Women’s Basketball Media Day Transcript

CARBONDALE, Ill. — Entering her seventh season at the helm of the Southern Illinois women's basketball team, Cindy Stein met with members of the media on Wednesday for SIU's annual media day inside the Cook Club of Banterra Center.

OPENING STATEMENT: "We're really excited about this season. I can't say enough about just being able to get out there and actually play somebody. I think that's going to be so important for us. After last year – I think I've said this a million times and I'm trying not to say it too much because I don't want our players to think along those lines, but I was so disappointed about our season. I felt like we were doing so many great things to get us to where we were consistently marching to the top of the Missouri Valley Conference.

I felt like we had a little bit of a down year. With that being said, every year I evaluate our program and every facet of it. What I did last year was basically do a deep dive into what we were doing, how we can get better and really looked upon myself and our coaching staff of how we can help our kids be better. I feel like we're doing an outstanding job. Academically, our kids are doing outstanding. They're kicking butt in the classroom. In community service, we're kicking butt. In graduation, we're kicking butt. We finished 11^thin the nation in Team GPA in the WBCA poll, which is outstanding and a great honor for our program. There's a lot of positives and our kids are working hard in a lot of areas. I looked at our fundamentals, I felt that we had too many turnovers. We needed to be a bigger stickler to the fundamentals.

I listened to our baseball coach's interview recently and I love how he talked about mastering the simple play. We've got to do a better job doing that this year. We've got to be tougher defensively. We've been really stressing defense the last couple of years, buy we've got to be tougher and I feel like we are. We've got to take care of the ball. I think we averaged 15 turnovers per game last year. I'd like to get that between 10 to 12. I want us to run the court hard every single possession. I felt like that dropped off a little bit because our depth wasn't quite what we wanted it to be.  I think that won't be a problem this year because I feel like our depth is outstanding. Our team chemistry and our team concepts – I wanted to make sure we looked at those things and how we could collectively work better. I feel like we have great individual talent, but we've got to work better as a team. Our team concepts and the way in which we move on the court has to be more of an overall team effort. One of the things we did this offseason was have them read a book this summer called "Chop Wood, Carry Water" by Joshua Medcalf.

As coaches, we can preach all day long about what we want our kids to understand and what they need to do and what they need to grasp. So, we took some of the things that they were grasping and we talked about how we could get better in those areas. Some of those things that stood out in the book and some stuff that I actually took to heart is that you can't cheat the process. You've got to be a stickler to the fundamentals. Under pressure, you don't rise to the level of the occasion but rather sink to the level of your training. That was something that hit home with me because that's exactly me. I've got to make sure they're trained. I've got to make sure that they're doing everything that they can. I've got to put them in those pressure situations.

Being comfortable with the uncomfortable. Do things that you're uncomfortable with. Our kids want to know what practice looks like every day and we don't tell them. Sometimes we stick the hardest drills in the beginning rather than the middle like last year. We're just mixing things up. We're trying to do a lot of different things. In the spring during workouts, we were tough on them. Then they got home for three weeks and came back for the summer and our summer was tougher than the spring. Then, they got home for another two and a half to three weeks and then we started the fall and we've been tough on them as far as the intensity of every single day. We're also making sure that we've got good things that we're doing for their recovery process so we're not overworking them. When you have eight hours, I never feel like we're overworking them until you get to that 20 hours and then you've got to pay attention to that.

Our goal is always going to be to win the Missouri Valley Conference Championship. We shouldn't even have to say that anymore. That's always going to be our goal each and every single year. What we're going to concentrate on is getting better every day. When we can concentrate on that and make sure that we're showing up every day, that's when we're going to really succeed and that's what we're going to concentrate on.

Players that I think have been impressive so far – Nicole Martin. Hardest work ethic of anybody on the team. She's in here non-stop. She is always in the gym. She's First-team All-Conference and there's a reason for it. She's someone we rely on heavily. I was telling one of our recruits that came in the other day that playing with someone like Nicole Martin is a highlight for any guard because you can basically throw the ball anywhere and she's going to go get it. Then she scores with it. Makenzie Silvey is another young lady having a really good fall. She's shooting the ball well and I like that she's using her length defensively. We still have to get her to play defense all of the time, but she's going to be really good defensively. I think that she can cause a lot of problems on the defensive side of the ball. Abby Brockmeyer is probably one of the most solid players every single day. You can always count on her to know what she's doing, hit the boards hard and help her teammates out. She's just very, very solid. She's actually moved out to the wing a little bit and had more reps there. I don't know if we'll put her there too much but her versatility of being able to know all of the plays and all of the spots has really been helpful to us because our depth is much, much better.

Then we have two newcomers that I feel are going to play a lot of minutes. Awa Keita is a junior college transfer from Cochise College. When I first saw her play, I was sitting in a gym in Arizona and she didn't let the opposing point guard come up the floor for four-straight possessions. She basically stole the ball from her every single time and laid it in. One of the shooting guards on the other team started to get hot and her coach put her on that shooting guard and that kid didn't get to touch the ball again the entire quarter. Someone that you'll definitely see a lot of great things out of because she can change a game defensively. When we're trying to get tougher defensively, I think she helps with that. Our kids love playing with her because they know we always have a chance when she's protecting the basket as well. She can guard any position and as a coach you love that.

The other one is our transfer that came last year that can play this season and that's Gabby Walker from Lindenwood. Another young lady that is a very physical rebounder and a physical player down low. When you talk to your team about toughness, it's being able to play physical and she definitely fits that mold. She's doing a fantastic job for us. Those are two kids that I think you will all find very exciting to watch play.

I think our schedule is tough because when I look at it, we have so many regional rivals on that schedule and it really doesn't matter if they're ranked or not ranked. When you're playing teams that you're going head-to-head with in recruiting all of the time, it becomes a pretty intense game. When we look at SIU-Edwardsville, St. Louis, SEMO, UT Martin and Murray State, those are all teams that are really good, solid regional rivals.  We have the Compass Challenge, which is held up at Dekalb, Illinois this year and that's against our in-state rivals. We've got Eastern Illinois, Northern Illinois and Western Illinois. Again, I love the fact that we're doing rivalry games so much because that's the competition part that you've got to have out of your kids. You cannot take a game off.

Then we've got teams like Memphis, who has a nationally ranked recruiting class this year. I saw a picture of one of their kids on their media board and I think I could put three of our kids together to fit inside of her and she'd still be bigger than they are. I don't know where she's playing, I assume down low. We've got to figure something out for her right away. St. Louis, being in an Atlantic 10 conference opponent, obviously they're always tough. IUPUI had 20 wins and went to the WNIT last year, so they'll be a tough opponent. As will Tennessee Tech, who is another team with 20 wins.

I feel like our depth is a lot better and you're probably going to see substitutions a lot quicker. That's kind of what we've been working on in practice. Our kids are going to get up and down the floor. I think you're going to be excited about that kind of style and we'll go from there."

QUESTION: Your core is primarily upperclassman. Have they responded as well as you had hoped to the tougher offseason?

STEIN: "Yeah, I'll admit that they struggled initially. The student-athletes today want to be very comfortable in what they do. They want to know what you're doing, if it's going to be hard, how many, how long. We basically told them that you're not going to know what happens in a game, so we just tried to apply that to our game situations, and they've gotten a lot more used to that. Are they quite where I'd like them to be right now? Somedays we are, somedays we're not. But we're training them hard and I think they're understanding our concepts a lot better. I think that they would be able to validate that with what we're emphasizing. I think that they all want to play. I think that's the thing that we've seen the most is that our competition in practice is pretty intense. We could put five kids on one team and the other team would just know that they're going to get killed. That doesn't happen this year. It's like any team can win because you've got a great nucleolus on each team.  It's hard to sometimes figure out who are the five best because it's not just five. I think that's a great problem to have."

QUESTION: What are you seeing that you like from the tougher workouts this offseason?

STEIN: "I like that the vets are constantly playing. We've had to really work on our spreading of the floor, our change of direction off of a rebound, getting the ball out quick. I see us running the floor better, executing a little bit better in our secondary. We're getting a rim runner a lot more consistently. We're able to make that pass better and we're making better decisions. Defensively, I just feel as though they just have such a better idea of what they're supposed to be doing, where we want to be and how we have to work together. Just those team concepts in general are probably a lot more solid in their heads right now."

QUESTION: When Brittney (Patrick) is out of the game, who's going to come in behind her and run the point?

STEIN: "I think that Caitlin Link would be able to replace Brittany pretty well. She's just a lot more mature and has a better idea. Kristen Nelson is a great option. One thing that we like in our players is the versatility. Brit does such a solid job there. Link is probably more of a vocal leader out there. But I feel like we have three great options there."

QUESTION: With this depth, are you talking about playing eight players? Nine?

STEIN: "The golden plan is to try and play 10. Right now, there's a chance to play 11. You never know when injuries come into play. Honestly, as a staff we've kind of talked about being committed to playing as many kids as we can so we can play as high of an intensity for a long period of time."

QUESTION: You had issues with turnovers, and it cost you some games last year. With a more mature roster will those things kind of take care of themselves?

STEIN: "Well, I hope so. I think with our depth, if someone isn't taking care of the ball, they absolutely will understand why they're sitting next to me. Playing time is huge with kids. Sometimes that's the best discipline you can have. Sometimes it's hard to gauge at this time until you start playing. I'm a coach who doesn't give up and gives second and third chances. When it comes to crunch time, you're going to know who you want in the game."

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Players Mentioned

Abby Brockmeyer

Awa Keita

Caitlin Link

Nicole Martin

Kristen Nelson

Makenzie Silvey

Gabby Walker

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