October 16, 2007
The defending Big 12 Conference champion and preseason league favorite Texas A&M women's basketball team kicked off the 2007-08 season by attending Big 12 Basketball Media Day held Tuesday in Kansas City, Mo.
Texas A&M head coach Gary Blair, senior A'Quonesia Franklin and juniors Takia Starks and La Toya Micheaux met with the media and gave their insight on what to expect from the preseason nationally-ranked Aggies in the upcoming season.
TEXAS A&M HEAD COACH GARY BLAIR
(Transcript courtesy the Big 12 Conference and ASAP Sports)
Opening Statement
?It?â„¢s good to be in Kansas City. As we were coming in the airport, I was telling my kids, probably the biggest highlight of my coaching career is when we made the Final Four in ?â„¢98 (while at Arkansas). We left the West Coast and arrived there on Tuesday, went back home to Fayetteville and had to come up here on Wednesday. We arrived in Kansas City around 4 p.m. and as soon as we flew in, we saw the big billboard saying, ?Welcome to the Final Four.? Kansas City has always been fond memories for me. It?â„¢s a great city. My wife received her doctorate from the med center here when we were in Fayetteville. Kansas City is a great town. We?â„¢re glad to be here. Hopefully next spring, we can stay a little bit longer than we did against Tennessee when we played them in the Final Four. That didn?â„¢t last long, but I?â„¢m glad to be here.?
Gary, what factors have to come together for this team to get you back to another Final Four?
?First off, health. We have the kids, but we?â„¢re not very healthy right now. We have a lot of kids that are banged up right now for the first time that I can remember in 10 or 15 years. We have to get healthy and we have to stay hungry. We will not be the sleeper that?â„¢s coming up. People would look at us last year and say, ?'yes, they play good hard-nosed defense, but who?â„¢s going to get 20 and 10 from them each night??â„¢ We didn't know who was going to get 20 and 10, because we pass that torch around. That?â„¢s what our team is made up of. Our leading scorer averaged 14 points per game and it?â„¢s probably going to be the same this year. We have our top six players back and almost our top 10 back. We have three very good recruits coming in, two guards, one from the Kansas City area, Tyra White, who we?â„¢re expecting a lot out of this year. And, it?â„¢s nice to be the hunted for once. Oklahoma had that for the last couple of years. And in one way, they?â„¢re still the hunted. When you have Courtney Paris, I think all roads lead to Norman. But, you?â„¢ve got to come through College Station first. I think that?â„¢s going to be fun.?
?Can we live up to all of the hype and expectations? Can we put bodies in the seats now without having to do gimmicks? Can our fans stand up and pay their money at the window and say we want to see quality, we want to see a top 10 basketball team, are they for real? Hopefully, we can live up to it. This is what we?â„¢re in coaching for. I?â„¢m tired of being Cinderella. I?â„¢m the oldest Cinderella there is, and so we?â„¢ll relish it at the top. Now, what we have to do is try to live up to it. But, you?â„¢re living up to it in the hardest conference, top-to-bottom, in the country. No. 1 through No. 12, no one can compete with what we have in the Big 12.?
Talk about having a bull?â„¢s eye on your back. What was it like in the offseason, through the offseasons you?â„¢ve had in the past, to where this offseason, being Big 12 Champs and being able to say that and tell kids that, how much of a difference does that make?
?It was huge, particularly in the national scene. We were able to get in certain homes and when we would say who we were on the phone, they automatically said, ?'hey, I saw you play Oklahoma. I saw you play George Washington or Baylor or Texas.?â„¢ So, television helps out a lot, but this conference helps out a lot. In the Midwest and in the southern part of the country, we lead the nation in attendance. And, we lead the nation probably in media exposure, and that?â„¢s a tribute to you guys and I think it?â„¢s a tribute to what you?â„¢re producing out there. We all have good marketing departments and I think all the head coaches in this league, sell ourselves pretty well. But, it?â„¢s a constant battle, because women?â„¢s athletics, not just women?â„¢s basketball, will always be in the grassroots stage. We?â„¢re growing and growing and growing and that?â„¢s our job to keep it growing.?
?What?â„¢s so nice is when I look around here, it reminds me of when I first started in the women?â„¢s game at La. Tech. We were having fashion editors come cover us in New York. People that got stuck would draw the assignment of covering women?â„¢s basketball. You are here because you want to be here, you didn?â„¢t draw the short end of the stick, you drew the right end of the stick. And, that?â„¢s what?â„¢s so good about our game and of all the stories that you can write about our players. I encourage all of you to write more human interest stories about our young ladies in the conference, besides the negative stories of the wins and losses. There are so many stories out there that need to be told. And you?â„¢re the media that can do it.?
?It?â„¢s nice to come up here with a Big 12 Championship ring. I just put it on yesterday and it?â„¢s great to have instead of my Arkansas Final Four ring that I have worn for years. I always told my kids that I would always wear that Final Four ring until we won our own ring at Texas A&M. I did the same thing when I left Stephen F. Austin and went to Arkansas and wore our Final Four ring. I did the same at Stephen F. Austin coming from Louisiana Tech. I wore a national championship ring until we earned a Sweet 16 ring at Stephen F. Austin.?
?Our first three games are going to be tough. We?â„¢re playing the Chinese National Team, the fifth-ranked team in the world, which has a number of WNBA players. Then, we?â„¢re playing SMU in Dallas on Nov. 9 and it?â„¢s their best team since 2000 and Rhonda (Rompola) has really worked hard to get that team up. Then, we come back home and play the U.S. National Team on Nov. 11. We?â„¢ll get our lunch handed to us, but at the same time, we?â„¢re one of the eight schools along with Baylor in our conference that?â„¢s getting a chance to play the U.S. National Team. That?â„¢s tremendous for our conference that we?â„¢re playing the best of the best. If any of you all could get down to the game, I encourage you to do that. People don?â„¢t realize that the U.S. National Team will be the best team either in men or women?â„¢s basketball to ever play in either one of our two facilities on campus. It?â„¢s going to be great for us. We?â„¢re going to enjoy that moment. I don?â„¢t know what the score will be, but we?â„¢re going to have fun playing.?
You don't have what I guess you would say superstar-type players, but you do have a lot of complimentary players, players with maybe superstar ability, but that?â„¢s not necessarily how you play. You stress defense. How has that style worked for you over the course of your career?
?I think it works first with your assistant coaches and who you hire. Can they teach the game and coach the game, not just recruit the game? I think that?â„¢s where too many staffs fall short on. We develop kids and I think that?â„¢s the strength of our program. That?â„¢s why we?â„¢re getting a lot of the kids we?â„¢re getting because you go back and you look at what we start with. They might not be a top 10 player in the country, but all of a sudden, we?â„¢re doing a good job of developing what we have. Kids don?â„¢t leave our program, they stay. They graduate and I think that?â„¢s important.?
?Now, when you look at a Tennessee and a Connecticut for the 2008 recruiting class, if you keep up with the website, they committed eight out of the top 15 in the country between those two programs. That sort of gets old, but at the same time my little band that I have, we?â„¢re going to play super hard, and if you think a Kim Mulkey-coached team is going to back down to a Tennessee or a Sherri Coale-coached team is going to back down to a Connecticut, it isn?â„¢t going to happen. This league plays hard and we?â„¢ll stand up to anybody. Of course, Oklahoma has got the premier player in the nation this year in Courtney Paris. It will probably be her, (Tennessee?â„¢s) Candace Parker or (LSU?â„¢s) Sylvia Fowles, but each of those three can be defended. That?â„¢s what you have to do. You have to build your team around defense first, and that?â„¢s what we did. Even though every player on our team was recruited for their offensive ability, we teach them how to play defense early. That?â„¢s how you get playing time for us, defense. If we become a better rebounding team and get a little more inside scoring this year, I think will improve. You have to, your same kids are back.?