bleedCrimson.net Weekly Coach Spence Interview

bleedCrimson.net Weekly Coach Spence Interview :: 07/21/08

swasson — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:00:00 -0500

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 Weekly Coach Spence Interview :: 06/26/08

swasson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:00:12 -0500

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 Weekly Coach Spence Interview :: 04/29/08

swasson — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:00:00 -0500

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 Weekly Coach Spence Interview :: 03/19/08

swasson — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:16:36 -0500

bleedCrimson.net Weekly Coach Spence Interview :: 03/13/08

swasson — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 02:09:52 -0500

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.

bleedCrimson.net Weekly Coach Spence Interview :: 03/10/08

swasson — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:00:00 -0500

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 the final two games of the regular season, talks about the postseason awards for Sherell Neal, Anikia Jawara and Madison Spence and looks ahead at the WAC tournament and their first round opponent Hawai'i.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about the Fresno State game this past Thursday night?
Darin Spence: It was very competitive. They came out and played well, played with a lot of intensity and we did too. We played well. We probably missed our first ten shots of the game and they were all within 10 feet of the basket. We had some good inside shots, we just had trouble putting it in the basket that night and I think that was probably the story of that game. We just couldn't make shots. It's probably the only game where we've faced that kind of a problem all year long, we've always just found a way to score. That night I don't know if we were just rushing shots or trying to shoot it too quickly but just couldn't get the ball in the hole.

bleedCrimson.net Weekly Coach Spence Interview :: 03/03/08

swasson — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 05:00:00 -0600

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 Nevada and Fresno State, their upcoming games against Fresno State and Hawai'i and talks about the mental edge the Aggies will have heading into the WAC tournament.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about the Nevada game on Thursday night?
Darin Spence: Tough game. Any time you play Nevada you've got to be ready to battle. They're so aggressive defensively, they come at you, they don't stop, especially for ball handlers, they do a great job of trying to disrupt your timing. It really takes a lot out of you to handle the basketball against Nevada. They're real pressure oriented, and they're very athletic and quick. And if they get away with the grabbing and holding stuff it's even tougher. We knew going in it was going to be a rough night. Our first half was kind of spotty as far as how efficient we were in our play. Tyshae and Annikia had some foul trouble early so that affected us. Second half we were as good as we've been all year and we just really took it to them. It was a great win.

bleedCrimson.net Weekly Coach Spence Interview :: 02/25/08

swasson — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:00:00 -0600

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 game against San Jose State, their upcoming games against Nevada and Fresno State and talks about the contributions of his five seniors.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about your win against San Jose State this past Thursday?
Darin Spence: San Jose State for us is always an interesting place to go to. It's a place that doesn't have a lot of atmosphere, it really puts a lot on your kids to be focused and bring a lot of energy otherwise it has the feel of just being in a practice session. This year it was a little different. They were fired up, their band was going crazy, there still wasn't anybody in the gym but they had a little chip on their shoulder trying to get themselves a win. I thought it was a real good effort on our part, from start to finish I thought we were focused on the offensive end and made good plays. Defensively we took their shooters out of the game for the most part. Of course it was a good win and any win's a good win especially on the road against one of the lower teams.

bleedCrimson.net Weekly Coach Spence Interview :: 02/18/08

swasson — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:00:00 -0600

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 game against Louisiana Tech, their upcoming game against San Jose State and the challenge of facing a team with nothing to lose and resting up to gear up for the final stretch of five games.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about the La. Tech game?
Darin Spence: It was a big win for us. We needed it and any time you can beat La. Tech you take it and you move on to the next game. So I was really pleased with how we came out in the first half and tried to establish that hungry attitude, try to put people away. We let it slip a little bit in the second half but I thought we did a great job of regrouping and fighting them off and getting a double digit win. It was a good win, good night for us.

bleedCrimson.net Weekly Coach Spence Interview :: 02/11/08

swasson — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:01:00 -0600

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 Idaho and Boise State, their adventurous trip to Boise State after the Idaho game and this week's game against Louisiana Tech.

bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about the Idaho game this past Thursday?
Darin Spence: Idaho, obviously it's a good road win for us. Idaho is one of those teams that, they've made a shift and they're starting to play different players, they've taken some that they played a year ago and they're not getting as many minutes and so he's went to a core group and they've gotten a lot better. They played really well against us that night. We played well in spurts. We didn't play a real consistent game throughout, we played in spurts and we just gutted it out and found a way to win.