bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie women's basketball head coach Darin Spence throughout the 2008/2009 season as the Aggies take aim at a conference championship. This week we spoke with Coach Spence their quarterfinal loss to Louisana Tech, talked about the growth of the team and looked ahead at next season.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the loss to Louisiana Tech?
Darin Spence: As I said in postgame with the media, we didn't go there to get beat. From that side of it it was a little disappointing. We knew going in that we had our hands full. I was really pleased with how our players fought through the entire 40 minutes. Especially the last three minutes, we made the decision that we were trying to build for next year, trying to do the quick foul, quick score, drive it, try to hit a three or get fouled. We had a good stretch there at the end. I was really pleased with how the kids just hung in there and stayed with it and just kept battling.

bc.net: The first half it looked like Louisiana Tech gave you every opportunity to take control of the game but maybe because of the youth and inexperience you weren't able to do that. But you got down 17 points in the second half but put together a really good stretch and got it down to seven points, and as has been throughout the season, the kids haven't given up no matter how far down you were and really made it interesting down the stretch.
DS: We were excited when we go it cut to seven and at that point they called a timeout and came out of the timeout, we had one defensive mishap that led to a three point play and then we went down the very next offensive possession and turned the ball over and it went right back up. But I think our players learned at the moment that you've gotta be able to run good possessions on both offense and defense and not give possessions away. That's been the theme of what we just went through this year. We just gave away too many possessions, whether it was offense or defense. We just didn't play every possession to its completion. We always talk about wrapping up our possessions, one by scoring, two by coming up with a defensive rebound. I thought we learned, we got better and we gave ourselves a chance. We just couldn't get over that hump. I always joke around about our test anxiety come game night. We really had better practices as the year went on. Our kids learned how to work hard, how to work hard for longer stretches. We're just really low on experience but this team has fought every single day. I was really pleased with how they came to practice, it just gives us a lot of encouragement moving forward.

bc.net: One of the big keys in the game was their 26 offensive rebounds, obviously you were playing without a completely healthy Niki Holt or a completely healthy Kelsie Rozendaal. How much different do you think the game would have been had those two been completely healthy and 100%?
DS: I don't know if the outcome would have been different but our size would have been greater. At times in that game we played with four guards and moved Tyshae Walton to our 4 spot, she's 5'8". We wouldn't have had to been trying to work the jigsaw puzzle around as much as we did. I've always thought that if you have injuries it's so much better to have them at the beginning of the year because you never get to the point where you count on certain people. But when it happens at the end of the year it really makes you scramble and that's what we were doing that game. We probably would have gotten more rebounds but La. Tech is pretty athletic and we were so focused on defending them that we forgot to rebound the ball during those stretches. So it just kinda caught up to us.

bc.net: You had several early season losses that were real close losses because of the inexperience and youth and maybe if you had been able to pull those games out you're looking at a completely different season.
DS: No question. We go on the road at UTEP and then at Kent State, both games we could have won, should have won. We just didn't finish them off. So who knows, you win those two and it could have been different. But after the La. Tech game at the tournament, we sat in the locker room and that was a mad basketball team. They weren't mad as far as being embarrassed because we got beat, they were mad because we talked about the season in its entirety and how from a win/loss standpoint it's something that we're not proud of but at the same time we know we've got a lot of young kids valuable playing experience. So now you look and our sophomores are going to come back next year and and our freshmen, that group is going to be so much better and then you add what we have coming in and now we have players in position that really understand what we're trying to do. I underestimated going in just how young we were and just how different practice had to be from a year ago. Everything had to be right back to square one, this is how you pass, this is how you catch, it's just like being back coaching middle school as far as how we try to break things down and simplify. We talked about how we're not going to do that again. This team is just really eager to get started again this spring and summer. We have a basketball team that's just fired up about the future and as coaches we're excited about what we have coming back. I really feel that we're not very far behind Fresno, we have a win over Fresno, we have a win over Nevada, we're not far behind those top four semifinal teams in the league by any stretch of the imagination. Now with some experience we feel like we're going to be right there in the hunt. But at the same time I think the WAC overall is going to be a much better league as well, there's some good young kids on every team.

bc.net: One of the things that's very common with freshman laden teams but didn't really seem to happen to your team is that they hit that "freshman wall" and your team didn't really experience that.
DS: Yeah, that's an interesting point and I think that sometimes ignorance is bliss. Sometimes they just don't know and have those older seniors talking about, "I'm tired" as four year players will when they get to that stage of their career because they think they've learned everything so now with those old bodies you need a little bit more rest and those young ones are still running around. The power of suggestion is really strong, when you have good leadership and they hand good messages on that's how it's received and I think our older kids, Tyshae and Niki did a great job of being solid leaders for these young kids. We as a coaching staff, we never felt sorry for ourselves because we were getting beat, we just kept hammering away, kept driving them. We never once stopped and said, "We better rest or back off." We were too into what we were teaching and working on and the interesting thing is that from a coaching standpoint we were so invested in these young kids this year that we've spent a lot of time with them and enjoyed our time with them as well. We can see our basketball team getting better every day.

bc.net: Obvious in the improvement from the beginning of the season to the end of the season, at the beginning of the season you were getting out rebounded by 10 or so rebounds per game by the end of the end of the season you were only getting out rebounded by three or four and that was mostly because of size. What were you most proud about with this team in terms of their development over the course of the year?
DS: I know there was never a day where they didn't work hard. There were days where we practiced a shorter amount of time, some we practiced longer but they never came in and dogged it. They never came in with the attitude of "geez coach, take it easy on us, we just lost four in a row." They always wanted to learn, they always wanted us to challenge them and they always answered the call. I thought offensively our players were pretty resilient as much as we changed what we were trying to do throughout the course of the year to fit our players, they were receptive to that, they didn't say, "wait coach, we you're confusing us" they just kept trying. Probably the disappointing thing to me was we just didn't buy in defensively enough. We just didn't give it our all on the defensive end to get stops. But again, that sense of urgency and attention to detail comes when you're older. Sometimes when you're young you just don't realize that wasting a day or a game is not going to come back to haunt you so that's probably the one disappointment that I have. But overall, yeah we didn't want to finish with nine wins but then again, we felt like we had that run through to last year where those kids were older, well now they all graduated and we've got to start again with the younger group. It's just like when Monique and Sherell and Carla Denning were freshmen, that's what this group felt like and we're just starting over again, we're just going to keep building and this team has really energized me to where I can't wait to get started again with them.

bc.net: Heading into next season, you've already announced three of the players you have coming in next season, talk a little bit about how you see them fitting into this team.
DS: We needed some size, we needed some mobile size and Malia Magazzeni from Highland High School in the Phoenix area is a 6'2" post player, she's real nimble and runs and is a physical kid, a rebounder/defender type. And that's what we need. A body that can bang people around. Her dad was an offensive lineman from Arizona State, he's 6'7", he played in the NFL a little bit, mom is about 6 foot, so she might grow some. She's just a great kid. Chrissy Fletcher is from Downers Grove, Ill., from the Chicago area, her team posted top four in the state tournament the last two years, 6'1" about Tabytha Wampler's size. Runs really well, another physical kid. And then Camila Rosen is a six foot long athletic wing player that is a good offensive player, she'll be a good defender. Camila comes from Berkely High School which is one of the best programs in the state of California. Those three bring winning attitudes and winning backgrounds from three very very good club programs in the summertime. They're going to come in and give our returning players some competition every day in practice. Not to mention we have Crystal Boyd our transfer from Texas who could be the best player in the WAC. She's a 5'11" guard and she was in my office today just talking about how she can't wait to get going. She's can play the 1 through 4. Today I told her, you may be playing some 4 so we can play four guards and just attack people, get out and run. She's so competitive, she doesn't want to lose a walking race to the drinking fountain. That's how competitive this kid is. You can just see how it changes our team in practice. So that's going to have a big impact on our team next year. We're excited, one for our new kids and two because we have a good group coming back.

bc.net: Talk a little bit about Madison's year, it was a little disappointing in that she had to battle illness the whole season and wasn't at 100% but she was very consistent in non-conference and conference scoring 14.3 points per game and really had to take everybody's best defensive effort. It really looked like she was a different offensive player in the last quarter of the season, a lot more aggressive.
DS: You know, her freshman year she was the third option on our team, if she was on the floor with Monique, she was probably fourth option. She allowed herself to just slide in and fit in. Now this year she had to take on a whole new role where she was our top option. She had to handle the ball, pass the ball, shoot the ball, score the ball, defense and it was a learning experience for her as well. Getting everyone's best defender, face guarded her, never came off her. The game at Kent State where she was just lighting them up, towards the end of the game they put an older athletic, physical kid on her, just kind of held her and grabbed her. She had to get used to that as well. You know, I think in her two years of Division I play, she's seen both sides of it, a support player and then the lead player. I think she had a great year. Do I think she can she be better? Yeah I do. I think she's a long way from her potential. The funny thing to me is she told me the other day that her goal for next year is to make the All-Defensive team. I think she was within the top six in the league in scoring all year so at one point, we say, "Golly, she could have been better," but then she's in the top six in the league in scoring, getting everyone's best shot and not 100% healthy. We've gotta think that if we'd have won more games, she would have been a First Team All-League player. All in all I was pleased with her play. I know she's not happy at all, she's already been back in the gym. We're trying to shut her down for a while and let her rest as we are with all of our players. But I think she had a good year and I think her teammates did a much better job as we moved forward, figuring out how to play with her and helping her out.