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Making adjustments to head West
Posted: Saturday March 18, 2000 03:14 PM
Sylvia Hatchell coached North Carolina to a national championship in 1994. The Tar Heels finished the 1998-99 regular season 24-6 and advanced to the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16. North Carolina is currently 18-12 and the No. 5 seed in the West region.. Check out Hatchell's diary every other week on CNNSI.com.
March 18, 2000
We gathered to watch the bracket announcement last Sunday night and were pleased to see we had a fifth seed. When we saw that, we thought if we'd won the ACC tournament we might have had a fourth seed and gotten to play at home. But, we were excited to see we'd be going to Santa Barbara. It's a beautiful place, somewhere the players had never been. This week was our spring break, so it's was great to have the chance to go stay on the beach. We were all excited about the announcement. We made a lot of preparations for coming out here, trying to go ahead and get on Pacific Time. We practiced late on Tuesday in Chapel Hill, at 9 p.m., and we left about that time on Wednesday night to travel out here. We flew into Los Angeles, so by the time we got to our hotel it was about 2 a.m., or 5 a.m. our time! So, we're well adjusted to the time. We've had a few good days of practice here and I feel like we're ready to play. We're just trying to focus on the same things we did during the ACC tournament: defense and rebounding. We've played our opening games at home the last nine years that we've participated in the NCAAs, so it's a change to be starting the tournament on the road. You think it's a big advantage to play at home, but actually there's a lot of pressure. You're expected to win, you've got to take care of a lot of logistics and you probably don't have as much control of your players because they're in their own environments with their friends and all the things they're used to doing. We've been able to advance in our last seven tournaments playing at home, but we've had some really close games. When you go on the road, the team is all together and there for one purpose. You don't have a lot of outside distractions. You can just focus on what you need to do with basketball and have a little bit of relaxation, too. We play at 6:35 PST Saturday at the Thunderdome, where they're expecting a sellout crowd. We've played in front of some tough crowds, loud crowds, and I don't think that will bother us. Our players will enjoy it. Overall, we've had a great time here so far, a great trip. The environment is wonderful and the people at UC Santa Barbara have done a fabulous job. Now we're just ready to play. It seems like about a month since we've played a game (actually it has been almost two weeks, since March 6th), but we've had some good practices. Last week in Chapel Hill, we scrimmaged our guys we play against, and this week we've done some fine-tuning and worked on our shooting. Now that it's finally time to play a game, we want to see the players get back in their rhythm. We're going to focus on starting strong, and hopefully we can just keep moving along from there. Watching Friday's first-round games really got us pumped up to be at our best. It's a new season now, a new opportunity. You've got to win to move on and there are no second chances. You've got to be your best when you walk out on the court, and the best teams are the ones that advance. It can be anybody's national championship. The biggest news yesterday, though, was the announcement that Louisiana Tech coach Leon Barmore would be retiring after this season. I think the whole women's basketball world was shocked. He's done so much for our sport and has always had such great teams at Louisiana Tech. We just wish him the best and thank him for all he's done for women's basketball.
-- Coach Hatchell
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