Gary Blair assesses his team's road to improvement

Select quotes from Blair's media session

Opening statement...

“We’ve had two games at home. Hopefully we’ve made a few corrections. Of course we played better against San Diego State University because they were not as good as Washington. We’ve got some work to do. We just left the film room. We’ve seen what people are doing on zone. I really believe that during the course of the year were going to see seventy-five percent zone versus last year where we saw seventy-five percent man. I think that’s what you’re going to see. Now if we’re going to see zone offense, we’ve got to do a better job. We’re walking the ball down the court instead of pushing the ball down the court after a basket. We’ve got to act before that zone can be set up. We’ve got to use our speed, which we have at the wings and the point but too many times we’re walking it down.

"This is a payback game for Penn State. We’re going to work hard in practice today. We’ve got one kid still in finals but we’ll get workout in. Then we’re going over to the gingerbread house with special Olympians at Still Creek Ranch and we’re going to show them around. Hopefully we’ll be able to do finals in the morning, basketball right now, and do community service and then some of our kids with finals still left on Wednesday will be studying or over at Bright this afternoon.”

On his team...

“I think of a lot of it is we aren’t playing as hard as what we’ve played in the past. We’ve got some kids that can play hard. Then it’s hit or miss. I think we’re behind. We’ve played pretty good competition. I just think we’re down a little. I thought this would be a high scoring team and it hasn’t happened so far. We’ve got a ways to go. We’re not scoring in transition. Our press, we’ve got to work on it to create more offense. We’re going to struggle against a zone so we’ve got to turn you over more with full court press. Before we can full court press effectively, we’ve got to know who our man is. After a free throw, we can’t find our man and we’ve got to do a better job of that.

"A lot of that just comes from basketball IQ, which we’ve got to get a little better on. When that happens, the offense is the same. We have good shots; we’re not knocking them down. To do that we’re going to start changing up our practices a little by doing individual work and get them to have more confidence where they can make the shot. I think we’re behind.

On having a key player to turn to...

“This is committee all the way. Even though [Courtney] Walker has double figures in every game but first one. In fact she had twelve in the last game. I think basically we’ve got a lot of players that can score twenty, but I’m not sure that we have any player that can score twenty on three consecutive nights like you had with [Kelsey] Bone or [Danielle] Adams. What we’re going to have to do is going with the hot hand, particularly when you’re playing against a zone. You have to share the ball a whole lot more. You have to make the extra pass and you have to take that open shot.

"Sometimes they might be against a zone pushing towards Walker and she’s got to take the shot when it’s there. Last night or whenever we played, she turned down a couple of shots because she had just missed the previous shot. But when you’re a shooter the next shot is the most important one, not the one you just missed. She’s got to have that confidence going into it. She’s has to be the TK Starks or the Sydney Carter or the Tyra White for us. Don’t be afraid of a miss. Think about the make that you’re going to make the next time.”