The tradition of coachspeak dictates that when U women’s basketball coach Elaine Elliott is asked what big games she sees on the horizon for her team, she is compelled to reply, “I have absolutely no thoughts in that regard.”
After all, coachspeak etiquette dictates that team leaders insist they’re not looking ahead to anything, just taking the season one game at a time.
Well, on this latter issue, Elliott apparently never read her official Coachspeak Manual.
“We’re not even taking it one game at a time at this point?we’re taking it one practice at a time,” she said. “I’m not at all focused on wins and losses. As a coach, all I can do is figure out what I need to teach the players better, and ask myself, ‘How can I do that for them?’ I don’t even know who we play next.”
Coachspeak Manual flying out the window?
While such fatalism may seem a tad melodramatic when contextualized in a team that is 9-9 overall, and 2-4 against Mountain West Conference opponents, juxtapose that against last year’s 28-4 record and trip to the Sweet 16 and Elliott’s frustration becomes a little more understandable.
With just a month left in the season and her team mired in sixth place in the conference, Elliott doesn’t even have the luxury of saying that at least the Utes have been showing signs of improvement.
After starting off the year at 7-3, the team subsequently lost six of its next eight games. Colorado State recovered from a 17-point second-half deficit to win in triple overtime, New Mexico came back from 13 down with a 29-2 run and wound up winning by 11, BYU trailed just once, at 6-5, in its game with the U, and the Utes self destructed against UNLV on Thursday.
“The unfortunate part of it is that in conference play, we’ve been worse than at any time in the preseason,” Elliott said. “It’s hard to take. You keep asking yourself, ‘Why has our performance seemingly dropped off?'”
Assessing the problems with the fundamental structure of the team and determining why there’s been a deteriorating performance may seem similar, but it’s not quite that simple. Elliott is well-aware of the problems posed by the former.
“When you look at our team, you see why: You don’t have a defensive stopper, you don’t have a kid who’s made all the plays for you, you don’t have a scoring four player [power forward], you don’t have a kid you can put on the floor and tell to just go out there and score,” she said. “That’s a lot of things to be without.”
As for why the team is not making due with what it does have, why limitations aren’t just accepted and ignored, replaced by effort and determination, the coach still isn’t sure, other than to say that a lack of confidence is as contagious as the deadliest virus.
“It keeps feeding on itself?there’s no explanation for it,” Elliott said. “A kid shoots 50 percent in the preseason, then goes 0-for-12 in her last four games; I can’t explain it. I’ve just got to be patient and let them work through it.”
Time and circumstances, however, don’t make patience easy. While the coach never subscribed to the preseason projections of her team finishing second in the MWC, neither did she think they’d face difficulty even getting into contention.
Doing that is no longer an easy prospect, given that the remaining eight games on the conference slate pose a serious challenge. The Utes must again face the top four teams in the league?CSU, UNLV, New Mexico and BYU?and of those four contests, only the Lobos will be coming to Salt Lake City.
Elliott is hardly in panic mode, though. While it is a bit disconcerting to her that, a full three months into the season, she and the team are “just really trying to re-focus on the fundamentals,” she knows there are things that everyone on the team?her included?can do to see the situation improved.
“Sometimes it’s pretty obvious why we’re struggling. Part of that is my fault, and I have to take responsibility. We can’t do as much as before, so I have to figure out, ‘What can we do?’ It’s just teaching more effectively for where they are. Maybe I’ve been asking too much of them,” Elliott said. “But then there’s things on the court and that’s their responsibility. They’ve got to get tougher, they’ve got to make more plays, they have to hit shots, they have to set screens?”
And they’re going to start doing it one practice at a time.
“[Practices will be about] just getting nasty and playing hard, developing quick thinking and using our instincts,” she said. “We just have to stay positive. It’s all about moving forward and having that new bruise to show you’re playing hard.”
Showing off bruises? Must have missed that chapter in the Coachspeak Manual.