January 30, 2006
Head women's basketball coach Gary Blair met with members of the press Monday at the weekly basketball media luncheon held on the Texas A&M campus.
Click the link to the right to listen to the press conference. A transcript is posted below.
Gary Blair Media Luncheon Quotes
Would you rather see Texas Tech coming in here not 9-9 and looking for wins, or does it really matter after you've already seen them once?
"We know what they're going to do. They know what we're going to do. Our teams are very comparable in a lot of ways. We have a little bit more depth, but you do not need depth if your starters played the minutes that Missouri's did (65-51 win over Texas Tech Saturday). Their starters played 31 to 40 minutes and just had a quality game against Texas Tech. Sometimes depth is overrated, depending on how you're using it. I think the key game for Tech this week is they're playing Texas at home. It's time for them to make a decision. Are they going to make a run to get into the NCAA Tournament? To do that their most important game is their next game, and that's against Texas at home. They've played very well at home. They've had three one- or two-point games at home that they've won somehow, someway, so give them credit for what they're doing. For what we're doing here, we need a little bit of rest to get ready. If we would have won the ballgame Saturday, I would have been saying, 'We don't need any rest, let's play. Let's go find a non-conference game.' I wouldn't want any rest at all. But right now, we're going to reflect back on what we need to do to get better. We've played eight games. We are halfway through. We know our weaknesses. Other teams know our strengths. What we've got to do is accentuate those strengths. We've got to be better in transition. We've got to be better in transition defense. (Oklahoma) is the first team all year that has exploited us. Not just on beating the press...they were scoring after baskets even when we were in half-court defense. They were shooting layups."
How do you get (Morenike) Atunrase on track?
"I'm going to go back to school and get my doctorate in psychology. We've tried bringing her off the bench. We've tried starting her. I got a press release today about Cappie Poindexter, the great guard from Rutgers, that I've got to give to her. I said, 'Look at these percentages. This is what a next-level elite player is all about.' Is (Morenike) in a slump, or are people defending her better? If you remember, Alicia Robertson of Texas Tech had the same type of sophomore 'slump,' if you will, for Tech last year. Now this year, she's sort of getting it going the last few ballgames. Maybe people are respecting her more and she's not adjusting to what people are doing. The hardest thing she's doing is her shot selection is not very good. People are contesting her, where before she was really scoring off drives from the post, or shooting the three, or just driving up and shooting the jumper. Post players had a harder time defending her because she was quicker than most post players. When you go against the perimeter kids that she's going against, these are 5'10" and 6-footers that are used to guarding people just like her, and she's not making the adjustments. Her ball-handling has been very suspect. She's got to do better at creating her shot off the dribble than what she's doing now."
Are her problems tied to your half-court offense? Saturday a lot of possessions possibly were wasted with bad shots, turnovers, and such. Is part of that tied to her struggles?
"I think they aren't, a lot of it is just spacing, because when she does have the ball, she's not creating shots for others. When she has the ball, she's looking to drive in and score herself and not see the open person. We run a lot of set plays for (Takia) Starks and we get her open. When she's not open, she gives it up to somebody else. That's why her assist-to-turnover ratio is a lot better than Morenike's. When we give it to Morenike, the defense is collapsing in and it's not letting her throw it in and she's not seeing what's open outside. She's just got to learn to be a little more unselfish with the ball and find the open person, whether it's Aqua (Franklin) or T-Kay (Starks), or get the ball to the four-player. The number one problem is this is her first year of playing the perimeter. So sometimes it's not the defense as much as it's a young kid trying to find her way around. She's struggled with it. (She) Looks good in practice one day, looks average in practice. (She) Looks good in a game, looks below average in a game."
Is there ever any temptation in a game to move her back to the four because there are certain things she can do, or do you sort of have to stick with this?
"No, I think that's a good point. I think we can look at it. But the problem is, if I move (Danielle) Gant to the three, Gant cannot open up the defense with her outside shooting right now. Right now she cannot...she will hopefully by next year. Now I've moved a non-shooter outside. At least (now) I've got Erica Roy, who's a 15-foot shooter. You put Morenike in, it's going to close up the middle even more, but it's something we've got to look at."
How do you get your post players frame of mind set right after going against what you say is one of the best post players in the nation (Oklahoma's Courtney Paris)? How do you get them to not carry that over into this week?
"I think when you look at (Texas Tech's) LaToya Davis coming in, she might be the second or third best post player in our league after what she's done all year. She's a double-double waiting to happen. I think she had 22 against us the first time we played, so we didn't stop her. She's a mobile 6'1" post player, where we were looking at a physical 6'4" post player (against Oklahoma). I think it's just another assignment that our kids have to take on. Every game (Associate Head) Coach (Vic) Schaefer is going to the film room telling them, 'This is who you've got this week.' It's like the who's who of college basketball, who you have to stop in the Big 12. Is it (Baylor's) Sophia Young? Is it (Oklahoma's) Courtney Paris? Is it (Texas Tech's) LaToya Davis? Or, the (C'stelle) N'Garsanet kid from Missouri, who really hurt Texas Tech in that ballgame. I just think we have to have a balance on this team. In the last game we did not have a balance. We cannot have our one, two and three scoring 80 percent of our offense. You've got to blend it inside and outside and we've got to do a better job there."
You have the three Big 12 South teams in this area in Texas and Tech and Baylor, all still yet to come to Reed Arena. How important for the program in general would it be to knock some of those off at home?
"I thought we were really ready to do it this time (Saturday against Oklahoma). I think it's huge for this fan base because we're trying to develop a town into a basketball town. Our normal fans do not recognize how good a Missouri or an Iowa State is. We've got to find a way to get the job done. Not just to educate our fans, but to when you look at the NCAA selection committee, they want to know why you can't beat teams in the Big 12 South. (A&M men's coach) Billy (Gillispie) did it last year by beating Texas and Tech at home. We've got to do it here. I realize that, and beating the North...that's great. But at the same time, we're here to win the Big 12, not to win the North."
As you go into recruiting, that would have to be big too...
"Well, we had one of the top recruits in the state at this last ballgame. We'll have a couple of the top recruits in the state at this next ballgame (Sunday vs. Texas Tech). But we'll have every kid that we're recruiting in the nation watching on TV. What else is happening at 3-o'clock on Sunday afternoon? You can only talk about that Steeler game so much. Let's get ready to put our best foot forward. We're talking to our kids and we're doing all the promotions and putting people in the stands. Now it's time to put the best team on the floor. We didn't get it done the last ballgame. The crowd was better than our team. That's just something that we've got to change, because a number of times that we've played here (in the past) the team has been a whole lot better than the crowd."
You've talked about this second-half schedule and how tough it is, but when the season started in November what was Gary Blair's goal to come out of these eight games? 5-3? 6-2? What did you think?
"You're not going to trick me into that one (laughing). I knew with eight games, I couldn't talk about the eighth game until I got thru the first seven right there. My goal is simply to get to the NCAA Tournament. Period. NCAA Tournament. I don't care how we get there."
How many teams from the Big 12 do you anticipate right now will make the tournament?
"I hope we get seven. I cannot see getting eight because of the parity that's in the league. It's the same way on the men's side. When you have parity it's not good. You need a bottom of the league and you need an extreme top of the league. There's just a lot of party going on right now, very similar to the Big Ten. You know which four will get in and you don't know about the parity right behind it. It's good for college basketball, but then sometimes it allows some of the medium conferences to sneak their second or third team in because they have a good record, but they're not necessarily that good. For the big conferences, everything has to fall right for us. So now, you start pulling against your friends. You pull for A&M, and what is it going to take for A&M to get to the tournament. That's the sad part of our business. You have to have the bubble teams start losing and you want the big dogs to win."
Who are you rooting against this week (Texas at Texas Tech)?
"Pittsburgh (laughing). Tech played Missouri good until the last few minutes of the game. It's like (Tech coach) Marsha (Sharp) said, it was a good basketball game for 35 minutes. But that's what's happened most every time we've played Tech. We've won the first 35 minutes, they've won the last five and they come away with the 'W'. It's going to be a huge week for Texas Tech and it's going to be our biggest week of the year, even though we only have one game. This is a 'must' game. Oklahoma was not a 'must' game. It was a game we all would have felt great after. I'm not sure we were ready to handle the pressures of beating them. They'd have been talking about us last night at the Duke/North Carolina game, and on TV at the Baylor/LSU game. Right now, I don't know if our kids are ready for that. We've got to get little bit more mature both on and off the court to be able to handle the pressures of being a top-25 team. That was the disappointing thing, because we would have been in the top 25 if we'd have won."