bleedCrimson.net Weekly Coach Spence Interview

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. We spoke with Coach Spence about the 2008/2009 schedule which was released on Monday.

bleedCrimson.net: Talk a little bit about your schedule. The biggest thing that jumps out is your stretch from the middle of December to the end of January you play 10 of 13 games on the road.
Darin Spence: I think we've got a good balance to the schedule but we're in such a strange situation, the better we get the harder it is to schedule. Just trying to get bigger name teams to come play us and it's just really a difficult situation for us. I think our location plays against us and I really wanted to try to get some more name teams on our schedule to help out with our RPI and strength of schedule. I didn't anticipate us playing on the road the first couple games of conference either. But we get to go to a tournament in San Diego and that'll be good for the California kids on our roster. I think we've got a good balance of some name teams, some strong teams and some teams that are trying to get better.

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. We spoke with Coach Spence last week as part of our review of the Best Wins of '07/'08 and we also got his thoughts his two new signees Ashley Scroggins and Crystal Boyd, Niki Holt and her visit to post player camp and a little bit about the schedule for next season.

bleedCrimson.net: Talk a little bit about the junior college player you signed Ashley Scroggins.
Darin Spence: Ashley is from Mineral Springs, AR, she played two years at Pratt Junior College in Kansas. She's 6'2", a good athlete a banger type player, physical. She likes to work inside and she's going to give us some good depth in there. Obviously a good defender, good rebounder. She's a 72% free throw shooter in her two years at junior college. That's a good thing. When you get post players fouled and if they have the ability to step up and make free throws that really wears on your opponents. She's got a great attitude. I think she was underrecruited so she's going to come in with a lot to prove and a lot of enthusiasm and she's just a neat person and I'm really looking forward to having Ashley with us.

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. In this offseason check-in, Coach Spence talks about his contract extension, his incoming freshman class and the offseason schedule for his kids.

bleedCrimson.net: Talk a little bit about your contract extension? Obviously it enables you to continue to build the program.
Darin Spence: Yeah! And it keeps us from moving too, that's kinda the good thing. We, in my opinion, have really climbed the mountain in five years here. I keep saying this but the people have no idea where this program was. When you're on the outside, you think you know but you have no idea where it was at and things that we had to do and all the issues we had to address everywhere from our fundraising in our Fast Break booster club, our camps, our staff, just recruiting budgets, equipment, everything. I really think it took a good two to three years just to get that all squared away and then we've been able to win a few more games. Actually, we won a few more games each year after that first year. But there was just so much to do and now we have a really good group of young kids in the program that I think can reap the benefits of all those years and can really take us in a positive direction. Our coaching staff has been a lot more stable, we've been together for a few years. I think that helps out and I'm just really excited that we're gonna keep building on what we're doing. And it was never of course it was never a question in my mind, it [extension] was just a matter of going through the process of getting renewed.

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 today's interview Coach Spence talks about their quarterfinal game, returning to the identity as a team and looks ahead at today's semifinal matchup against Boise State.

Click the play button to listen to the audio.