By: Natalie Fiorilli | The Duquesne Duke
TDD: What’s your main focus in the offseason this summer?
DB: It’s always to get better from an individual perspective. We will spend a large majority of the time that we are allowed on the floor to work on individual weaknesses and strengths. We will really attack the weight room and really work very hard in the weight room to get to be stronger, quicker and more explosive.
TDD: Where would you say the team needs to improve before next season?
DB: In a sense, that is something that we can’t improve upon. We only have one guard who has experience returning, and that’s Chassidy [Omogrosso], and so we’re going to need to have kids, who have not played a lot of meaningful minutes, really try to develop their confidence in this offseason. Then with our foreign tour in August, finding them minutes against competition besides ourselves, and letting them play through mistakes.
TDD: What are the plans for the foreign tour?
DB: We’re going to go on a foreign tour in August, and we’re going to take the team overseas to Europe. We don’t have everything finalized with it, but we know that we’re going to go to Hungary and Croatia. We’ll play four games, possibly five, and we’ll have 10 days of practice before leaving.
TDD: Do you think the team is feeling pressure after setting the precedent for seasons to come in 2015-16?
DB: Yeah, pressure is good. I’m glad they feel that pressure, and I think they do. I don’t think that will push them. I think that it adds to it, but I think that when we recruit, we try to identify kids that are really self-motivated, and we have very self-motivated people.
TDD: Do you have any thoughts on how the team is going to recover after losing such a high-caliber senior class?
DB: The world spins forward, and we’ve lost other really good players. We are certainly going to miss April [Robinson], Deva’Nyar [Workman], and Emilie [Gronas], and what they have given us is something truly special, but that’s college athletics. It’s the ‘next woman up’ philosophy, it’s time for the younger ones to do what we do in women’s basketball, and that’s win.
TDD: Who are you expecting to step up this year?
DB: I don’t know, it’s up to them. We’re going to find out. Really, that’s a question that can’t be answered right now.
