Coach Cieplicki Media Day Quotes
Opening Statement:
“I just wanted to welcome everybody here this afternoon. I’m going to make a couple of brief comments, and then I’ll field questions. I thought I would start by thinking about an experience I had at the University of Vermont when I first got into coaching women’s basketball. In that first season there was a major controversy. We were playing in a big game and there was an issue with the administration and the community about whether or not we should pull out both sides of the bleachers for the game. Up until then there was only one side pulled out. After a lot of talk about it, they decided to pull out both sides of the bleachers. We got pretty good after that, and I remember a lot of people coming up to us in town and telling us, 'I was there from the beginning. I was there when they only had one side of the bleachers pulled out.' If every person who said they were there from the beginning was really there from the beginning, we wouldn’t have had room for them all.
“I share that with you today because there’s been some discussion about the Dome. There’s been a big push on my part and the program’s part to get games to the Dome, at least a majority of them. I just want to emphasize to everyone how excited our players are about that and I am about that.
“You know, we talked to some of our players who are here now and they said, 'We watched the guys on TV last night. Do we get to play at the Dome?' It’s nice to be able to say yes, we get to play at one of the greatest facilities in college basketball history. I’m excited about that and I’m excited about this group. I think that there’s a nice window of opportunity with this group over the next few years to really develop the talent here and to do what we came here for when we decided to come here two years ago – to get this program good, and to be good consistently.”
On adjusting to playing in the Carrier Dome:
“In terms of women’s basketball, because it’s not on TV all the time, I think it’s hard for people to understand that we go places and we face the same thing (as men do playing on the road) when we play at a Pittsburgh and when we play at a West Virginia. I really think that the quality of the experience for our players and for our fans is going to be better overall. Now the first thing my wife said to me was, ‘Where do I get to park?’ I said, ‘we’ll figure it out.’ For those of you asking about parking, we’re going to do something. Whether I have to drive over there and do a shuttle, I don’t mind. But let’s come on out – I do think it’s going to work out.”
On the role of junior guard Tracy Harbut:
“I think Tracy has really done a fantastic job. It has been nice to watch her develop over the last couple of years. Obviously, those of you who have followed the team closely know that we want her to be more and more of an offensive threat and I think she’s ready to do that this year. She’s fallen into a leadership role, in a sense, and has really taken that on. She’s going to have a good year and she’s going to be a key to our success this year.”
On preparing freshman guards for BIG EAST play:
“I think for both Jenny (Eckhart) and Cintia (Johnson), the best preparation they’re going to have is the fact that they both play so hard. They get to play against each other every day. Obviously, when you have first-year players running the point, you’re going to have your challenges. I think we were able to figure out some things last year to help Rochelle (Coleman), whether we screen on the ball a little bit early or we mix some things up in terms of how we’re just going to get the ball up the floor. With the way AAU is now in women’s basketball, I think Cintia and Jenny have both had so many experiences against very good players and teams that hopefully it won’t be a real rough transition for them and for us.”
On personnel changes in the team:
“Looking at the fact that we were able to bring in five freshmen, to have Sara Antolick back…We were very, very fortunate to pick up Ashley McMillen, who I think people are going to be very impressed with as a shooter. That was a huge get for us and we were able to really recover. I’ve been thinking about this team a lot. I think we have a good balance. We have a lot of shooters, we have a couple of athletes, we have a true point guard and we have a lot of size now. Now it’s just a question of developing this group and getting good enough so that we can beat some of the best teams in this league.”
On redshirt freshman Sara Antolick:
“Sara has great athletic ability and she’s really improving her skills all the time. We talked about what she wants to do down the road. If she wants to play professionally, which we think she can, the redshirt … we were fortunate she had only played in six games. It was the magic number for us. I think you’ll see that the extra year, as we all know, maturaty-wise is going to help significantly. It’s nice to watch her out on the floor and know that she’s going to be here for four years.
“She’s had no setbacks at all this fall and take a good look at her today. She looks fantastic physically. I think she’s worked tremendously hard in the weight room. I want to mention the fact that Will Hicks and Hal Luther, (the football strength coaches) have taken our team over. They started that in the spring and I think it’s had a tremendous impact on our team. I think we’re very fit, I think we have a little more bite to us, and I think Sara’s really been a big part of that.”
On freshman guard Cintia Johnson:
“Both she and Jenny Eckhart have the ability to really run the team for us, now and into the future. Obviously, Cintia being a local product from Nottingham High School, it’s wonderful for the community to have her here. She sets a great tone on the floor with her intensity and plays hard all the time. With she and Jenny competing at that spot, we feel pretty secure that over time we’re going to be fine at the point. Plus, I think both of them just set a great tone for our practice. When your point guards are out and they’re on the ball and they’re into it, it makes everyone else play harder. We’re excited and it’s great to have Cintia here.”
On freshman forward Keri Laimbeer:
“Keri Laimbeer has had a lot of success in high school in terms of coming from a great high school program. Obviously, she has to deal a lot with her dad (Bill Laimbeer) and the history there, but Keri has a great personality and she competes. It’s the same for her like it is for anyone else when we’re recruiting. In order to be a winning program, we have to have people who know how to win, not just people who know how to play. Her coming here, part of it, I think is the basketball, and part of it is that she wants to be successful in TV someday and for communications, there isn’t a better place to be. So it’s worked out for her, it’s worked out for us – it’s a nice fit. Hopefully she’ll get out there and smash some people around for us this year. I’m not just talking about Keri, I’m talking about our frontcourt. We want to be very physical and bang the heck out of people.
“Keri likes to play facing the basket, like her dad, and passes the ball very well. She has a good understanding of the game, obviously, with her background. We like the fact that we were able to treat Keri like anyone else in the recruiting process. We saw her during the spring and summer. I got involved with her to make sure the academics were a good match. Her parents really tried to minimize their involvement and in fact didn’t even come on the official visit. Keri came alone. We pretty much had just a great feel right off the bat that this was going to be a good match for us.”
On his expectations for his third season at Syracuse:
“I’ve tried to be very guarded in my expectations, but that’s the next logical step in my mind: Let’s get over .500 this year. I’d love to see us in a post-season game, whether it be NIT or NCAA. I can honestly say I think the pieces are here. Can our young players play well enough as freshmen and sophomores to do it? I guess we’ll see. I know they’re not going to fail for lack of effort. Hey, if we don’t do it this year, we’d better darn do it next year because four years is plenty to wait.
“I really feel like we came in and said we have a plan, and we want to build it the right way so we can maintain in. The pieces are here now.”
On the changes in the Big East Conference:
“On the women’s side, I think like the men’s side, the new teams are very, very good. DePaul has consistently been a top 20 team, Louisville was a top 30 team. Marquette has been very good and South Florida took UConn to overtime last year. Cincinnati has kind of been down, but they say they’re back this year. They’ve had a good recruiting class. The toughest part of us – and it’s the same reason we left Vermont to come here – is because there’s no easy game. Every game is going to be a battle for us, and that’s why we’ve tried to be realistic in our recruiting and in our goals. Let’s win non-league. Last year we won five in the league, we won a tournament game, now we have to take the next step.
“We have to get this program back. I’d like to go back and look at the history: In the last fifteen years before we got here, this team, this program was .500 or better in the BIG EAST twice. In fifteen years. We have to turn that around and start to consistently be in the middle and upper part of this league.”
On the depth of this team:
“We have a lot of depth in the frontcourt. Vida (Sipaviciute) had a great summer and played for the national team over in Turkey. Obviously with Sara, we’ve talked about her. I think that Keri and Brittany (Smith), Jill (Norton)….now we have six players who are better and will help us. For those of you who have followed it pretty closely, we crawled (the ball up the court) the first year, we walked it up pretty much last year – hopefully we can jog it up this year. We want to play faster and we feel like we have the depth and the athleticism in the frontcourt.
“These kids can run. I feel like we have a lot of choice and that’s obviously going to help us. We’re not going to be afraid to smash people and to be physical, and to play the kind of style that we really like playing, which is grind it out and don’t give people anything easily. I think you’ll see Lina (Lisnere) is a little farther along than we thought, and Brittany Smith is, too. I’m excited about our young players.”
On team leadership:
“It always comes down to leadership and it's going to be upperclassmen, and we only have two. We have one senior in Jill (Norton) and one junior in Tracy (Harbut). It’s funny, I was talking to someone the other day about the team and we were talking about the sophomores as upper classmen. The reality is, we all have to do some (leadership). Jill and Tracey have been through a lot in their two years here in terms of transition, and in terms of trying to establish what we’re trying to do as a program. I think they’re going to provide great leadership and I think they’ve already done that in the preseason.”
