Around Campus

Texas Basketball Coach Jody Conradt Q&A

The Texas women’s basketball team enters the new season as one of the nation’s highest-regarded clubs. In each preseason publication to date, the Longhorns are ranked in the national top five.  Head coach Jody Conradt’s Longhorns return 11 letter-winners, including four starters, with three of the starters (seniors Jamie Carey and Heather Schreiber, along with sophomore Tiffany Jackson) claiming preseason All-America honors while also in the preseason running for National Player of the Year honors. Texas has made three straight trips to the NCAA Sweet 16, and is the two-time defending Big 12 regular season champion, winning the crown outright two years ago while sharing the title last year en route to its 30-5 finish. Coach Conradt, who enters her 29th season as UT head coach with 847 career wins, offers a brief look at what’s ahead for her squad and the importance of dealing with the expectations that face the team.

Coach, tell us about the high expectations which face your team as the 2004-05 season gets ready to start ...

JC: “First, we were so excited to get to practice on October 16th (the first official day of NCAA basketball practice). The expectations are high, especially since we are a team which lost only one player - even though that player,  Stacy Stephens, was a four-year starter and an All-Conference and All-America  player and someone who was a big, big part of our success. We return as many players as anyone in the country, and with the expectations comes the pressure that I didn’t think we handled very well last year, particularly in the (NCAA) playoffs. There’s a totally different mindset when you have expectations as high as we anticipate them being this year. We don’t look much at preseason rankings and such – they are fun for the fans and for the media, but we do have our own high expectations for ourselves this year.

We have an opportunity to be really good this year. In the back of our minds – and this is not something we’ve spent any time talking about yet – we are thinking about championships. The Big 12 Conference is one of the toughest, if not THE most competitive, leagues in the country, and if we can achieve success in the Big 12, then that sets us up to achieve during the NCAA Tournament.”

You mentioned that the team didn’t handle the high expectations as well as it could have last year; is there a change in how the team is approaching this year and the expectations that Texas will be a national contender?

JC: “We always want our players thinking,  ‘I’m playing basketball at Texas, and there are certain expectations which go along with that.’ In terms of talking directly about this season and how to deal with expectations, we are working on that daily. That said, we’ve enjoyed some good success the last three years. And this success has come from hard work. Our players understand how important every day of preparation is, year-round. That’s the work they do in the spring, in the summer, during conditioning drills and individual workouts in September and October. Our players have a great sense of purpose heading into the season.”

You start the year with one of your largest senior classes in memory – six players (Jody Bell, Kala Bowers, Jamie Carey, Annissa Hastings, Heather Schreiber and Mercedes Williams). What impact do you expect these six players to have on this year’s team, and how do you expect them to handle leadership issues?

JC: “We’ve talked as a group to our six seniors about a lot of topics, including leadership roles. Leadership is always an issue with every team, and certainly it is an issue with this one. We have a very strong senior class in terms of what they’ve all contributed on the court; they are still learning how to be leaders. The issue of leadership is going to be one of the big questions which needs to be answered as we move forward.”

Texas is the only school in the country with three preseason Wooden All-Americans and three preseason candidates for National Player of the Year honors (Wooden Award and State Farm Wade Trophy). What are your feelings on this?

JC: “Again, once you have preseason team honors and expectations, individual honors follow like they have for Jamie, Heather and Tiffany. That again is part of the expectations we face this year. I’m pleased our players are getting recognized, but I know we all are in agreement that individual recognition isn’t what’s important. What’s important will be to see how we can put it all together as a team.”

What has the addition of freshman guard Erneisha Bailey and junior transfer and forward Daria Mieloszynska meant to the program?

JC: “I thought we didn’t have enough depth last year, especially on the perimeter, and that hurt us. We got into a bind at the beginning of year with the loss of Annissa (Hastings) to her Achilles injury, and then down the stretch of the Big 12 regular season Kala (Bowers) had some health issues, which extended into the postseason. Erneisha and Daria are both talented players, and they will make our practices more competitive and will push for playing time.”

Do you have any final thoughts on what it will take for Texas to defend its Big 12 championship and make a run deep into the NCAA Tournament?

JC: “Like I said earlier, we need to address our leadership issues. We need to stay healthy of course, and we’ll need to toughen up defensively on a regular basis and improve our offensive consistency. We are going to work hard in these areas, and if we succeed in addressing them, then we’ll be in a position to challenge for championships. We’ve put together a schedule that is very, very demanding, and it all starts on Sunday, Nov. 14 when we face Penn State here in Austin in the State Farm Tipoff Classic. We look forward to having great crowds in the Erwin Center once again. They provide us with so much energy, energy that the team feeds off of. This can be a special season, and we hope the fans will turn out in huge numbers to support us.”