The Standard: In Season | Episode 1: We’re Back | UConn Women’s Basketball

Happy opening day! Debbie, you are a former player. What is opening day like for these young

women

who are about to take the field for the first time? It is exciting. You have butterflies. It doesn't matter what year you are. From freshman to senior year. You are excited. It's about future possibilities. A lot of butterflies, a lot of excitement, a little bit more, let's say against our UConn players because of the injuries and the things they've had to deal with. I hadn't played in almost 600 days the last official game I played, so. Just to come

back

and have the feeling of being in that environment, of playing the game that I love again.

I've known about UConn

women

's

basketball

for a while, I had UConn plastered all over my walls since Moriah Jefferson and all of them were here, watching them grow up, so I'm like, wow, like I'm really here. now. Well, when you start, you try to stay in the moment, but it's hard not to think about what could be, what could happen. But every

season

starts the same, with those kinds of expectations and the anxiety to discover it. So after that we went to NC State. Very good atmosphere. The crowd was crazy. I think it was a sold out game.

This was at NC State, a road game, a team we had beaten the year before. You know, we went down there and I think they were probably expecting that. We started off strong and then they came

back

and punched us back, you know, kind of back and forth from there. I think at the end of the third quarter and the fourth, they pulled away. We didn't really have fluidity on offense, but that was because we never managed to prepare our defense. We never got into transition, we were never able to push the ball and create offense that way.

Nobody was happy with the result of that match and it did take us by surprise to a certain extent. I thought we'd be a lot better than that. There is never a good reason to lose, but you just want to learn from it and make sure it never happens again. I think that's what we're trying to learn from. Next we had Maryland at home in Gampel. And it was a huge, huge game for us in terms of the way we responded from the last game at NC State. Statement game to get us back on our feet and back to the identity we have as UConn and who we are: relentless, competitive, fearless and confident.

We could have decided the direction our

season

would take if we answered incorrectly. Another adversity we were facing. It's been the theme of my three or four years here, just facing adversity and how are you going to overcome it and how are you going to adapt to that? And I think this team has a huge, next-man-up mentality, in terms of if there's a girl or a teammate that goes down, we're going to play for them and we'll have different people that will step up. different ways, contributing to help fill that. empty. At the beginning of the game.

We try to set the tone defensively. After the loss, defense was the main factor and we want to pick up the pace and get steals. I think just because we're trying to set the tone of how much tougher we had to be, I feel like we came out strong and physical at NC State, so we were trying to do the exact opposite and come out strong. . When you have a team that's coming off a loss like ours and then you have a team that's excited to be here in this building. I think it's the first time we played Maryland here, we played them many other times.

So everyone's fired up, you know, everyone's super aggressive and that usually means it's going to be a defensive-minded game. The offense isn't really going to work very well when you're super loaded and I think both teams made it very difficult for each team to try to get any kind of flow into their offense. That was crazy. First of all, she fell. I was scared because at first I didn't even know what it was. Yeah, I was coming off the screen, her defender, like she was covering him tightly and had her hands out. Her hand went straight to my eye.

It's an underrated pain, I would say. My teammates are like you're so dramatic, but it hurts just as much as if you were right in the eye. My contact got stuck somewhere in my brain and ended up going down. She said it was quite painful. She wears contact lenses and I think the girl scratched her eye. You know, she was quite uncomfortable, is the right word. She wanted to come back as soon as possible, so that didn't surprise me in the least. Obviously, when she fell, we were just there to support her, but she said, “Guys, I'm fine.

Just give me 2 seconds and I’ll be fine.” It was extremely blurry. She was still squinting like my eyes. I couldn't really see in the first half. Still quite red and a little squinty, but I could see everything I needed to see. The next game after Maryland was my homecoming game in Minnesota. I grew up 10 or 15 minutes from campus. I went there all the time as a kid, watching the Gophers, watching the Lynx, watching the Minnesota State High School tournaments. Just being in that environment with my new teammates and my new family, and then being at my house and seeing how close-knit and how much family came together through this event, it was a crazy, surreal moment.

And also playing against my former teammate, Amaya Battle, who I would consider like a little sister to me and sharing that moment with her was huge. And we want to do everything we can to try to organize a trip home for our seniors. Sometimes it's possible, sometimes it's not and this one worked very well. The participation was difficult to describe. I mean, you had to be there to feel the excitement that was in the building before, during and after the game. Just seeing all the love and support everyone showed during the game really shows how much they love her and the impact she's had on her city, so it was a great atmosphere to play with her.

The match was tremendously ugly. There wasn't a lot of offense on both sides, but it was like a tough physical game, just like Maryland, where we had to dig in and find a way to win. And I think our defense was huge in that sense as well. Typically on our team we want the defense to dictate our wins and our losses on our offense to dictate how much we win. Obviously our offense wasn't that good in that game, but our defense stepped up and made a great team. It was a good and ugly victory. You know, it wasn't until the third quarter that we really asserted ourselves and did it all without Paige, you know, so she didn't score in the second half.

A lot of those points came from other people, which is a really good sign. The fan reaction was just incredible. I mean, if you saw what was waiting for Paige when she walked out of the locker room to get on the bus, it was like the Beatles were in town or something. So for Thanksgiving, we're going to the Cayman Islands. We are going to play two great opponents in UCLA and Kansas. And then we have a bye week and then we're in Texas, which is another brutal game. We are constantly challenged. We are constantly under pressure.

If it makes us better, then it's all worth it. After four games I feel great. I mean, I love being on the court. This is what I wanted to do last year. I couldn't play at all and couldn't wait for that opportunity to come. I'm definitely still getting my feet under me, still getting my legs ready to go. I'm not in the best shape I can be, I'm just getting back into game shape. But overall, I'm excited to get back on the court. You know, we have to be disciplined enough to follow instructions and we can stick with the plan.

We have to work hard, we have to improve and we will. You know, these kids are competitive. They want to win. They want to do the right thing. And now, as coaches, we have to make sure that every day, every day, every day, we make a dent in it. But it's early, you know, we're going to play a lot of players who didn't play last year, so it's going to take a while. Fortunately, I'm a very, very, very patient guy. The sky is the limit for this team. It all starts with preparation in practice, how willing we are to receive training and how willing we are to listen.

I believe in this team until the end. You know, I have their back at all times. I feel like this is a great team, we have great chemistry, so I couldn't ask for a better team this year. I have a lot of faith in this team. We've been through a lot and I think for us it's all just up there, the sky is the limit and we all know what our goal is. At this point, it's simply about what we're going to do and our response to fueling adversity.