Oct. 31, 2007

Tulane women's basketball head coach Lisa Stockton:
"First I want to introduce my staff that's here Alan Frey, Shanna Cook and Michele Savage and I think that's one of the positive things about going into this year we're keeping our same staff. A lot of things are the same. A lot of things on the roster are returning our players and keeping the same staff.

One of our themes going into this year needs to be not to start over but to continue on what we did last year. We won 26 games last year and do we begin this season trying to forget what happened or do we move forward and try to build on what we have done?

And part of building on that is to the players in this room is Ashley Langford, junior point guard whose really rewriting the record books for assists here at Tulane and Nikki Luckhurst who is really one of the best three-point shooters in the country and played a very important role in our championship last year.

I have been in this business long enough to know and have been asked since last year how did I feel about winning that many games and not going to post season and I think Dave [Dickerson, Tulane men's head coach] kind of eluded to it to. We've got a change in our conferences and we're rebuilding and realignment. This is our third realignment of Conference USA since I've been here and part of it is establishing yourself as presence in women's basketball and one thing when you talk about, I just found about these polls today, it's nice to be mentioned in that because we're on the radar again.

For nine years we went in a row and we had a couple of years we didn't and we're on the radar and whether we're ranked preseason ranked one or rather we get votes early, it's a lot of work to get to the end and still be there. But, you have got be on that radar and you've got to be one of those teams that are sitting on that table in the end of the year last year and we were.

We're not the only team that got left out. I mentioned earlier, that Western Kentucky had a 29 RPI and was left home and had over 20 wins. So there are a lot of things that go into that and you can only control what you can control.

Going into this season, we want to build on that. We're on the radar...what can we do? I thought our schedule was pretty difficult last year. I thought that there were some teams that were very difficult and I think this year we stepped it up. Look at our first seven games we got five on the road. I think that is a real challenge. Of course, two of them are in Cancun which are teams aren't too disappointed about those but we've got Kansas State. We've got Alabama. We've got LSU. Very early in the season we've got Georgia Tech whose been picked fourth in ACC. We have Virginia Tech in our tournament. So we've got Big XII, SEC, ACC all over our schedule in non-conference, not to mention some teams like Stephen F. Austin.

So we've got a tough battle ahead but the thing I feel really great about is the fact we have great leadership. We've got a group of people that have what and know how to win. And I think sometimes your biggest challenge is getting your players to believe that they can win and come to games that are close at the end and not being able to pull them off. When games were close last year, we won and I think that says a lot about what kind of confidence we have in each other.

Losing two of our conference players, those are big shoes to fill. And being preseason ranked number one, I think it's a real testament to the players coming back. It's to Nikki and to Ashley, Alendra Brown, and Kendra Barnes and all those other players coming back and what they can bring to us. It's not how you start; its how you finish so I'd like to be number one at the end obviously that's our goal.

But this team has got a lot of new parts. Even though we only lost two, we've got really five new players. Probably the new player that's emerging that will be an impact pretty much right away will be Brittany Lindsey who is a red shirt freshman. We had a scrimmage against UNO the other day and she started in that and I think she's a player that's going to get better and better and she's giving up a lot more options inside the scores so I think that's going to be real positive for us.

Looking at our scrimmage, I really think our team came together. I wish I'd seen that kind of team playing in practice everyday. I really hadn't up until that game. We got into that game and we played 48 minutes. We had 13 turnovers. The other team really didn't shoot very well. We really dominated the boards and I think what we saw in that scrimmage is what this team needs to do to be successful. I think we need to rebound better than what we did last year. We did take care of the ball last year but that's going to be really key. And we need a little more a decent of presence inside. We can't give away as many easy baskets inside as we did last year.

Even though we're returning nine, I think as a team with the five newcomers, it will continue to get better. It's a real challenge, especially to the upperclassmen with the schedule we have early. Going to Alabama and having Georgia Tech here first. Those are two tough games to start the season with but I like to refer to them as opportunity games. I think that Georgia Tech here is a great opportunity for us to establish something on a national level early and it's one of those all or must win. It's one that we can really get our leg up and I think it's going to be a real challenge because they are a very good team.

We look forward to it. I'm really happy with our leadership and I really think that this could be a special season; especially one that we can build on and hopefully if we can have this non-conference season, I think the league is going to be tremendously competitive. It's really anybody's league. They might have put us one, but I think there is about four or five teams that can contend for it. SMU is one of those teams that didn't lose anyone from their roster last year and they were picked fourth. If those people step up, they've got a good season too. With that, have you any questions?

Stockton: I think the one thing, with our teams that have been successful over the year, I think the one thing that has been consistent is we have a goal of going NCAA, we have a goal of winning a championship but I think we very much focus on the present and I think this team knows that we really can't look ahead so what really has to happen is we've got to get better every game and obviously it's going to help us if we can win some of these games early. Even if we don't we've got to take it as a challenge to get better.

Last year we went into conference play and I thought we really had kind of got on a roll from our tournament and went into conference play and I thought we were really playing very confidently. And to win a regular season, it's great to win a tournament but to me to win a regular season is the most difficult thing to do because you've got be consistent, for us, 16 games and think that was probably the real testament for that team and I think this team could be the same.

On the biggest challenge early in the season
"The travel probably. We're on the road a lot and in the past I think that's something that's made us better in conference play: when we traveled early. But it's going to be a lot for us. They're going to miss a lot of class early and we're traveling some places that are difficult to get to. Its really difficult to get to Stephen F. Austin and we're having a hard time getting to Rhode Island. So some games like that I think it's going to be a challenge for us to go there and then play high quality basketball, get back, and get ready for the next opponent.

On replacing the top two scorers from last season
I think we can have more scoring inside. I think our first players have steeped it up. I think Brittany Lindsey gives us some of that too. I also think, and again our starters for the scrimmage, Nikki Luckhurst and Sasha Staidum started in there and also Ashley Langford. I think the three of them will do somewhat of what our guards did last year. Our guards had very consistent scoring. I think the three of them are really going to have to score for us but I also think we're going to get a little bit more inside consistently not just two or three or four but I think we're going to have to give a little bit more of a balance attack.

On lessons learned from last season
I think it's that they are real hungry from last year and I think they really, this group, once disappointed about not getting picked last year, they carried that into the summer and carried that into this year and probably give them an edge. The other thing, I think there are some players that this is their opportunity to get in there and play and they are really stepping up and doing that. And that's what a good program is supposed to do. You're supposed to have the younger players come up and be ready to play when it's their time and I think it's time for some people and they are ready for the challenge.

On Scheduling Philosophies, the RPI and NCAA Tournament resumes
I think it's important but I think RPI is a very difficult thing to ever predict. I've had teams that have had a very good RPI that didn't have as good a schedule and we just one a lot of games. I think it's important especially if we win these games. It's probably more important because I think we can get significant wins early. When it goes down to the end, if you've got those significant wins, they count. The RPI right now is really going to depend on how our conference does. If we get rid of the conference high and our conference doesn't do well among conference, then we have to win the tournament. One thing the conference coaches have really talked about is we have to do a better job of scheduling non-conference so we can win those games non-conference and come in and even our ninth, 10th, 11th, and 12th place teams need to come in with some wins.

I really think if your team is really trying to get to that NCAA, you need to schedule winnable games against the best opponents you can play. That's always a guess because we scheduled last fall for this year. The other thing you've got to have in there is you've got to have some significant wins so I think it's a balance. It's a balance of playing the best teams you can beat with teams if you beat; they're significant down at the end. Again, I think Stephen F. Austin is one of those games they're probably going to win their league. I think that Louisiana-Monroe and Louisiana-Lafayette will do well in their league. Lafayette was NCAA last year. I think those games that are winnable games with teams that are going to do well.

It helps us if the team in our league wins non-conference because when we play them, 50 percent of our RPI is your opponents' number of wins. If we go into it and we play in Memphis and they have eleven wins -- Memphis was 12th in the league last year -- If they have 11 wins as opposed to last year when they had [three], it helps us because we're getting their wins on our strength of schedule. Their RPI may not be high, they might have wins against 11 teams that aren't very good, but they have 11 wins so we get our RPI based on those 11 wins. That really has to happen in our league.

And I think some coaches in our league are really doing that and some coaches are probably over scheduling. I know from the last league and I really respect what we have done in Conference USA for the realignment. I think we have 14 teams and I think those coaches had a really good feel of where their teams were in those fourteen. And the teams that finished 14th, 13th, 12th, and 11th, they came into the conference with 10 wins pretty much every year, nine or 10 wins. And if you look back on our history, we had 4 and 5 teams from that league that went to the NCAA and we had as much as nine go per season. So we had eight and nine go per season out of 14, it's more than just they're all good teams because a lot of those teams that are in the league right now, were in that league so I think that is one of the keys right now. In this BCS world where a lot of money is going into those programs, we need to make sure that we schedule right and I think that's the key. If we come into this league, and we're predicted number one, and we come into the conference and we only win 6 or 7 out of our non-conference games and we're going to hurt the conference coming in. Even though that some of those losses would be to good teams, we're going to hurt our league. So, if we can come in, everyone can come in with 10 wins, our RPI's going to be good."