bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie women's basketball head coach Darin Spence throughout the 2007/2008 season as the Aggies aim for the WAC Championship and Beyond. In this week's interview Coach Spence talks about last week's games against Hawai'i and San Jose State, this week's games against Idaho and Boise State and weighs in on Bob Knight's departure from college basketball.
bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about the Hawai'i game on Thursday?
Darin Spence: It was a different looking team than what we had seen just due to their size. It was a different challenge for us. Their two inside players were just big and when I say big I mean tall not overly big, just good basketball size, and when they stretched their arms out they were even longer and taller. It was just a new challenge for us and they played a lot of what they call their amoeba defense, Jim Bolla the coach there spent a lot of years at UNLV around Tarkanian, Tark ran that amoeba defense and that's what Hawai'i runs a lot of. It just posed a new challenge for us and a test of our composure and patience.
bc.net: Irma Kmataite-Smith had 17 points in 14 minutes, her best game of the season so far. Can you talk about her play?
DS: It came at a great time. We were just a little slow, we were trying to figure out what we had to do to score against them. She came in and did a really good job of hitting shots and stretched their defense out. That's what she does well. She's a shooter, when she gives herself a chance to settle in and spot up and just catch and shoot she's really good. The challenge for her has been, if somebody runs or gets closer to her she doesn't want to shoot it. It takes a little time to get her shot off, she'll take off dribbling which means she can't make a dribble move and pull up and shoot it and she can't hit a three because she's taking off dribbling. So what we've been trying to get her to do is give a shot fake if they're running at you and let them land on you and get fouled, which in the San Jose game she got fouled twice shooting threes. Her strength is shooting the ball and after she hits a few shots, then they come running at her and then she can do something with the dribble and look to do some midrange shooting. She's so active and she moves without the ball pretty well. That's been her role for us and we're obviously going to need her to do more of that for us.
bc.net: Can you talk a little bit about the play of Niki Holt in the game against UH? She didn't make a big impact on the stat sheet but she gave you some really good minutes including hitting a three.
DS: Niki gives us much needed size, she has the ability on the offensive end to make shots. She's a scorer, they have to guard her, it helps stretch the defense out. They can't just leave her out there, she can make threes. She's actually much more comfortable out on the perimeter facing the basket than she is with her back to the basket. Of course we'd like a 6'4" kid to be better with her back to the basket but you have to be smart and play to people's strengths and keep working on the weaknesses. She's got the ability to step out and if you lose her she's gonna hit a shot on you. Defensively she does a good job because of her length and size and she changes people's shots. She played a solid game, she needs to give us 10 or so minutes every night and fill a void if we need an open shot here or there she's capable of doing that.
bc.net: Towards the end of the Hawai'i game you started putting in some of your other freshmen, Danisha Corbett, Erica Sanchez and Brittany Palmer, I was impressed with the speed of Corbett and Palmer, obviously the season isn't over but what do you feel that those two will give you next season?
DS: A lot of what you said, speed, quickness, they're very aggressive. They're gonna be good. I know there was a stretch where we had the four freshmen and Hannah out there and I turned to coach and said, it's like opening your back door and letting a group of puppies run out into the yard because they just go everywhere. They're really active, they're good players. We've got a good young group and it's going to help us for years to come. They're anxious, they want to play, they've given us great competition in practice which has made our older kids better. There's no question in my mind that if we were to give Brittany Palmer and DaDa [Danisha Corbett], those two all the minutes that a couple of the seniors are getting, we'd be just as good. They're talented players, they don't have the maturity yet to handle some situations or obviously the playing experience but they're good players and they're gonna be good for the next three years.
bc.net: Can you talk about the San Jose State game this past Saturday?
DS: It's an interesting group because they're athletic, they have enough talent, they just haven't put it all together yet. When you're losing games that happens but they have the ability to be a good team and win more games than what they're winning. They were a different group, the group from Hawai'i was a lot bigger then you go to this really quick and athletic team and they gave us some problems. Driving the ball. There were a lot of calls, it was a weird game because there were so many fouls called and so many free throws, it was just a strange game. I thought our team did a good job of fighting through the stoppage of play and the whistles and held our composure. But I'm impressed with how quick and athletic San Jose is.
bc.net: You talked about your seniors, especially your guards needing to step up, were you pleased with their play in the last two games?
DS: Yeah, no question. They're a group of five seniors and especially Monique and Irma, that have experience. They've played a lot of games at this level. They've had some success here and there. We have to rely on them, in Monique's case, if something's not going right, she can go in and help get us excited or pick the pace up which she does a pretty good job of that. She gives us a different kind of guard than what Madison is, Monique has shot the ball well in conference play and she's a huge part of this program and we need her to play at a high level the rest of conference play. She's playing really well right now, one because she isn't playing the minutes she had been playing in the past which has kept her healthier. She's fresher and a lot more efficient when she gets in the games. That's a huge plus for us as a team.
Irma's the same way. Her minutes are not what they were two years ago when she played but a lot of that is, she's kind of the offensive designated shooter. Her defensive game is not as strong as some of the other guards that are playing more minutes but both of those two guards have to really give us good play.
I believe you win with good guard play. It's nice to have the big kids but I really believe that good guards is how you win and how you play for championships. Both those two kids are very important for us. Sherell and Anikia, they do their thing and Carla with scoring and rebounding, we'd like to see them even kick it into a higher gear down the stretch of the remaining games of their careers. Carla is kinda the enthusiastic player of the group, she defends and rebounds but all five of them need to crank it up a little bit the rest of the way.
bc.net: Can you talk about the upcoming game against Idaho on Thursday, you opened up conference play against them what seems like a long time ago. Idaho has been playing better as of late and lost to Boise State by only 5 points on Saturday. How much different are they than the first time that you played them?
DS: I believe they're a lot different. I think they're a team that's very well coached, they play hard, they don't take possessions off. They're scary because they're just now really starting to put some good games together and it's an eerie feeling walking into their arena knowing, okay we beat them here, we didn't particularly play a great 40 minutes, we gave a lot of kids playing time and we ended up beating them by 12 or 13, what's going to be our mindset. We've talked about needing to win 3 of the 5 remaining road games if we want to stay in the title hunt and so this has got to be one of them. It's not going to be easy but you just hope we go in there and really defend and rebound. Now they've been playing around with different starting lineups, they went with a really young group the other night. This is the time of the year that you hope your experience and your maturity pays off. Last year we got beat in triple overtime up there after we had an 11 point lead. So if we do get a lead we have to make sure we're playing to increase the lead. It's going to be a tough game for us.
bc.net: You've got Boise State on Saturday in what could be a very important game for you, Boise State is in second place but you beat them in the Pan Am in the first game by 14. What's changed with their team since then?
DS: They have some other players who are starting to step up rather than Harris and Thompson. They've got some other kids starting to step up and play better and give them more point production so they're spreading out their points a lot more. They're just a real aggressive offensive team that keeps coming at you and coming at you. They have great experience, being the defending WAC champion, to win it you're going to have to go through them. They haven't lost at home, they're 10 or 11-0 at home this year. They obviously play much much better at home. It's a game where we can go in, having already beat them here, it's a game that we can go in and kind of swing away and see what happens, just try to give ourselves a chance, score tied ball in our hands at the end of the game. I think if we can do that then we would have a chance to pull out the victory. But I know they're going to try to really put it on us at the very beginning of the game. They like to knock teams out early and so we're just going to have to go there and withstand some of their runs.
bc.net: In the first game, Sherell had 18 points and her and Anikia combined for 28 points. Madison had her best game of the season points wise scoring 19 points. What do they need to get out of those three?
OR: In that game, especially being a road game, we can't have turnovers. Those three have the ball in their hands a lot so they have to make sure we're aggressive offensively, that we're getting good shots. Obviously they've got to make shots if we want to have a chance to win the game. But I think the biggest thing is we just can't have senseless turnovers. There's been games this year where we've had a lead and we've just kind of lost our minds for a stretch and had some silly turnovers. In that game, as every game we gotta hang onto the ball and we gotta make sure we're getting a shot every possession. Then we've got to defend solidly without committing silly fouls.
bc.net: This week Tasha Harris was named the WAC Player of the Week, this will be the second consecutive week that you'll face the WAC Player of the Week. Against Hawai'i last week you were able to make Tanya Smith a non-factor in the game at least on the offensive end. Will you have a similar strategy to make Harris work for her points?
DS: Yeah, that's something that we do every game. We don't go into a game and say we want to completely remove their best player because it's too hard. Those players are good for a reason and I don't believe you can just totally shut somebody down. When somebody's averaging 17 or 18 points, they're going to find a way to get what they get because that's what they run as a team, that's who they run through, especially in Harris' case because she's a guard. And Thompson their other guard is a great scorer. We just try to make them work for everything. Don't give them anything wide open, don't foul them and put them on the free throw line, make them have to work, if they hit shots they hit shots. That's kind of been our plan of attack for everybody's top player. Now what's important is we don't want their other three to go off. We want to limit those three and keep them to their averages and below and if we can do that, I think that' how you win games.
bc.net: Your team is 16th in the country in field goal percentage defense, #1 UConn leads at 30.9% but then you're just 1 percentage point behind the #2 team in that category, 7th ranked Rutgers. Can you talk about your team's defensive play and how important it is to your team's success?
DS: We knew going into this year and I knew taking over this program that it was something we were going to try to build and have be the foundation of our success here. It's taken a while to get us to this point but this group has really bought into what we want to do on the defensive end. It's important because we talked about coming into this year, we've got to keep us in games if we were going to keep going through those three and four minute scoring droughts like we had been in the past few years. If you're going to do that, you've got to make sure you continue to battle on the defensive end and force tough shots, get stops and get rebounds. What's been beneficial to us is we haven't had as many of those scoring droughts this year, we've been a better offensive team. You could say, well that builds off our good defense or our good defense builds off our good offense, it's kind of chicken or the egg theory. Both are working together hand in hand. I know this group takes a lot of pride now in our defensive effort. What we're doing, whether it's our man or our zone, we pick our times where we throw our press on people. They've really taken a great understanding and great pride in being a good defensive team and you'll hear us talk about, we're going to win this game with our defense and rebounding. It's really pleasing for me to see a group actually go out and execute what we work on every day.
bc.net: We're getting down to crunch time, obviously every single game is important but with these two road games this week, your team controls it's own destiny in terms of winning the regular season title. I know you talk about getting road splits, but is this team at the point where you say, you know what, we can go on the road and our goal is to win two?
DS: Yeah. No question. You have to feel that way going in. We talked yesterday about how the league race is playing out right now. We talked about each team and what their record is and how many home games they have left and how many we have left and so, in our situation, just winning the three home games is not going to be enough to win the league. We talked about winning three of the five road games that we have left, at worst if we want to win the league. And obviously you've got to take care of your home games because Boise is sitting there with five home games left with us being one of them. I believe they're at seven wins so if they win all five, there's 12 wins right there so you're gonna have to get to 12 for sure to be in the hunt for the league title. Now if we go up and win both this week, that means Boise didn't win all five of their home games so that right there would help.
We've talked about the plan, I think intelligent, mature teams can do that and you don't really have to live in that day-to-day one game at a time mentality because you do have to take a step back and look at the big picture of it. That's what we've done all year, we've talked about the big picture of the season this year. Not gotten so down after the five losses and not gotten too after the wins. We've plotted our course and laid out our plan of attack and the kids know what they have to do and quite frankly right now the coaching staff, all we have to do is get them to the games. I believe in how we do things this time of year and into the tournament is really all in the players hands. How I approach our program is I nitpick from day one, instruct and correct and push and prod them and really try to direct them until we get to this time of the year, then we just kind of take a step back and let the players play and that's been successful for us in the past. That's what we're going to do this year as well.
bc.net: The big news around college basketball is the retirement/resignation of Bob Knight. What are your thoughts on that? Have you had any experience with him or contact with him throughout your coaching career?
DS: I don't know him on a personal level. I did have an opportunity to meet him and visit with him at a basketball clinic that he came up to in Wichita, Kansas years ago. A lot of the defensive principles that they use are a lot of what we use. I've done a lot of my career based off of obviously John Wooden growing up in the Los Angeles area with the great UCLA teams and then also what Coach Knight's done. He's impacted a lot of coaches around the country and our sport, I don't know him on a personal level but he was very gracious to me in the brief moments we were able to speak and he was very willing and open to help me in some ideas that we were talking about. He's obviously added a lot to this game, more on a positive level than on a negative level.
