One coach will react one way, another another way after the team blows a 20-point lead and loses by one point to its archrival in its conference opener.
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DePaul coach Doug Bruno opted to downplay the criticism and to accentuate the positive when his Blue Demons returned to practice after Sunday’s heartbreaking 63-62 defeat at Marquette.
That loss dropped DePaul’s record to 4-5. Marquette is favored to win the Conference USA title. DePaul’s next two games are on the road against conference preseason picks Nos. 2 and 4, Louisville and Cincinnati.
“I could beat up on this team,” Bruno said. “The players could beat up on one another. But there’s been no finger-pointing.
“We have to learn how to win. To take care of business in the stretch. But in our last two losses, against ranked teams, we had many positives. We played very well against Illinois and again to get ahead by 20 points at Marquette.”
Bruno’s teams reached the NCAA playoffs the last three seasons and seven of the last eight. He hasn’t given up making it eight out of nine. He knows the youth of this team requires his patience.
Mfon Udoka, the 6-foot center and rebounder supreme, is the team’s only senior. Junior Anne McDonald started as a sophomore. After them, experience is limited.
Sara Burge, the tallest squad member at 6-2, started only one game in two previous years. Injuries limited guards Fuchsia Forrester and Stacy Krumrei to 13 and 15 games, respectively, in two seasons. Briana Fitzgerald is a sophomore. Molly Watson, 5-4 freshman point guard, has played nine college games.
“Mfon had 16 assists in her last three games, after only five in the first six games,” Bruno said. “And she just had her two highest scoring games. She knows, when she has two or three players on her, to get the ball to the open teammate.”
The viewpoint: On Jan. 20, the Demons play host to No. 1-ranked Tennessee, the team Bruno said “is the quickest in the country. Maybe Old Dominion is close, but nobody else.”
Looking at the national picture, Bruno said, Connecticut “is sailing along behind Nykesha Sales. Stanford will be stronger now that Kristin Folkl helped win the NCAA volleyball championship and has joined the basketball team. And I still love Illinois.”
If Tennessee and Illinois meet again in the NCAA tournament, it will be a push, Bruno predicted. “Illinois will never get up again by 21 points, but Tennessee will never press Illinois out of the gym again,” he said
The NFL approach: Illini coach Theresa Grentz says she likes the style of NFL coaching veteran Bill Parcells and adopted a tip Parcells offered her when they played golf together in a benefit pro-am.
“Bill told me, `You have to get somebody to bring the ball upcourt, and you have to get somebody to rebound. You’ll find shooters,’ ” Grentz said. “He was right.”
Grentz explained why All-American candidate Ashley Berggren did not start three recent games.
“Ashley did not fall into disfavor or do anything wrong,” Grentz said. “I wanted to make some of our other players accountable. The lineups . . . things I do now, are because I want to do the best to get our team where we need to be in March.”
Pointed praise: Natasha Pointer, Rutgers’ appropriately named freshman point guard from Chicago’s Whitney Young High, wasted no time in making her mark in college. Two weeks in a row, Pointer was named Big East newcomer of the week, the second time for scoring 20 points and making 11 assists against Notre Dame.
Pointer, in time, could join a long list of Chicagoland stars who have excelled at colleges far from their homes. Such players include Janet Harris of Marshall at Georgia; LaTaunya Pollard of East Chicago, Ind., at Long Beach; Marshall’s Kim McQuarter at Old Dominion, and Tennessee’s current standout, Tamika Catchings from Stevenson.