CU Basketball Media Day Quotes

Photo by: CUBuffs.com

October 25, 2016 | Women's Basketball

WATCH: Lauren Huggins interview WATCH: Quinessa Caylao-Do interview WATCH: Alexis Robinson interview WATCH: Kennedy Leonard interview WATCH: JR Payne interview

By: Andy Schlichting, Assistant SID

Colorado Head Coach JR Payne

Opening Statement
"I'm excited to be here, I didn't really know the format, this is my first media day here at CU. We've had a couple great weeks of practice. When people ask me how things are going my first response is it's moving slowly, but in the right direction. The hard thing about being a new coach is every single player on your team becomes a freshman again. Every drill that we're putting in is brand new, every set that we're putting in is brand new, that's why I say it's moving slowly, because it truly is like having 13 freshmen on your team but we're working extremely hard, our team is buying into what we're trying to do, and we are moving in the right direction. We still have a couple more weeks of practice, but we're excited to get going for real here."

On Scoring and Replacing Jamee Swan
"Jamee is a big loss, I think she did more than people give her credit for just in opening things up, because she was so strong inside opening things up for the perimeter. The bulk of our scoring I expect to come from the perimeter. The strength of our team is on the perimeter this year in returning Kennedy (Leonard), Alexis (Robinson), and Haley (Smith) who all scored pretty well last year."

On Different Approach During First Year
"I'm not frustrated, having 13 freshmen isn't necessarily a bad thing. Our team comes to practice excited to practice, everything is new, when you're in the same system for three or four years sometimes it kind of gets a little monotonous and old. I'm not frustrated, I don't think our team is. We're always hard on our players. We love 'em up, you feel a positive energy at practices, we're always encouraging and talking, things like that, but we're very much disciplinarians in our team. We do drills where, if it's not perfect, it goes back to zero. We're very much about the fundamentals of the game so we're always pretty hard on our team as far as discipline and doing things the right way. Good or bad, if we're picked first or last, we coach them up the same."

On Her Teams' Style of Play
"I like to make things work for the team that you have. We inherited a team that's a little more guard heavy than teams that we've had in the past. We're going to try to play as up-tempo as we can this year, I think the strength of our team is our backcourt, so being able to transition and to get early opportunities in transition will be really important for this group. It's going to be very aggressive and very high tempo."

On Haley Smith's Role
"She is a great leader. I tell everybody I wish I had ten Haley Smiths. She's our kind of player, she's very versatile, she can do a variety of different things, so I love that about her basketball. She's also a kid that gives 100% effort in absolutely everything she does, which also fits our M.O. of playing tough and playing hard. Haley's going to play basically two through five this year. We had an inter-squad scrimmage last week and she led us rebounding, led us in scoring, led us in steals, she's the player that's going to have to do everything for us. We're asking her to be more vocal, she may be the nicest kid in the world so she's a bit quite at times, but we're asking her to be more vocal and outspoken in holding her teammates accountable as well. She's an absolute rock for this team."

On Improving Field Goal Percentage
"It's a little bit of everything. What we're focusing on as a program, with each of our individuals and as a team, is details. We're working on footwork, the basics of pass-catch, hands and feet ready, hit people in their shooting pockets. It really is just the basics for us, I think if we can conquer that, we'll be able to take care of the ball better than we have and get high percentage shots."

On Lauren Huggins' Role
"Lauren is really kind of the life and livelihood of this group in some regards. Lauren has been injured for a little bit so she hasn't practiced as much as much as we would like, but she's getting closer and closer to getting back to full strength. She's obviously a great shooter and has been her entire career, we're going to ask her to do a little bit more this year. She's old enough and she's pretty savvy to understand the game and open things up for other people. Personality wise and energy wise, she carries our energy some days."

On Whether There's A Learning Curve Making the Jump to a Power 5 Conference
"I don't know. I really feel like basketball is basketball. I've coached at a lot smaller schools in smaller conferences, and we've beaten big schools from big conferences. In our programs, it's more about how you play the game. Like I said earlier we aren't dead set on one thing or the other (schematically) we will evolve and do different things based on our personnel. We talk so much about three things: being the toughest team in the country, being the hardest working team in the country, and being very disciplined in everything we do. Those three things are non-negotiables for us. We do those things whether we're at a little high school somewhere on the other side of the country, or at a big great school in the PAC-12, we would be the same team and that's what I think you'll see from this program."

On Incoming Freshman
"We have two fabulous freshmen. Quinessa Caylao-Do is from Tacoma, Washington. We actually recruited her at Santa Clara before we got here, which was kind of a cool coming back together for Q and us. She's aggressive, she's going to play the one and two, she's versatile in that she can shoot the ball, penetrate, she likes to defend which we love because she has that gritty, tenacious attitude on the floor. Q's been great. Eleanor (Jones) is our 6-4 Freshman from Scotland. She's maybe the most athletic player I've ever coached. She's been injured so she's been out most this fall, and just yesterday actually started easing back into practice. Again, she's extremely athletic, she lays the ball up at the rim, she can dunk, she can run, she might be one of the fastest two or three players on the team. She's one that will be very exciting future."

On Altitude
"I love it. It's a huge advantage. When I coached at Southern Utah we were about 300 feet higher, but we had the same advantage. For a team like us that likes to play up-tempo, it's awesome. As time goes on and we get deeper and deeper, it'll become an even bigger factor when we can continue to push in transition for 40 minutes. It's a huge factor, and people that say it's not are lying, because I've also coached at sea level and had to play at altitude and it's always a mind game. Do you talk about it? Do you not talk about it? But for us it's a huge advantage."

On Kennedy Leonard and Rebuilding
"Kennedy has grown a lot as far as what she says. I've only known her for six months but she talks about the growth that she's had and the challenge in coming to program and not winning as much as she'd like to. She's a fantastic player and a fantastic kid. She loves the game of basketball so she's constantly working, she's constantly in the gym trying to get better. Sometimes adversity makes you stronger and I believe in Kennedy's case it has. She came here knowing what it was. She came here because she wanted to leave her mark on a program. She chose this knowing that she could have a big imprint on the future of this program."

On Alexis Robinson
"Alexis is great. She had a great freshman season and we expect her to be the athlete she is. She has the fastest feet on the team, she's quicker than everybody, she should be able to kind of exert her will offensively and defensively. We're going to ask her to do more of that. She's a kid who loves offense, but we need to be able to use her athleticism on the defensive end as well as rebounding."