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UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEApril 1, 2016Katie Abrahamson-HendersonJohn HittDanny WhiteOrlando, Florida PRESIDENT JOHN HITT: I'm John Hitt and I'm the president here at UCF, and I'm very pleased this afternoon to welcome Coach Abe, her husband Michael and their children, Savannah and Brooklyn. Welcome to the UCF family. We're just delighted you're here. I think there's something about a Maine connection. I got to know Danny's mom and dad up at the University of Maine years ago, and I think Coach Abe and I missed by a month or so overlapping at Maine. I was just leaving and having finished my term there as their interim president and coming here to UCF. Coach, I hope you look back on your years at UCF as my wife Martha and I do; coming here is the best decision we ever made professionally, and I hope you feel that way when you conclude your service here many years down the road. Every day Martha and I are thankful that we moved here. We've had so many great friendships and opportunities here, and one we're going to add is the opportunity to watch you and your players really excel here at UCF. We're delighted that we are now on the same team, and I hope you'll agree coming to UCF was one of the best decisions you ever made. Go Knights. Charge on. DANNY WHITE: Thank you, Dr. Hitt. I know my wife Shawn who's here would agree; it's certainly feeling like it's the best decision we've ever made just after a few short months. Really excited to be here. UCF is an easy place to sell, and I don't think I oversold it, did I, Katie? KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Yeah, you did, but it's easy to sell. You did a great job. DANNY WHITE: The facilities here, our University, the infrastructure, the campus, it's all perfect, and certainly a really high-character group of young ladies to coach. I sold you guys, too, in the recruiting process. We had great candidates, a lot of interest in the job. One of the things the team told me is they wanted to play fast and up tempo, and Coach Frost, I think Coach Abe might rival what we have on the football field. They're going to play fast in women's basketball here, so I know our players are really excited about that. Just a few stats just because it's pretty mind-numbing to me what Katie has accomplished in her career. I think we have one of the very most talented coaches in all of women's basketball in the country, someone that built a dynasty at Albany and is leaving a dynasty that was built to continue to win. What she's done in her career is unbelievable, and everything I learned about her from people that know women's basketball really well, she's as high level of a coach as there is, and we're really fortunate to have her here. I know you guys read the press release, but I'll go through some of the things. In her first stint at Missouri State, in five years she went to three NCAA Tournaments and won the NIT, just an unbelievable amount of success including two regular-season conference championships. In the last six years at Albany, they went to -- it was the first-ever NCAA Tournament the first time? KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Yes. DANNY WHITE: And they went four more times, five in a row. Four regular season titles, five tournament titles, three-time coach of the year, program's first-ever NCAA Tournament win against the University of Florida here in state, a 12-5 seed upset, which is a really, really unbelievable accomplishment. 83-13 conference record. That's hard to imagine that kind of success, and we're excited about seeing an uptick here at UCF for sure, including a conference record 38 straight conference wins. 38 straight conference wins. We all know how hard it is to get league wins. 38 straight. Y'all ready to win like that, ladies? I'm excited. It has been a fast and furious couple weeks, but couldn't be more proud, one for me and our family to be at UCF, but to have Coach Dawkins and Coach Abe as the representatives of our basketball programs, it doesn't get any better than this. I'm really excited about the future in CFE Arena. With that, again, I'm proud to introduce you to your new women's basketball coach, Katie Abrahamson-Henderson, more affectionately known as Coach Abe. KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: I feel really good right now with all those stats. As you're a coach, you forget the last year; you just move on and more forward. I'm really, really excited to be here. This has been really fast and furious. I'm sure it was for you, Coach Dawkins and Coach Frost. I'm sure it was fast and furious. Obviously I first want to thank Dr. Hitt because without him saying yes and giving me that handshake, I wouldn't be sitting here. Obviously Danny white, he's been awesome in this process, and just it's really fast. You need somebody to be -- it's okay, it's okay, let's talk through things, so he's been awesome, so I really, really want to thank you for everything you've done. This has been -- and the committee that I was with, I just saw some of them today, and I'm like, thank God you liked me because I'm back here today, so pretty pumped about that. Obviously I want to thank my family. As you know, in this business if you don't have a lot of support, you can't do it on your own, and my husband is great, and he gets this business, and my children. They're okay now because they said the team is nice, mom, and Savannah, do you want to stand up and say hi? Savannah is 12, and I'm hoping I have one easy recruit, just one, I'm hoping, because she likes to play basketball. And Brooklyn, you can say hi. Brooklyn is 10, and she's looking for some friends maybe to play with. My husband is 20 -- no, just kidding. He's still got eligibility, Coach. But I want to definitely thank them. They're awesome. I was telling the team today, it's hard for them, but the people that have to do the most changes are us and my family, and thank God I have their support to do that. Michael is going to take my kids to Disney every day, I think, so it's going to be awesome. I definitely want to recognize the players at Albany and the president there. Do you know Robert Jones? JOHN HITT: I do not. KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: He said he knew of you, and Mark Benson, the AD there, and my former AD who actually hired me there was Dr. Lee McElroy. They've been awesome to me, and they did not want to let me go. They were kicking and screaming not to let me go, but once they realized that Danny kind of stole me, they were like, that's a great place. That's a great place. The president recognized Dr. Hitt, and he's like, that's a great place. That's a great man. He's done great things down there, and my AD said, I hate to say this, but Danny is great. He's going to be a great person to work for, and it's going to be awesome. And then my team at Albany, I told the ladies in the locker room today that they're really jealous of this moment for you because they don't want me to leave. They want me to be there. But they know that you're going to be blessed, and we're going to grow and we're going to challenge you and we're going to do all the things we need to do. To this team, I'm really excited. I thought everything went good today. Did it go good today? Yeah, good. You guys want to stand up, because this is about you. Come on, stand up. You guys are going to be -- good. It's hard for them. It's really hard for them. This change is hard for them. They came here for a different head coach, and now they've got somebody else coming in, but hopefully they'll trust us and believe in us, and just take one day at a time. It's about one day at a time, and so we've already exchanged numbers and stuff, so we're super excited to get to know them better and grow this Knight family and this women's basketball family. Thank you guys today for just opening your arms to us, and it's going to be a process, so we're really excited about that. One of the reasons I really was excited about this job -- not one, I told Danny and the committee, I was like, there's so many reasons, there's so many reasons I was looking at this job and this opportunity, you know, and it started with my philosophy. My philosophy is family first, academics second, basketball third, and really, and that's how everything we do with our program is going to be that way in terms of whatever issue or elements come up in the program, we're going to lead with that philosophy all the time, and going through this process is exactly the same thing that Danny was saying the whole time, and the search committee. It kind of rang a bell, and I was like, this is a good fit. So that was the first thing, the philosophy here. The second thing was quality of living and obviously a good diverse place for my family to live, where my children can hopefully grow here and maybe play here, I don't know. So that was the second. And these are in no particular order. Obviously the American Conference is great. Obviously we know UConn is the best basketball team in the country, but I always say, if you want to be the best, you've got to play against the best all the time, so you see where your bar is, so I'm really excited about that. The American Conference is a new challenge for me personally, and it's going to be a great challenge for us as a team. You know, the academic side. I looked at all of what we offer here, and in recruiting a lot of times you come across players that say, well, you don't have my major, and I can't go there because I can't study this or I can't go to graduate school there. I felt like there was a well-rounded base of academic programs here and masters degrees and everything that student-athletes that you could recruit to could do. I love the size of the University. That means there's just so much here to do for you to get involved with with the University side, so I thought that was great. I could go on and on. Obviously the weather is unbelievable. I'm like, this is -- sun shining every day? That's pretty awesome. I'm finding out I've got more and more people down here that I know. Actually, one of my former players from Indiana is here, and I didn't know that, so it's really cool that she's here. But there's just so many reasons to be here at UCF, and I'm really excited about the new coaches that Danny had hired. I talked to a lot of coaches out there that I know and said so many great things, and it's important that you work with great people, too, and hopefully I'll get to meet some of the other coaches, and I'm sure everybody is great here, so those were the reasons. So it's been a great opportunity for me. I'm really, really excited to get started. We have a player of mine that's actually at the Final Four that's trying out for the WNBA, and she started just like these young women, so I'm going to go finish that off, and then I'm going to be 100 percent here. I'm excited to be here, and I know all the terms now. It's go Knights, and charge on. So thank you very much. Q. You turned around that Albany program in about a year. What are your keys to turning around a program no matter what kind of personnel you have? KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: I think what you'll hear from me a lot is empowering women. That's what we did. We started from getting them to believe in themselves first, getting to know them, strengthening their minds and their spirits and their bodies and just everything. I mean, we constantly do that as a staff. I mean, it wasn't get out there and play basketball and do X's and O's. That's not what it was. I'm a big believer that women need to trust you all the time, so I've got to these young ladies to trust me, and we're going to keep empowering them as women and educate them and make sure academics are good, and make them feel really good about who they are and being a part of this program and be proud to walk around, and when they leave this University, they look back and say, I loved my basketball career; I loved Coach Abe. And maybe in the future somebody is rich and they have a house with a pool that I can come swimming at. But it's really empowering young women. That's my theme all the time, and we just did it with family first, academics second and basketball third, and I really stick to that philosophy, and I never go outside the plate. Q. What was your knowledge of UCF before you came here, and also just how fast was that hiring process? How fast did it go? KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Yeah, it's pretty -- well, I don't know how fast it was for Danny, but just for me personally, I mean -- that's how everything goes, so once you get involved, once I decided to follow through with the coming to the interview, I first had to tell my husband, and then this is going to go fast. If I get involved, this is going to go fast. I did tons of research before. I made a lot of calls to friends of mine, and obviously in particular about Danny and what kind of program he's running, and then I started to see who he was hiring. I researched Dr. Hitt and just everything, and before I even came on the interview because I know how fast these go, and I'm a big believer that if I'm going to put my whole heart into it, I'm going to go for it. I'm not going to just waste people's time because I don't like my time wasted, either, so I just jumped in full force. I felt like I talked 100 miles an hour and I didn't stop talking, and I didn't know how good I did or if I did good, and like I said before, I see the committee now in here, and I said, thank God you liked me, it went pretty fast. It was this week. Q. I know you talked earlier about going fast as far as your style of play. Is there a certain trademark that you want your teams to play by? KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Yeah, well, you know, I'm going to identify with these young women here first. I've watched some film on them, so the moment I saw film, I was like, yes, I think we can play the way we've been playing at Albany. I would love to press. I would love to press, many different presses, and just wear people out. They're going to have to buy in because that's going to take a lot of work, and it takes -- you've got to be fit to be able to do that, so defensively we're just going to mix it up and do all kinds of different things and fun stuff and get a lot of easy buckets off of steals, and I think they have it in them to do it because I've seen film on them, and then offensively I want to run, I want to go. I don't want to turn the ball over but I want to try to run as fast as I can and get good shots. The team is going to know where the shots are coming from. I was a post player guard in college, and I was always so frustrated especially when I was playing like the 4, and the shot went up and I would get taken out because I didn't box out, or I didn't go offensive rebound, and I was like, well, I'm getting taken out because I didn't offensive rebound; well, I don't know where the shot is coming from. So when we run our plays and we run our sets, every single person on this team is going to be excited to play because then they're going to know where the shots are coming and who's taking the shot, and every person on the team is going cool play that's going to them, and we do a lot of misdirection plays. It's really fun basketball to watch, and we built a really good fan base at Albany just because of that. Q. Can you give us a little insight into your coaching personality? KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: I don't know, I think it's changed over the years a little bit. I don't know how to answer that question. I'm pretty high energy. Obviously on the court, I'm pretty intense. In practice we don't waste a lot of time. It's two hours and it's very scheduled, and we go and go and go and go. I like to say that I'm a lot like Tom Izzo from Michigan State in terms of practice and how he runs his practices. They're very high energy. They're very team oriented. They're very high five, that kind of thing. And then it just depends on the game. It depends on the game and how I am on the court. But it's all about the team. It's all about these young women playing hard, and I think the main key is playing hard. Q. You said that you've seen them on tape, things of that nature. You've been to the tournament. How close is this team to getting to that point? KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Well, I said this in the locker room. It's up to them if they want to buy in. I watched one game, and it was USF. I watched that game, because they're the second best team in the league. I know how UConn is because I'm there. I was up in Albany, and so I knew how they were. But I watched the second best team in the league, and they were No. 15 in the country, and I watched them in the game here because I wanted to see them at home, and I watched this team, and I was like, wow, they're in this game the whole time, and it was the first half. They were in the game, they were in the game. They were all fighting. It was really cool to see, and then they kind of lost it in the second half. So I see there's so much potential there, and so obviously as a coach and as a staff, we've got to put -- I think we have the talent. I think we have the athleticism. I think we have a lot of key ingredients here. I think the two seniors are going to be key for this year, especially to see what they want to do and how they want to go out their senior year. But we're just going to take one day at a time, and I always say this. Everybody always asks us about what's going to happen in the future. I have no idea. We're just going to take one day at a time. We're going to enjoy the journey. We're going to work really hard. We're going to bond really well, and that's just kind of how I do things. Q. Coach, you've been exposed to a lot of different programs and won at a lot of different places. I know you've got start at Iowa under Coach Stringer. What are some of the lessons that you learned from her? KATIE ABRAHAMSON-HENDERSON: Vivian Stringer is the head coach at Rutgers right now. She coached me at the University of Iowa, and I've been blessed to play for some Hall of Fame coaches and also work for some Hall of Fame coaches, and I've taken a little bit from them. Obviously I played for Andy Landers at Georgia, and he's retired, but he's a Hall of Fame coach, and then I played for Vivian Stringer at Iowa, and they're different. Their styles are different. So I learned a different style. The one thing from Vivian Stringer, to answer your question, is family: Family first and then academics and then basketball. And then I had the opportunity to work with Joanne P. McCallie. She's now the head coach at Duke, but I worked with her at Maine, so I had the opportunity to learn a lot from her, and then I went to Iowa State and worked with Bill Finley, and he's a phenomenal coach, phenomenal coach. So I've had some -- I've been blessed. I didn't know my journey was going to be I'm going to be a head coach and I'm going to bring it to another team. I was just placed in all the right places to be able to succeed. I never wanted to be a coach. I wanted to be an exercise physiologist or run a fitness club or something, and I just really got thrust into coaching because I really wanted to empower young women, so with all that knowledge and working for and with all those great coaches, it absorbed somewhere, and so I'm very blessed to have worked with those people. Q. Danny, being where you came from in New York, was she a coach that you kind of had your eye on as an up-and-comer, maybe somebody when you got here and started to search that you kind of thought this could be a really great fit here at UCF? DANNY WHITE: No, it's part of my job to always know the landscape, I think, in as many sports as I can. You can't keep track of all the sports, but certainly I always need to know the landscape of what's going on in women's basketball, and we had a lot of -- certainly a lot of admiration for the job she did at Albany, and actually my coach at Buffalo, Felisha Legette-Jack, and Katie know each other really well, worked together. But I had no idea we were going to be in a search at this point, so I didn't have any of those thoughts at that time. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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