Women's Hoops Guru

By Mel Greenberg

Hello everyone. The Guru is having a major quiet rage moment in that this entry page blew up on him when he tried to append quotes from the email sent by Rutgers off of Friday's session with the Scarlet Knighrs that he was unable to attend due to matters here in Philadelphia that also included coverage of the Temple-Penn game in the previous post.

Mich as the Guru grew up in The Palestra, he does not feel like hanging around in the underbelly of the fabled around for another hour or so to recreate what he just lost.

Those thoughts are safe in the recesses of his mind and when he is in a more serene state 24 hours from now he will give his context on the game in this space after the outcome here.

Meanwhile, here are comments from Rutgers Hall of Fame coach C. Vivian Stringer and a few players. They speak for themselves, so to speak.

Basically, the Guru, in tying back to last year's controversial finish, noted that many participants are gone and this is about learning and that perhaps Rutgers gets more in the long run from a win and less from a loss depending how the Scarlet Knights proceed through the Big East.

Tennessee has already been nicked but enough is in front of the Vols in the Southeastern Conference, but not as much as Rutgers in the Big East, to pick up NCAA resume honors along the way.

That said, here are the quotes, which did make it into this template this time, even if the Guru's own intro now exists somewhere among the space junk revolving around the planet.
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(If he did not think it actually sounded like a good read, the Guru would not be in such a state )

Here's what was said.

Grrrrrr :)

Head Coach C. Vivian Stringer

What can you take away from a 6-0 December:

“They weren’t challenging games. I know we’re getting better. I appreciate that we have an opportunity to play a Tennessee because we can measure ourselves.”

On Tennessee:

“Tennessee is an excellent rebounding team and we’ve done a poor job of that. They’re an extremely aggressive defensive team and we don’t even handle that well at practice.”

On the tough schedule leading up to BIG EAST play:

“We’re going to be tested at the highest levels and what’s good about that is we can measure and know that we’re going to be fine in the BIG EAST or we’re going to have problems.”

On both Rutgers and Tennessee having so much young talent:

“Sometimes you can be so young that you don’t even know what you don’t know. That’s also true of our kids; we don’t know what we don’t know either. In this case, they’re playing. So much of it has to do with your mindset. When Matee (Ajavon) and Essence (Carson) were freshmen they started. They took care of LSU, Tennessee and Texas. Three games in one week, back-to-back-to-back like that and we won all of them. And they were a major part of that. But they were so young that they didn’t even know what they didn’t know. But they had to play and produce. There was no hesitation, no fear, they just played. That’s the difference, it was their mindset.”

What’s it like playing Tennessee:

“For us it’s almost the same because we play Tennessee every year. It’s not like we’re seeing them once every three or four years and we just heard about Tennessee. We’ve been playing them quite a bit, at least I have personally. What it’s like is, a team overcoming the mystique of another team and realizing that it was all in their head in the first place. They were good and everyone knows that they’re good, but you lose when you give them more credit than they deserve. You can’t do any talking; you have to back it up. You do recognize that they are fundamentally sound and they are the best athletes in the country, there’s no question about that but you have to find a way to get it done.”

“I can look at tapes from last year and they’re doing the same things. They just do what they do and they do it well. Some of the patterns they ran for Candice Parker, now they run them for Glory Johnson. The difference may be replacing her with the same kind of quality. Can you really take out a Candice Parker and put in a kid that just got a scholarship. But she has quality people coming in behind her.”

Is this a better team now than when the team returned from the west coast road trip:

“Yes. There’s no question, we are light-years ahead of that. Our challenge is playing the highest level of competition.”

Is the rate of improvement that the team is making satisfactory:

“I’m never satisfied with that. I’m not because we don’t compete well enough against each other. We just need to be competitors in practice. There’s such a thing as having 10 players and there’s such a thing as having 10 competitive players. We are getting better out there, but we have a long way to go.”

Kia Vaughn, Senior Center

Does it strike you that you are playing in a game with two coaching legends:

“They are. Although both of our teams started off slow and we have young players that are actually the majority of the team, everyone knows that regardless of how bad we start off, it’s Vivian Stringer and Pat Summitt’s team’s so obviously they are going to come out and show improvement. Later on is when everyone starts to peak and this is always going to be a good game.”

On how the team has improved since the west coast trip:

“We came from that trip, being a four in my mind to being a six and a half or seven. So we have a long ways to go to get to 10.”

How do you feel about your offensive game:

“I’ve been up and down. I think it was just me wanting to win so bad that I actually shut myself out more. I try hard to get my teammates to learn everything and with that I lost what I should be doing. So I had a conversation with my teammates and I told them to just play hard and I’m going to be who I am.”

“I do as much as I can. If I’m getting double and triple teamed, it’s the whole team. I have to be calm and find them. They have to hit open shots in order for it to come back to me so I can be effective. I can’t score on two or three people. In order for me to be effective, I need my guards to be relaxed and do what they have to do.”

What’s it like this time of year with the extra practice time:

“For me it’s exciting because it’s all about basketball. There’s no school. It helps as an individual because you have extra time to work on your game. And you have extra time to stay here to help your teammates understand here. This is the time I actually get back into game shape. This is when we actually get to bond more.”

Epiphanny Prince, Junior Guard

Has Coach Stringer used the events at last year’s game as motivation for match-up with Tennessee ?

(Stringer took away the team’s practice gear and have them doing their own laundry since Dec. 2)

“She hasn’t been using that. She has been telling us things like ‘we should want to win. The real motivation is that if we win we get our stuff back (laughter).” Question from reporter, what if you don’t win, you don’t get your stuff – gear- back? “We won’t get anything back if we don’t win. This is our real test. This and GW are our real tests, she said. I guess we have a 50, so far. I just want to win. I don’t need any extra motivation, ready to play hard and win.”

Would a Tennessee win motivate you as you begin the BIG EAST schedule?

“It’s very important because it would give us a lot of confidence going into BIG EAST play. We were predicted second in the league and we have already have some very close games that we shouldn’t have. We know that anyone can win on any given day so we want to come in here with a lot of confidence, especially in conference.”

You have a six-game streak, how much better in this team playing?

"The only game that we played very good in was GW (in the six-game win streak).We have played down to competition a lot and we don’t come out to attack teams. We have come out lackadaisical and letting others attack us first. The only team we attacked first was GW. We tried to attack them first both offensively and defensively.”

-- Mel