By Aren LeBrun, News Correspondent
The women’s basketball team fell in the Colonial Athletic Association quarterfinals, but after a 10-8 conference run this season following a 6-12 record last year, the team is on the up. Head coach Daynia La-Force was honored as the conference’s Coach of the Year at the conference’s banquet March 13. She sat down with The News to talk about her team’s standout season.
The Huntington News: It’s tough to lose in the first round of the tournament. But you only have three seniors graduating, do you think your team is primed to make a deeper run next year?
Daynia La-Force: Definitely we can. I think we did a good job building on some foundations this year; learning how to win, believing we can win, doing the things necessary to win on a more consistent basis. A lot of those things we had to learn before we became competitive and get those wins we needed. Our goal this year was to get 20 wins. We got to 17. I think the fact that we didn’t reach our goal left us hungry for more wins.
HN: What kinds of things are you going to have to change to get to that 20-win milestone?
DL: I think to get to 20 wins you have to be a little more consistent. I felt that there were times in the season where we’d play our best basketball and then the next game we didn’t play well, times in the game where we put a stretch together where we were playing very well and then let up when it’s the last five minutes of the game or last 10 minutes of the game. I felt sometimes players were inconsistent with their play. These are all things I think we had to go through in order to become a better program. We’ve never cheated the process in terms of becoming a good program, and we’re not going to start now.
HN: It was a big year for you as a coach, taking home CAA Coach of the Year. Your team made enormous strides on the defensive end this season. Every coach preaches defense to his or her team. Not every team plays it to the level yours did this season. How did you make it happen?
DL: It comes with teaching the girls. I think we do a great job as a staff going back and breaking down film and showing them exactly where they need to improve. Last season we put up all the stats and we let our returners know we were last in the league in a lot of defensive categories. Defensive rebounding, opponent field goal percentage, we were last in a lot of those categories.
We as a staff had to give them a renewed energy by giving them something different. I think all those things combined, the focus and plus giving them something tangible that they could practice every single day really made us a better defensive team.
HN: So it was the defense, and not the tremendous shooting on offense that really did it for you guys this season?
DL: Offensively we had a great system, even last year we knew we had very talented players. But they had to realize in order to win games we had to play defense. We had defensive goals on the board before every game. We also gave out stickers in the locker room after every defensive goal was achieved.
HN: Deanna Kerkhof and Kashaia Cannon are leaving, and they’re two of your leading scorers who did a lot of your outside damage. The three was a big part of your game plan. With that bunch graduating, do you see any sort of offensive changes for next year or do you think you can fill that gap?
DL: Every year players have to step up because players graduate, so I expect my returning players to do just that. They need to understand that we’re graduating a large chunk of our offense, and in order to fill that it’s up to them to step up, work hard over the summer, do the things necessary to get better, learn from their experiences this year, and become better all around players. I think A’lece [Mark] will have to step up for us in her scoring role. Amencie [Mercier] is probably going to have to take on a lot of that responsibility as well with the scoring. She has to average double figures next year.
HN: Although they didn’t always get a ton of minutes, there were some promising performances by some of your younger players this year. Are you confident in their respective careers going forward in the program?
DL: I’m looking forward to the freshman class that we had this year, sitting out and watching what was happening and being a part of it. I definitely think that we have a lot of scorers in that freshman class. Kazzidy Stewart has the ability to score. Tiffany Montagne, I’m looking forward to her being more confident on the offensive end, and Sam [DeFreese], when she had her moments she was able to score and she did some nice things for us. They feel a shared responsibility, because they know that they have to step up and pick up where the seniors left off.
HN: Going back to A’lece [Mark], you guys had a guard heavy roster this year and from an outside perspective her impact could often be somewhat understated. How important is her all-around play to you guys going forward?
DL: A lot of things A’lece did for us didn’t show up on the stat sheet. She was sort of that glue player, she did a lot of the dirty work. She did a nice job hitting the offensive boards when we needed it. She was one of our better offensive rebounders, outside of Jewel [Tunstull]. Her ability to just be versatile, you know, get to the basket and hit the three-point shot, really created a special dimension for us. A lot of teams didn’t know how to guard her. One of the things that she did well on a consistent basis was she found open shooters. She really put pressure on the defense to stop her going to the basket, and this left people wide open for three-point shots. I think she’s a really special player for us.
HN: You had an outstanding year, you set a record for home wins, two players hit the 1,000-point mark, Kash set the single season three-point record. Do you think it’s safe to say that Northeastern is now on the radar for other teams in the conference going into next season?
DL: Definitely. The preseason predictions always relate back to how we ended and how we did the year before. I expect the conference to give us a favorable number in terms of where they think we’re going to finish. We did a lot of great things this year, we played great basketball. We earned a lot of respect from the coaches in the league as well as the players in the league, and that doesn’t go away overnight. We need to build on that. Like I said, our goal at the beginning of the year was to win 20 games, and we didn’t reach our goal. So we’re not satisfied with the way the season ended.
HN: Was that youth?
DL: Yes. I think what we lacked was a mental edge. A mental focus. A mental swag. I think sometimes our kids weren’t mentally prepared to compete all the time. And I think that hurt us.
HN: So, what’s the next step for this program?
DL: A championship mentality makes championship teams. I don’t think we showed that complete mentality this season. We showed signs of it, but I think our players and our staff realize that’s what we need to get next year. I think you’re going to see a change in our mental approach to the game and a more consistent play throughout a ball game. Once we get to that level, that’s when we are going to win 20 games and that’s when we are going to become a championship program.
