Rhonda Rompola just completed her 15th season as the Women’s SMU head basketball coach, but a loss to Tulane to end conference play, has toughened her teams chances for an NCAA bid.
“For us to have any kind of chance at post season play, I think we've got to win a couple of more games,” says Rompola. “But I’m going to look at as a positive, that was our wake up call, and our team needs to take that wakeup call and we've got to out and so something with it.”
SMU is hosting the Conference USA Post season tournament, and has earned a first round bye. But she is concerned about her teams last performance. “We had some problems with communication the last time,” she says to her players during practice. “We had some problem defending their shooters, and we got to be ready to defend them.”
They're home record this season, is a respectable 11-and-5, but they prefer, not be good hosts as the post season approaches. The first tournament games will be played at Moody Coliseum on Thursday, March 2nd.
Says Senior Forward Sarah Davis, “Yeah, we kind of want to give them the tennis locker room, that's the worse locker room here at Moody,” Jokes Davis. “You know I'm kidding, we don't want to be too nice because we want to take care of our business.” Davis is one of only three seniors on this years team.
“The tournament shows what you’re made of,” says Senior Guard Kendall Shead. “Some people rise to the top, or blend in at the bottom.”
“Its really who's playing well that night,” says Rompola. “I mean Rice is a hot team right now, Tulane is a hot team, we're playing at home, and we want to play like, when we go out and step on the floor, we want teams to fear playing us.”
Winning the conference post season tournament is SMU's only hope of making the NCAA tournament, because an at-large bid might be out of reach. The good news is that the tournament is on their home court.
No comments:
Post a Comment