A Conversation With Charlene Curtis
11/17/1999 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Nov. 17, 1999
Charlene Curtis is excited, and with good reason. Her women's basketball team, after winning 12 games total in her first two years, could be ready to match or exceed that total in the 1999-2000 season alone. Eleven players return with practice experience, and three true freshmen add some quality depth to the squad. Gold Rush's Jay Reddick talked to Curtis a couple of weeks before the Deacons opened their season against Fairfield on Nov. 19.
Gold Rush: It seems like you'll have a lot of competition for playing time this year.
Curtis: I think we've got real good depth. You think about both of our guard spots out front, and I think we've got four people there who have real good experience and will truly contribute to the program this year. It might just depend on the game, who's on and who's not, to determine who gets playing time.
Alisha Mosley has the experience, game in and game out, but Janae Whiteside came on strong last year. Adell Harris is very much improved in her ability to lead the team and make things happen on the floor. And then Val Klopfer, we saw glimpses of brilliance from her last year, and she's just gotten stronger.
Alisha might still play some three for us, if we go with a small lineup. I haven't thought of that as a true starting lineup, but you will see that lineup.
Gold Rush: How about along the front line?
Curtis: It's going to be good. LaChina Robinson is still leading the way there, but she'll get some real good competition from Johanna Bjorklund for a starting role. As it looks right now, I would figure they'll split those 40 minutes. Johanna has a real good chance of playing half that time. I would hope that as the season goes along, we can put them together, but we' re not ready for that right now.
Johanna has a very good knowledge of the game. There are certain things that she does very well as a freshman. She catches the ball well, she passes the ball well for a big girl. She sets good screens, she gets herself open down low. She has such an enthusiasm for the game, and she doesn't have any fear. She came in ready to help us. She also understands her weaknesses, so she's willing to work on those and get better.
Her team over there played the triangle offense, so she's familiar with our system. We put some twists in it, but she's ready to step in and help right away.
She also has a good inside-outside game, and she gives us more size and bulk inside. She's giving LaChina somebody to play against in practice. Olivia Dardy will play both the four and the five this year. Very little three. She proved to be much more effective inside for us, so that's where we'll keep her. I said Johanna and LaChina will split time at the five, but Olivia may see some time there as well.
Brenda Mock Kirkpatrick is giving us all we have to give every day. She was one of the most productive players we had per minute last year, but it's just a question of whether she can sustain it because of the type of player she is. She plays with so much energy that she plays herself right out of it. Right now, she's probably the leading candidate to start at the four spot, but she'll also see some time at the three.
Kristen Shaffer has the lead at the three right now, with Brenda Mock behind her, so I feel good about that situation.
We also have Heather Miller, a freshman, who can really shoot the three. She's really a two-guard, but she doesn't have two-guard ballhandling skills yet. That's where we struggle with Kristen as well. Heather will see some time in special situations, because she can knock down long 3s when she's open. She played some post in high school too, so she knows how to get the ball to the basket from down low.
Elizabeth Biedrycki is coming along, coming back from some old stress fractures in her back, and she'll play some four and five for us. And LaTisha Pearson, who redshirted last year, is still in kind of that developmental stage.
We have enough people that we can give away some fouls this year. We can afford to send people in there and tell them to be aggressive, and not put LaChina in that position. If she's not getting it done defensively, we can send others in there.
Liz Rogers is improved over last year and is starting to understand what we want from her.
Tiffani Listenbee, even above Johanna, has brought some elements that we haven't had. She's really quick. In a drill the other day, she was posted up in one block, and a bad pass was made to her down low in the other block. I knew it was a turnover, but she got there, caught it, turned and scored. We don't have anybody else who can do that. She's having to learn to do some things technically better, but she's learning to flow with the play.
When you look at numbers, you have Olivia and Brenda Mock at the four, but we have to make sure we get Tiffani playing time early, because she could be good for us.
Gold Rush: Sounds like a solid group. You must be excited.
Curtis: I'm very excited about their enthusiasm. They're willing to learn and get better, and they've retained. Right from the beginning of practice, I felt like they've retained what we taught them last year, so we're not starting from scratch like I felt like we have the last two years. Two years ago, we definitely were, then last year we had six new people. This year, we had 11 coming back, and three new people who were pretty intelligent basketball players.
Gold Rush: You improved from four to eight wins last season. What's the key to improving even further this year?
Curtis: It's important that we win early. I'm not even talking about preparing for conference games. For us to have a winning season, we have to win nonconference games. We have 11 of them, we have to win 80 percent of them. That's a stretch to get to 16 wins that way, but we're working towards that. If we win nine or 10, then we're really talking.
Gold Rush: How does the schedule stack up for that?
Curtis: LSU on the road is probably the toughest opponent we'll have. They' ll be like playing an ACC team. The more wins we get, the better our confidence level will be. Right now, our confidence level is where we were when we finished the tournament last year.
Gold Rush: That big finish had to help a lot.
Curtis: Our spring workouts were great, our fall workouts were great. We've just got to figure out who's going to play. We'll play a lot of people again. We've got 14 on the roster, and 10 of them will play a lot. We still don't have that one person who'll play 30 minutes and be that productive. They'll get fewer minutes and still produce.
Gold Rush: You're still looking for someone to average double figures in scoring, which hasn't happened for two years.
Curtis: Someone will do it this year. We averaged about 60 points a game last year, and we need to add 10 points to that, and it doesn't have to come from one person. We have about 16 points to replace with Heidi Coleman and Emon McMillian, but we can do that. Olivia needs to average two or three more points a game. Janae averaged six, she'll average 10. We've already made up for that 16, then we just need everybody to inch up a little bit.
And we are going to be a better defensive team. We won't play as much full-court, but our half-court defense will be tighter and we'll be able to pressure the ball more.
Gold Rush: How's the league look?
Curtis: Well, the media poll put us ninth, and we'll just have to see about that on the court. But I don't think there's any true leader, and there's no cutoff point between the haves and the have-nots.
As far as the media, if we finish fifth or sixth, they'll think we had a great year. And we're a better team. The juniors and seniors know how much better it is.
They told me about that building right there (East Hall, the new classroom building across from the Athletic Center). They started building that my first year. I looked out the window here and they were digging the foundation. It took them forever because they had to move the tunnels. If you'll remember, my first year, I said our goal was to build a foundation. It really took us a year and a half to do that, and what you saw at the tournament last year was us pouring the concrete in that foundation. This year, we'll start building above the ground. They couldn't put the building above the tunnels, and like that, it took us a lot longer than I thought to build our foundation. Now, we've got that foundation in place, and the team looked at me in preseason and said, "Coach, there's classes going on in that building this year." What they're saying to me is that they're ready to get it done.
I told them I wasn't so sure. Do we have furniture yet, or are we sitting on the floor? Are there pictures on the walls, or is there just drywall up? We'll find out. I think we can get the building frame and get the roof on.