Wake Forest Athletics
Gold Rush: Mike Petersen Feature
2/16/2006 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 16, 2006
JIM: I realized going over the tape that Petersen skipped a freshman. I have a call in to him, and I may have to call you with that sentence to insert (I'm leaving for a wedding in an hour). The spot is marked in all caps.
Mike Petersen's debut as Wake Forest women's basketball coach certainly got people talking. In his first season, he led the Deacons to the second postseason bid in program history (and the first in 17 years). Petersen, to his credit, says he's not satisfied with NIT bids and 18-15 records - he wants to reach the NCAA tournament and get Wake Forest competitive in the ACC. Gold Rush's Jay Reddick talked with Petersen as the team prepared for its first exhibition game.
Gold Rush: It must be nice as a coach to have something concrete to build on, with the postseason bid last year. Petersen: Last year's postseason success has given us a tangible thing that we can look at and say, we did some things right last year. But we can get a lot better. It has raised the bar some. By any stretch of the imagination, we did not achieve the goals we set for ourselves last year, and I think that's an indication that we're going to have high goals for the program. But at the same time, last year's success, those were significant steps in the right direction, and they gave us a positive feeling going forward into this season, that hopefully they can build on.
Gold Rush: You came in with high expectations, but it seems like those are starting to spread. For the first time in a while, Wake Forest was picked as high as ninth in the ACC preseason media poll. Petersen: It's a good news/bad news thing. It's the first time in seven or eight years that Wake wasn't picked last. So that's good news, I suppose. The bad news is, where they have us picked still is unacceptable. I told the players the day the poll came out that they had succeeded in at least modifying the perception of the program, but we haven't completely changed it. We haven't done everything we need to do yet. It's better, but it's not where it needs to be, and I think this year's team has the chance to get quite a bit more of that done.
Gold Rush: Where do you see the most room for improvement? Petersen: We need to get better in two areas: we need to defend the post better, and we need to be a better defensive rebounding team. Those will be the two areas where people will see the most improvement. A year ago, we didn't have a lot of problems with our initial defense. We made them miss a lot, we just didn't get the ball back enough. And we didn't have very many problems at all offensively. We didn't score inside very much, but we scored plenty of points on most nights. The big things are to defend the interior and get more rebounds, and I think we will be that. We've addressed some of that with personnel - we're bigger and stronger, we've got more depth. If we do those two things, that will help us win those close games. We had six one-possession games that went the wrong way last year.
Gold Rush: As far as personnel, it seems like you have a lot of experience coming back, and you're able to build some depth behind that. Petersen: The three seniors and Porsche Jones all are good players. We're fortunate to basically have four starters back; everyone in the league pretty much has four starters back, but that's a good thing. Porsche is a very good point guard, played extremely well last year and really understands what we want to do. Cotelia Bond-Young is an all-league player, Liz Strunk is an all-league player, and Keila Evans would have had a better season, except she played a lot of the ACC season with an injured foot and missed six games with a stress fracture. Those four who played a lot of minutes last year give us an experienced core to build around. I do think we'll have better depth in a couple of ways. The first is, Melissa Washington redshirted last year, and she had a very good fall. She gives us really good size and scoring and a defensive presence inside. The freshmen all have a chance to come in and help. And then, some of the kids who didn't play a lot last year have gotten a lot better, the Maya Bennetts and Tiara Goods and Tara Tates - they have an opportunity now to add to that depth just because they're a year older, and they're improved.
Gold Rush: Has everybody come back physically as you expected? Petersen: I think so. We had a good spring and summer, our fall's been pretty good, practices are going fairly well. This is a team that should be improving all year long, because while our core group is very experienced, a lot of the kids who will play a lot of minutes haven't played a ton. They're talented kids, and they'll improve throughout the season. Theoretically, this team will still be getting a lot better in January and February. Sometimes, with a team that has a lot of experienced depth, you're as good as you're going to get in January, and this team should not be like that.
Gold Rush: Talk a little more about the freshmen individually. What have you seen from them? Petersen: As a group, they've been about where I expected. They have a lot of individual moments where they show what they're capable of, and a lot of days where they look like freshmen. The increased speed of the game and the increased intensity of every practice is an adjustment, I don't care who you are. But having said that, I'm happy with where all of them are. They've all shown the ability to help us. Yolanda Lavender is a point guard. She's very talented, very strong. Usually, point guard is the hardest position for a freshman to come in and get acclimated because it's, by nature, such a leadership role, and that person so dictates the offensive tempo. So she probably has the most difficult jump. But she's had stretches in practice where she has shown us why we recruited her. And she's had other stretches where, you know what? She's a freshman. The great thing for her is that she gets to play every day against Porsche and learn from her. Dierdre Naughton is an off-guard, and we've seen some of the same thing. She has a really good feel for the game, really understands offensive basketball, really unselfish and has had a really good fall. For her to play very much, she's got to beat out an all-league player. Alex Tchangoue is a small forward. Alex has probably been the most pleasant surprise of that group. We knew she was a very good athlete, she would play very hard, she was a good defender. Alex has shot the ball very well. That was something we weren't sure about initially, but that's been a little bonus. Corinne Groves is a post player for us. She's very athletic, runs the floor very well, and has a real knack for scoring around the basket. When she gets that ball and gets it above her head, you always think it's going in. JIM: THE SENTENCE GOES HERE. As all of them get more comfortable they're all going to get better as the season goes along.
Gold Rush: Having some experienced players has to help in your second year installing your system. Petersen: It does help. A year ago at this time, we basically had a whole team of freshmen - we didn't have anybody who knew what we wanted. We had some kids that played and understood the level, but when we put things in, it was the first time everybody has seen it. Now when we put things in, at least half the team has seen it before. We still have about half this team as new, so it's still not where you want to be. But we're not having to re-teach everybody.
Gold Rush: Are you putting in new wrinkles or tweaking what you did last year? Petersen: We're tweaking some things, because our personnel is different. A year ago, we played five perimeter players for the bulk of the season, and we won't do that this year. We have legitimate size now. Our motion is different: we have more of a high-low look to our motion, where last year it was very much five out. Our defensive scheme is a little different based on how we're going to use our size. But the basic concepts will stay the same: we'll push the ball every chance we get, we'll play pressure defense and try to speed the game up, all those will remain the same.
Gold Rush: Last year, building confidence and getting wins in nonconference was key. How does this year's schedule compare? Petersen: I feel like our nonconference schedule is good. We've got Kentucky coming here - they made the semifinals of the NIT last year, we had a good game with them at their place last year. That's our feature home game. We're on the road at Rice and Richmond, both made the NCAA tournament last year. Those will be good tests for us. It's a schedule that will get us ready to play in the ACC. The ACC is the best women's basketball league in the country - it's not even close. Of the 12 teams in our league, eight were in the NCAA tournament last year, and we were in the NIT. Of the nine teams in postseason, I think seven won at least one game, and five won at least two games. It's going to be a great conference season, and there aren't any nights off.
