Fighting Falcons
Fighting Falcons
Season Preview
Q: Rachel Murray is obviously a huge defensive presence. Is one of the challenges this year to make her more consistently offensively? A: Rachel’s biggest challenge is to come and play every day; to come out and go to work every day in practice and in a game and not let her move away mentally at given moments. When she is focused, she is an excellent defensive player and she can score.
Q&A with Steve McDonald Q: You have taken great pride in building the program here, so what does it mean now to put on a Fairmont State jersey?
Intro Staff Players review
A: The number one goal as a program that we have for our players is that they have a sense of pride when they put on that uniform. With that pride goes responsibility, and that they take those concepts of pride and responsibility with them after they are done playing here so that playing women’s basketball at Fairmont State means something. It’s important for them to leave a legacy for the next group of players after them.
Records
Q: How are the players adjusting to the loss of senior Ashley Vavrek’s timely scoring and finding their own roles for the upcoming season? A: Every team, every year has to find its own identity. They have to find what they do well and get better and better at it. Right now I think we are developing that in terms of defense, but offensively I think that we are still searching. That’s going to happen when you have four a young team like we do. It’s going to take a while. This is definitely going to be a basketball team that is better in January and February than we are
FSU
in November and December. What we need to have happen is we need our defense to carry us through November and December.
Q: What are Lauren Gilbert’s biggest strengths to the team and what is the biggest key for her success this year?
Q: You are in the second year of a different offensive system, so how have the players and coaches grown with having a year of that under their belts?
A: Lauren has worked extremely over the summer but has been set back with an Achilles injury in the preseason. I think she’s made the transition from junior year to senior year, and out of basketball for a year and a half before that. I’m not worried about her mental approach, we just need to get her healthy and on the court.
A: The biggest difference between last year and this year, in terms of offense, is that I think as coaches we are more familiar with what we want out of it, so I think we are doing a better job of teaching it. We are progressing at a good pace, but we still have five freshmen that are trying to figure this thing out. There is a learning curve. At the same time, it’s been a much easier transition this year in terms of how everyone views the offense and where you can score out of it.
Q: Has bringing in a core of players from one school (North Marion) affected the dynamic of the team in any way? A: I think it has had only positive effects. They are four really wonderful kids, and they get along extremely well with each other and the rest of the team. I think one of our biggest strengths right now is team chemistry – the girls genuinely like each other. There is no North Marion separation when we are practicing or at meals. They’re just good kids who want to see each other succeed. There’s no amazing camaraderie out on the floor with them right now. It will probably help us over time more than it will when most of them are trying to adjust to college basketball ball.
Q: How did Kaitlin Snyder progress from the start of the year to the end of the year last year, and then from the end of last year to this year? A: Like most freshmen, Kaitlin was tentative in the sense that she just wasn’t sure how she fit in the offense. I thought as the year went on she became more comfortable and her abilities came out and was able to play at the level she’s capable of, which is very high. This year, she’s picked up where she left off last year, but she still is learning what her role is with this team, which I think is much more of a scorer for us.
Q: As the team continues to find its identity offensively, how important is it for the defense to be consistent on a nightly basis?
Fa i r m o n t
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U n i v e r s i t y
Q: Is this year’s team an unknown quantity? A: I know what this year’s team should look like, right now I’m not going to be able to lay odds of whether it will end up that way. We are very inexperienced in addition to being young because our three seniors are only in their second year of the program, so we don’t have a single player out there on the floor that has been in our program for more than one year on the floor. As a coaching staff, we have an end goal and we are constantly moving towards that end goal. We feel like we have the type of players that can play the style that we want to play. Q: Do you see any carryover and hunger from the returning players to win another WVIAC Tournament and get back to the NCAA Tournament? A: If you have a sophomore or junior dominated team that has made it, then I think you can talk about the hunger to get back. We graduated a number of kids, we’re very young, I think they’re more worried about what entre is going to be served tonight at dinner than getting back to the NCAA Tournament. I think it’s our job as coaches to bring them along to the point where they understand that the basketball purpose of the program is to get to the NCAA Tournament. We’re not talking about that right now, though. We’re talking about today’s practice and trying to get a little bit better.
A: Much like in football, the defense is always going to be ahead of the offense. It’s kind of like that for us right now. We’re trying to figure out who
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is going to score, how they’re going to score and where they’re going to score from, so we have to be consistent defensively. We spoke about that with our players yesterday in practice. You can’t get better in any aspect of basketball unless you know what that “getting better” should look like. Right now we’re not 100 percent sure, even defensively, what that should be like but I think that’s because we’re young.
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Intro Staff Players review RECORDS FSU
Rachel Murray Q: As a group, what does the group of newcomers bring to this year’s squad? A: The new group is quick, they play well together and they can shoot; but they’re still learning college basketball and the speed of the game. We think we can win every game on our schedule, but we think we can lose every game on our schedule, and that’s the nature of college basketball. In high school you can look at 12-15 games and if you have a good team, you’re going to be OK, so you have four or five games where you have to play at a different level. It’s a different situation now. We are trying to communicate to them that we need to get a consistent level of effort and enthusiasm because we think we have enough talent to win, but we have to be consistent in our behaviors. G u i d e 11