we speak. I think we probably will have some inconsistency since we have five freshmen in our top nine or ten-rotation. Hopefully they'll be more consistent than inconsistent."
On Senior's Carrying the Scoring Load
"Unfortunately not. Our two seniors - Emery Carter haven't been healthy for the last year and a half. She's [Emery] playing without a knee brace for the first time in that time and playing very well. Maudess Fulton is a player that we think is capable of scoring 12-15 points per game for us. But our two leading returning scorers both averaged about eight points per game. We can't really lock in on someone who will be able to score for us. With Lauren Neaves, Krystal Frazier, Valeriya Berezhynska and Kadie Riverin in the house, knowing where those points were going to come from, we pretty much had an idea the performance level they were going to give us night in and night out."
Men's Coach Ben Braun
Opening Statement
"Thank you for coming out here today. As [Coach] Greg Williams said this is a big day [for Rice basketball]. Officially, Friday night just to have our facility open to get a tour is great. I know Coach [Williams] shares my sentiments, his players and our players were in the locker room for the very first time. Compared to what they were used to - I couldn't get my players out of the locker room. Also, Coach Williams was looking for his players in the same way and they were in their locker room. We both share something in that we have great ambassadors for this university - the players are not complaining, certainly our coaches aren't making excuses. The excitement of finally being in Tudor Fieldhouse is fantastic. I would like Coach [Williams]. He's been great to work with. I've had the opportunity to work with many Women's Basketball head coaches over my time and Coach has been fantastic. He's showed me the ropes here in terms of practice conditions and what we're getting into. He's been great and I really appreciate that.
Getting back to our team - we are excited. We've been going 6 am practices. I gave them the option to go 6:30 or 7 am and they chose 6. If you don't believe me you can ask them. They wanted an earlier practice time. This is a group that wants to do well. If you look at the guys this year, I really feel for our team because our team fought injuries last year. A lot of the guys on the team weren't able to play last year but they're able to play now. I'm really excited for Rodney Foster; I'm really excited for Cory Pflieger. These guys had some injuries last year and couldn't play through the season. Now they're here and they're really excited for this season to come. As a coach, I'm excited. I can't tell you how I've looked forward to coming to practice every day and getting in to our season. We didn't make things easy for our guys. We open with up with Portland State here on Saturday. Portland State's an NCAA [postseason tournament] team. They're a unanimous pick to win their league; they have the [Big Sky] conference player of the year on their team; they have a number of transfers that were outstanding high school All Americans. I didn't give our team an easy opener, but I think it's fitting that our team gets a pretty good idea of where we stand. I think our fans will as well. We want to make sure our team has a good opener. We'll see what happens on Saturday. The good thing is - we have a couple more days to prepare. We have a closed door scrimmage today, which will be our second permissible scrimmage and then I think we'll get a little better idea of where we stand."
On Team's Readiness for the Season Opener
"You never know if you're ready. I always go into every season and practice believing that we're going to be ready. Game time is something else. Maybe your team is not ready at the beginning, maybe they come back in the second half. I'd like our team to be ready by the opening tip. Really, you find out if they're ready not through game-day, but through everyday practices. I can tell you, our team has never cheated a day of practice. Our team has practiced hard. Like I said, 6 in the morning practices - the guys are stretching at 5:30. Guys are in the training room at 4:45. Our trainers are here every other morning. If you ask me if our team prepared to be successful and if they are ready, then I believe they are. Giving them the tough draw that they received for Saturday, then that's a different story. But I believe psychologically and physically our team has answered the call and is ready to compete, which is what it's all about."
On Team's Expectations
"I've never put a numbered goal on our team or any team I've coached. I don't think it's fair to say this team is going to win X amount of games. Number one, you don't know about your competition. Number two, our team is a team that we want to be better as the season goes on. I'm not as concerned with our team in October or November as I'm going to be as the season goes on into December, January or February. If our team can get better as we've done in practice then we can talk about how successful we can be. Really there's no way to put a measuring stick on that now. Would our team like to participate in the postseason tournament? Yes, absolutely. That would be a great goal for our team. Would our team like to compete in the C-USA tournament? Yes, absolutely. But to be able to talk about those things, our team has to be able to compete at our best level, our competition level. We have to achieve our potential. That's been the biggest thing - getting to be consistent in practice on a daily basis, competing everyday. I don't care which team you are on, our guys will probably tell you something about it, it doesn't matter if you're on the blue team or gray team. It's not important if you're on the first team or second team. It's about our program playing 10-12 players strong, not about who's first team or second team. If we can get that mentality then our chances go up as we play people this year. That's going to be our goal - to get better, to improve and to develop some consistency. We have to go from last year. Last year didn't end the way the guys and a lot of people wanted it to end. The good news is - that was last year. We have to look past last year and ask what our capabilities are this year. We have a brand new start. This new facility is going to give us the ability to really kick this season off with a great start."
On Tough Non-Conference Schedule
"It's not that easy. Our non-conference schedule is tough, as I mentioned even with our opener. Most people schedule an opener so they can show up and win. That's not the case. I gave our team probably as good of an opener [as possible]. We're going to play a team that is NCAA [tournament] ready. They're a team that's been there and are ready to go back. Starting with them and adding in a couple of other schools - Texas A & M and Oklahoma, I think it's a great non-conference schedule. That's what the Conference USA is going to be about this year - our league is getting better. Whoever we faced last year in the Conference USA, it's going to be that much tougher this year. Most teams have their top players coming back and they've added some players. We'll use our tough schedule as a measuring stick for us. What are we doing well and we need to do to improve. There's nothing like getting to practice and having a coach tell us where we need to improve. Our players are very smart so it's easy to get into a practice and explain a game situation and say we did these things well but we really need to improve in these areas. That's going to be our goal this year, just continue to get better, use our games as a measuring stick, and non-conference schedule. By the time we're done with our non-conference schedule, you talk about BYU on the road and other games I haven't even mentioned, these are school that have had 40 or 50 game non-conference winning streaks. I played BYU when we were back at California. We went in there [to BYU], I shared this with my team here at Rice, and played them after they'd won 48 non-conference games in a row and beat them that night. It doesn't matter how many games you play, how many games you win, it's what your team feels it can do on the court."
On Benefits of the new Facility
"Playing in a new Fieldhouse doesn't mean we're playing in a new place so we'll automatically win the game. It means that you have excitement and a consistent place to practice. Not only can our players practice in a consistent atmosphere, they can also study in an athletic study center. They don't have to walk across campus. They can lift weights in here. They're doing their study sessions and their tutorials in here. Everything is one-stop shopping and that is the vision of Chris Del Conte when he was the architect of putting a plan and everything together with Bobby Tudor. That's what gives your program consistency. When your athletics facility, academics and everything is scattered all around, you have to catch buses and walk bikes back and forth that gets tough. But now that things are here, I believe our players can get to be consistent. I think that will help our performance, there's no question. The other end of the coin, Greg has probably experienced this as well, to be able to have players visiting campus - future Rice Owls - to be able to visit with this vision in mind that really helps your program. On Wednesday, signing day, we hope to have a pretty good recruiting class. I think a lot of that had to do with number one the job that our players did in recruiting those young men, and number two, the new facility. The players and the parents that came in on those visits got a chance to look at our facilities and say this is the type of education and atmosphere that I want to spend the next four years in. The benefits will be not only on the opening day but as we go on in time, no question about that."
