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BIG TEN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S MEDIA DAYOctober 31, 2013Joe McKeownCHICAGO, ILLINOIS THE MODERATOR: Joining us now is Northwestern head coach Joe McKeown, entering his 6th seen and returns 10 letter winners and three starters, finishing last year 13‑17. JOE McKEOWN: I'm Joe McKeown. Excited to getting back to the Big Ten and getting started. This Sunday we scrimmage Notre Dame and get right into our nonconference schedule so we will find out what we're all about. We have a young team, 11 freshmen and sophomore and we return the Big Ten freshmen of the year, Maggie Lyon who had a big year for us. It's going to be fun. It's a fun time to be at Northwestern, a lot of excitement about all our sports. Q. In terms of basically recruiting in this league you got the McDonald All‑American on your team this year and that's the name I'm looking for? JOE McKEOWN: Niac is from Minneapolis, right? Q. Where is she going to fit with Maggie Lyon and some of the other kids? Will she make an immediate impact or are you going to bring her along slowly? JOE McKEOWN: I think a little bit of both. I think she is one of the most gifted freshmen I have had the opportunity to coach over the last 30 years. It's just given her an opportunity to learn her teammates, learn the game. She played on the USA National Team this summer and I think that was a great experience for her. She is also a freshmen that is trying to find her way and be a Northwestern student and also just trying to keep improving as a college basketball player. Every now and then she'll do something. I said to one of my coaches a week ago, I said, nobody has done that in our gym unless they were on the other team. She tried to goal tend a shot the other day. I thought it was a good sign. She is a great kid, great person to be around, humble and just going to get better. Q. You did lose some significant people to graduation, but your point guard is back this year and how will she help you maybe incorporate and keep everything together with the new, young kids? JOE McKEOWN: We have point guard Carly Roser from Canada, started every game going into her junior year now. We have invested a lot, she has had tremendous experience now as a‑‑ kind of threw her into the fire the first two years so she is going on the road and hit a buzzer beater to beat Iowa, she has played in a game where we LSU, played great college basketball. She has had some up's and down's and I think she is ready in her junior year, in a league that's loaded with great guards it important for us that she play well. Q. Coach, last season you guys were in a lot of games, you were the team that nobody wanted to play because you scared everybody. How has your team evolved from that persona last year to where you are right now? JOE McKEOWN: Great question. I think the biggest thing for us is to finish off games now. We had some injuries over the last couple of years but hopefully we have the depth now to play through forty minutes. We were in pretty much every game, and there were times since I've been at Northwestern, we have been the best 30‑minute team in America but we gotta play 40. This year, I think some of our depth will help us through that some of the experiences our players have had in game situations and understanding how to finish off now, hopefully that will carry over. Q. Coach, you mentioned Mia, and Lauren Douglas is probably one of the best players I've seen. How does that style of play impact your game going forward if at all? JOE McKEOWN: When I took over at Northwestern, the stigma about their program or the program when I walked in, besides we had finished last for 10 years that was they were slow, big, floating‑type team and took us a while to change that, but I feel like we're one of the teams now that has athletic ability to push the ball and I think defensively we will be more aggressive. That's one of the things I couldn't do my first couple of years even when we won 18, 19 games we couldn't go defensively at people like I wanted to like we did George Washington when we went deep into the NCAA Tournament. I feel like we're coming back to that type of team, Christa from Texas, also, and Lauren, and Carly is one of the faster players in the league so hopefully as we progress through the Big Ten that style of play will hold up. Q. How hard is it for Northwestern to get a kid like Coffey to come in and have to battle every other Big Ten program in the country? JOE McKEOWN: Good question. When you look at what we have and one of the reasons I took the job was‑‑ there was multiple reasons but we're in one of the greatest cities in the world in Chicago, our campus is one of the most beautiful on the lake, sits on Lake Michigan. One of the top‑10 academic schools in the country, why wouldn't you want to come there, right? That would be the way I would look at it. Also you have to fit Northwestern and she is a little shy, humble kid who I think she gets what we're about. Northwestern will never be‑‑ it's a balanced place and I think that's what she was looking for. The hype and the pageantry of recruiting, she was smart enough to get past that and look for what she wanted and that's what helped us. I don't know if that's the word pageantry, but we have a lot of that right now. Q. Coach, I'm in WNBA mode but wanted to get your thoughts on Cheryl Reeve. She talks about how you impacted her career and what you have seen in her over the time. JOE McKEOWN: Thank you, Cheryl was my assistant at George Washington for six years and it was the first job she got and six weeks into it I realized she was really good. To her credit she has worked hard and to have the success in the WNBA, she really deserves it. A lot of people talk about she has three Olympians on her team, Maya Moore, and she has done a great job of getting them to play well together and buy into the team aspect of pro basketball, and it shows. Really happy for her, I think she is one of the great coaches in our game right now. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much. Best of luck this season. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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