https://setonhall.rivals.com/
By Zack Cziryak
Continued from part 1
Q: You mention that 15 players can’t play. What are your thoughts on the women’s side having 15 scholarships to give as opposed to 13 on the men’s side?
A: Fifteen is a disaster. You will never have parity in women’s basketball until you cut down to at least 12 scholarships. The problem is that we don’t need 15 players. Take us for example, our last three players, kids that transferred this year or didn’t play, they go to the A-10, players 13, 14, 15 in the A-10 go to the MAAC and so on. Where we lose out on kids in high school it's because they go to the BCS schools because they can take them…but they’re not going to play. They just take them. And we do the same thing, take players that may need a few years to learn and adapt and we use them early on in practice in the hope that they develop into something more down the line
There are a lot more injuries in women’s basketball so you want the extra player, but you know taking some kids they might see limited time early or not play much until their junior or senior years.
Bottom line, you’ll never have parity in women’s hoops until you limit scholarships. There's just not enough good women players as their are in men’s basketball. It’s just a reality. With the men you can find a kid not ranked that you see in an AAU game and he ends up being a stud. It’s just not like that on the women’s side.
I think it will also reduce transfers. We get criticized for having two or three women leave each year but that's because you can't keep 15 kids happy. Kids want to play. I think cut the number of scholarships and that will reduce transfers because the women will start going to the right level and they'll get to play a little bit more. Here at Seton Hall we’re big proponents of limiting the number of scholarships. Even if you wanted to drop down to 10. Then you don’t have to give a full one to everybody. Then maybe The 10th, 11th 12th scholarships are halves.
If that happened theoretically we could give a recruit a full scholarship that say Louisville can only offer a half and then maybe we get her. If you ever want to have parity in women’s basketball the number one thing you have to do is limit scholarships.
Q: You played at and coached at Iona and now coach at a school that shares a lot of similarities with it in Seton Hall. What's your pitch for the smaller, Catholic school?
A: Honestly, it’s very similar and the only thing that’s different is the level. Obviously the MAAC is not the Big East. We sell New York City, we sell that we’re Top 5 in internships because of New York City and that’s huge academically. Our business school is top notch, but all of our academics here are really strong. It’s can at times be difficult to get a kid on campus but once we get them we don’t lose them that often and I think a big part is the people at Seton Hall.
Joyce Strawser, the dean of business, always meets with our kids who are in business. Chris Kaiser in Arts & Sciences always meets with our recruits. I think that’s huge because Coach B says it all the time, Seton Hall is all about the people. I think that’s why we’re so successful in what we’re able to sell because we’re really a hands-on campus. You have great people who really do care about the students. That’s something that we’re really able to sell.
As I said previously New York City is big for us, our academics are strong, and I think our success on the court speaks to our recruits. We’ve averaged 19 wins a season in the last seven years. We’ve gone to two NCAA Tournaments; we’ve had a draft pick. Shadeen, if she doesn’t get hurt this year she would have been drafted, so that would have been two draft picks in seven years.
With UConn coming back that raises the level of the conference. We’ll be a top 3 or 4 conference in the country for women’s basketball now. We are not a mid-major conference. Even last season without UConn we were rated in the top 6 leagues in the country. So now this coming season we are looking to jump a few spots. I tell kids right off the bat, if you want a big school, if you want to take a bus to class, you don't want to come here. It’s not for you. But if you want to play at a high level and now compete against the best individual team in the country you can do that here, at Seton Hall and in the Big East.
I also think a lot of why we’re successful is Coach Bozzella. People don’t understand how good of a recruiter he is. They don’t understand how he’s able to get the level of talent we’ve been able to get here. He did it at Iona. When we left we had the MAAC player of the year, rookie of the year and the defensive player of the year and another all-rookie team selection. We left all those kids there and five starters for a team that ended up winning 28 games.
We had a kid there that was the MAAC all-time leading scorer and the girl behind her was the MAAC all-time leading rebounder. I think people underestimate how good of a recruiter Coach B is and how he’s able to sell himself and the staff. The facilities, refurbishing the gym helps but will it get us one more kid. Maybe, but really the girls come here because our staff sells ourselves.
We sell the academics, we sell New York City, we sell Seton Hall, but we really focus on selling ourselves and the culture that we’ve built here.
Q: I’ve noticed a decent number of the program’s recruits have come from places like Florida and Minnesota over the last few years? Is there a reason for that and what is the typical recruiting strategy for the program?
A: We go all over. We’ve got kids from California, kids right in our own backyard. We do recruit nationally. In Florida we know a lot of the AAU coaches down there and they help us out a little bit. Minnesota is the same thing. I guess it’s just where we’re finding the recruits. We find it hard that the top-level kids in New Jersey and New York usually don’t stay here. They want to go out to the BSC schools. Especially the New York kids, they are enamored with the BCS schools. Often they come back, but they don’t initially stay here. It’s really just who’s on our list, what we’re looking for. The fit. We’ll take any players from New York, from California, from Florida, it doesn’t matter it’s just what we’re looking for and who we’re able to get in with. Like I said there's just not a huge pool of women’s basketball players like there is in the men’s game so we just try to find what we need and work contacts with people that we know and have a good relationship with.
Q: Does UConn’s addition help the program from a recruiting standpoint?
A: I don’t think it does. I think the old Big East was a draw because basketball was the sole focus of the conference. It was the number one league in the country. If it wasn’t UConn, it was Louisville, it was Notre Dame, it was Syracuse, it was Rutgers. I think UConn coming in, do we get one or two more players because of that? Maybe, maybe not. But because the power five is still the power five, the power five money is still the power five money, the power five dorms the power 5 cost of attendance, etc....those things are just so much to overcome. UConn doesn’t bring that in for the ten other teams. UConn doesn’t make us better. Actually I think it makes it more difficult in the Big East.
They were in the AAC and didn’t lose a game in conference. It’s hard for women’s basketball because like I said the parity issue, we can’t get the players that UConn is getting. The men can get players that UConn men are getting but the women can’t get players like the UConn women are getting. I don’t think it’s going to change much. We'll sell it in recruiting. It’s exciting and it’s going to be appealing to some kids, but I don’t think it will be as influential as some think.
Q: What are the pros of UConn rejoining the conference?
A: You play UConn, I think the national television avenues will improve. You win a national championship.... it’s 'The Big East' won a national championship. When we played them here at Walsh we were sold out. I think any gym they go to in the Big East they’ll sell out. I think that’s exciting for us to be able to draw those kind of crowds. You want to play the best when you’re coaching and playing so you do get to play them twice a year and you never know what could happen.
Personally, I think Geno Auriemma is a great ambassador for the Big East. He does things the right way, he’s about the conference as a whole which is huge. He’s going to represent the conference the right way and help us get the most out of it. I think it will help us with NCAA tournament bids. We’ve been a one to three bid league, I think the most we had was four one year. I think we might be able to get in four or five because of them. It’s going to raise the level of our conference so that the RPIs will be higher.
Obviously, there’s a lot of benefits, but it’s going to be difficult. They’re getting top 5 and top 10 players in the country every year and I just don’t think anybody in our conference is going to reach that level.
By Zack Cziryak
Continued from part 1
Q: You mention that 15 players can’t play. What are your thoughts on the women’s side having 15 scholarships to give as opposed to 13 on the men’s side?
A: Fifteen is a disaster. You will never have parity in women’s basketball until you cut down to at least 12 scholarships. The problem is that we don’t need 15 players. Take us for example, our last three players, kids that transferred this year or didn’t play, they go to the A-10, players 13, 14, 15 in the A-10 go to the MAAC and so on. Where we lose out on kids in high school it's because they go to the BCS schools because they can take them…but they’re not going to play. They just take them. And we do the same thing, take players that may need a few years to learn and adapt and we use them early on in practice in the hope that they develop into something more down the line
There are a lot more injuries in women’s basketball so you want the extra player, but you know taking some kids they might see limited time early or not play much until their junior or senior years.
Bottom line, you’ll never have parity in women’s hoops until you limit scholarships. There's just not enough good women players as their are in men’s basketball. It’s just a reality. With the men you can find a kid not ranked that you see in an AAU game and he ends up being a stud. It’s just not like that on the women’s side.
I think it will also reduce transfers. We get criticized for having two or three women leave each year but that's because you can't keep 15 kids happy. Kids want to play. I think cut the number of scholarships and that will reduce transfers because the women will start going to the right level and they'll get to play a little bit more. Here at Seton Hall we’re big proponents of limiting the number of scholarships. Even if you wanted to drop down to 10. Then you don’t have to give a full one to everybody. Then maybe The 10th, 11th 12th scholarships are halves.
If that happened theoretically we could give a recruit a full scholarship that say Louisville can only offer a half and then maybe we get her. If you ever want to have parity in women’s basketball the number one thing you have to do is limit scholarships.
Q: You played at and coached at Iona and now coach at a school that shares a lot of similarities with it in Seton Hall. What's your pitch for the smaller, Catholic school?
A: Honestly, it’s very similar and the only thing that’s different is the level. Obviously the MAAC is not the Big East. We sell New York City, we sell that we’re Top 5 in internships because of New York City and that’s huge academically. Our business school is top notch, but all of our academics here are really strong. It’s can at times be difficult to get a kid on campus but once we get them we don’t lose them that often and I think a big part is the people at Seton Hall.
Joyce Strawser, the dean of business, always meets with our kids who are in business. Chris Kaiser in Arts & Sciences always meets with our recruits. I think that’s huge because Coach B says it all the time, Seton Hall is all about the people. I think that’s why we’re so successful in what we’re able to sell because we’re really a hands-on campus. You have great people who really do care about the students. That’s something that we’re really able to sell.
As I said previously New York City is big for us, our academics are strong, and I think our success on the court speaks to our recruits. We’ve averaged 19 wins a season in the last seven years. We’ve gone to two NCAA Tournaments; we’ve had a draft pick. Shadeen, if she doesn’t get hurt this year she would have been drafted, so that would have been two draft picks in seven years.
With UConn coming back that raises the level of the conference. We’ll be a top 3 or 4 conference in the country for women’s basketball now. We are not a mid-major conference. Even last season without UConn we were rated in the top 6 leagues in the country. So now this coming season we are looking to jump a few spots. I tell kids right off the bat, if you want a big school, if you want to take a bus to class, you don't want to come here. It’s not for you. But if you want to play at a high level and now compete against the best individual team in the country you can do that here, at Seton Hall and in the Big East.
I also think a lot of why we’re successful is Coach Bozzella. People don’t understand how good of a recruiter he is. They don’t understand how he’s able to get the level of talent we’ve been able to get here. He did it at Iona. When we left we had the MAAC player of the year, rookie of the year and the defensive player of the year and another all-rookie team selection. We left all those kids there and five starters for a team that ended up winning 28 games.
We had a kid there that was the MAAC all-time leading scorer and the girl behind her was the MAAC all-time leading rebounder. I think people underestimate how good of a recruiter Coach B is and how he’s able to sell himself and the staff. The facilities, refurbishing the gym helps but will it get us one more kid. Maybe, but really the girls come here because our staff sells ourselves.
We sell the academics, we sell New York City, we sell Seton Hall, but we really focus on selling ourselves and the culture that we’ve built here.
Q: I’ve noticed a decent number of the program’s recruits have come from places like Florida and Minnesota over the last few years? Is there a reason for that and what is the typical recruiting strategy for the program?
A: We go all over. We’ve got kids from California, kids right in our own backyard. We do recruit nationally. In Florida we know a lot of the AAU coaches down there and they help us out a little bit. Minnesota is the same thing. I guess it’s just where we’re finding the recruits. We find it hard that the top-level kids in New Jersey and New York usually don’t stay here. They want to go out to the BSC schools. Especially the New York kids, they are enamored with the BCS schools. Often they come back, but they don’t initially stay here. It’s really just who’s on our list, what we’re looking for. The fit. We’ll take any players from New York, from California, from Florida, it doesn’t matter it’s just what we’re looking for and who we’re able to get in with. Like I said there's just not a huge pool of women’s basketball players like there is in the men’s game so we just try to find what we need and work contacts with people that we know and have a good relationship with.
Q: Does UConn’s addition help the program from a recruiting standpoint?
A: I don’t think it does. I think the old Big East was a draw because basketball was the sole focus of the conference. It was the number one league in the country. If it wasn’t UConn, it was Louisville, it was Notre Dame, it was Syracuse, it was Rutgers. I think UConn coming in, do we get one or two more players because of that? Maybe, maybe not. But because the power five is still the power five, the power five money is still the power five money, the power five dorms the power 5 cost of attendance, etc....those things are just so much to overcome. UConn doesn’t bring that in for the ten other teams. UConn doesn’t make us better. Actually I think it makes it more difficult in the Big East.
They were in the AAC and didn’t lose a game in conference. It’s hard for women’s basketball because like I said the parity issue, we can’t get the players that UConn is getting. The men can get players that UConn men are getting but the women can’t get players like the UConn women are getting. I don’t think it’s going to change much. We'll sell it in recruiting. It’s exciting and it’s going to be appealing to some kids, but I don’t think it will be as influential as some think.
Q: What are the pros of UConn rejoining the conference?
A: You play UConn, I think the national television avenues will improve. You win a national championship.... it’s 'The Big East' won a national championship. When we played them here at Walsh we were sold out. I think any gym they go to in the Big East they’ll sell out. I think that’s exciting for us to be able to draw those kind of crowds. You want to play the best when you’re coaching and playing so you do get to play them twice a year and you never know what could happen.
Personally, I think Geno Auriemma is a great ambassador for the Big East. He does things the right way, he’s about the conference as a whole which is huge. He’s going to represent the conference the right way and help us get the most out of it. I think it will help us with NCAA tournament bids. We’ve been a one to three bid league, I think the most we had was four one year. I think we might be able to get in four or five because of them. It’s going to raise the level of our conference so that the RPIs will be higher.
Obviously, there’s a lot of benefits, but it’s going to be difficult. They’re getting top 5 and top 10 players in the country every year and I just don’t think anybody in our conference is going to reach that level.
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