Lisa Bluder met with the media on Thursday ahead of their Hawkeyes season opening game on Monday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Find out what she had to say in her presser.
Opening Statement
BLUDER: Thanks for joining us today. It’s exciting to get the season started. We played Southern and we played Evansville last year. Both of them are pretty similar to what we saw last year and we’re just excited to get the opportunity to get out and play in front of people and have the opportunity for it to really count (in the standings). I was happy with our exhibition game. I thought we did some really nice things. Now it’s going to obviously get a little harder against DI opponents, but a really really good feeling about this team moving forward.
Q: Have you learned more about the way you’re planning to sub post players? What does the rotation look like?
BLUDER: It’s kind of changing all the time. It really depends on practice quite honestly. How they perform in practice, and we might go one way, one day and another way, another day. It also depends on the opponent. If we’re playing a team that has five guards on the floor, maybe you’re looking at Hannah Stuelke as the first post player coming off the bench. If your’re looking at a bigger post, maybe it’s Addison O’Grady. AJ Ediger has been doing a really good job. Sharon’s a little bit behind with her recovery of her knee surgery, but I really think we could go any of those ways and I love that versatility.
Q: What areas did you feel like you needed to clean up after the exhibition game?
BLUDER: We had cleanups in the transition zone and defensive issues. I think we are getting better at that. We need to be able to transition into zone defense in case we’re playing that, but really what we’ve been doing a lot this week is working on ourselves, as far as continuing to add to our playbook a little with new zone offense, new player quick hits, those type of things. So that’s what we’ve been working on. New defensive strategies, just continuing to add to our playbook throughout this week.
Q: Played Southern and Evansville last year and won handily. What do you want to see out of the team in the opening two games before the first road test at Drake?
BLUDER: Drake on the road is always a tough place to play because the Knapp Center is such a great environment. I understand it’s almost sold out or maybe it is sold out already. I know that’s going to be a real challenge for us. With these two games, we have to prepare not only for Drake, but we have at Kansas State, after that we’ve got Belmont at home, which is a great team. I don’t want to overlook these teams, but I also know that we need to get better for the future with these teams. Whether that means getting younger kids some more playing time, whether that means experimenting with certain plays. That’s what I want to see. I want to see us fundamentally sound. You spend all summer working on fundamentals, and you find out in your first games if it paid off and I hope it did.
Q: What kind of anticipation is there before a season opener?
BLUDER: It’s pretty fun. We love to play the game, it’s just fun for me just to go to practice quite honestly. The season opener always has a kind of special feel, right? It’s the beginning. I told the team; the beginning is the most important part. If you don’t start well, it’s hard to get back on track. It’s exciting because it is officially here and when we start playing, there’s no time for any hesitation. There’s no time to put in a lot of new things. (It’s) prepare for the next opponent, prepare for the next opponent. I think our team is definitely mentally ready for that. I think physically, they’re ready as well. They’re in good shape, I think they’ve done what they needed to do over the summer as far as weight training, take care of their bodies nutritionally. Now it’s time to reap some of the rewards for the hard work that you put in.
Q: How can you get Hannah Stuelke on the court more? Is it crazy to think she could play 20 minutes a game?
BLUDER: It’s not crazy at all. I think you have to have your best players on the floor, and I think she’s one of our top six or seven players. I just think she’s that good. She’s going to get better, that’s the thing. Freshmen are inconsistent and you can’t just bank on freshmen. You have good days, and you have bad days in practice as a freshman. She has been a pretty highly consistent for the most part, but you never know when the lights come on. It’s officially here, how is she going to react to that situation. She’ll back up our 4 and then will also have the opportunity at the 5 position like I was saying when we go up against smaller lineups.
Q: Team is deeper compared to last season. Are the players aware of that and that their minutes may fluctuate with that? A few less minutes, but the team might be better overall.
BLUDER: They’re aware of it. They see it in practice, they see it in our rotations, they see it statistically, how people do every day in practice, that we are much deeper than we were before. That’s going to be a real advantage for us. We did an exercise with our team, and we asked them each to write down how many minutes they thought they deserved, and I honestly thought the total number was going to be about 300 and obviously 200 minutes are available. It really wasn’t that far off. It was not much over 200, it was about 215. What that tells me is my team is very realistic about their playing time.
Q: What can you tell us about Southern?
BLUDER: Lots of times they will probably run out a five-guard offense. They can attack the ball screens very well. They’re mostly a player-to-player basketball team. They will press a times, but it’s more of a slowdown press. We are not going to go through our scout for them until Saturday. We’ll have Saturday and Sunday to prepare for them. What I’ve done this week is take each day and prepare for a future opponent just because we had so long between our exhibition and first game. One day we are working on Drake, one day we’re working on Belmont, one day we’re working on Kansas State. We’re not going to have as much time to prepare (during the season), so I want to have things in mind for those opponents. Then Saturday and Sunday, we’re really going to focus on Southern.
Q: Interesting approach to prep for teams you aren’t playing next on the schedule. You think the team is mature enough to handle that approach?
BLUDER: I think they would get bored if I spent eight days working on Southern and I used to not tell them that we were working on future opponents. I thought that’s silly because actually it gives you a little bit more energy. It gives you a little more motivation when you think, ok today we are working on Team X and how are we going to beat Team X. It just makes it more fun. I think it brings a little more energy to practice and once we get in season, we will take it one game at a time. In the preseason, we’re trying to get better. How do we get better, working on what Kansas State’s going to do. That’s going to make us better for Southern, as well as Kansas State
