Finally Focusing On Basketball

Rutgers begins its encore to its national runner-up season

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Oct. 25, 2007

By Jessica Garrison

CSTV.com


	JESSICA GARRISON Jessica is a women's basketball editor for CSTV.com and contributes regularly. E-mail here!

NEW YORK -- It took a few minutes for any reporter to venture to ask C. Vivian Stringer the question on many minds at Big East Media Day, but finally, there it was: When did Stringer think media attention would shift away from Rutgers' offseason drama and settle upon the Scarlet Knights' quest to repeat their trip to the national title game?

Not soon enough, came Stringer's reply. The irony of the question was not lost on her -- the media asking about the media may be more common in women's basketball than in any college sport, but Stringer has worked very hard to get her team focused on one thing and one thing only.

Playing championship caliber basketball, every game of the season.

Is this the team of five returning starters, the national runner-ups, the ones that battled through almost every type of adversity to get there, the best team that Stringer has ever coached?

"They have a chance to be," she said. "They have the greatest improvement of any team I've ever had. They're the only team that's ever met the conditioning test three weeks before we were going to test them. They've committed themselves. They're working."

Last year, Rutgers got off to an admittedly rotten start. They opened the season 2-4, lost an embarrassing stunner to Duke, and at one point so disgusted, Stringer booted them from their own locker room, relieving them of their Rutgers practice gear.

"I wouldn't wish that upon anyone, especially as a competitor," senior guard Essence Carson said.

But Stringer's brand of tough love worked. The Knights' defense and conditioning came together, they began to rattle off conference victories, they trumped archrival Connecticut in the Big East tournament and made their unexpected nail biter run to Cleveland, right through then-No. 1 Duke.

The same numbers and names start this year on the Rutgers roster, but the players themselves are noticeably different. Each one of them speaks with a degree of calm seriousness, a determination that this season, they will not get ahead of themselves. This season is about focus, and their focus will always be on the task at hand.

"We just take it one game at a time," Carson said. "If you don't win the games between now and [the title game], you won't get there. Maybe that way we can start better than we did last year."

The preseason expectations for the Scarlet Knights have certainly increased. They were picked to finish second in their own league, but the Media Day mob was glued to their table, unusually outnumbering UConn's posse. Stringer sat through most of her interviews with the Big East preseason poll on the table in front of her. Whether the positioning of the press release was intentional or not, the Rutgers coach is far more comfortable with the role of the hunter than that of the hunted.

"I've had to strike a balance to understand and accept the expectations," Stringer said of her team's Final Four run. "That's the burden, if you will, of the crown. [Last preseason] there were no expectations -- we were so bad."

Stringer keeps her players hungry for this season with a rare combination of hard work and personality. She exacerbated their adversity last year to great effect, and though she has to work harder to create that same sense of urgency with this accomplished team, it is well within her Hall of Fame abilities.

"Every day is a fight, playing for Coach Stringer," senior guard Matee Ajavon said. "She tells us last year was last year. When she makes us run, we know."

"[Stringer] is just herself," Carson said. "This game is her life, it's her true love. When you have someone that passionate in front of you, you can't help but be passionate. Her natural hunger -- you just feel her words."

Of course, Rutgers does have the ultimate motivator hanging over them: That last loss, the elusive national title.

"Did we achieve our ultimate goal? No. And that's our motivation," Carson said.

Carson especially has watched her team's success ebb and flow in her four years, but her personal strides should benefit her team greatly. Long known as a defensive standout (and reigning Big East Defensive Player of the Year), Carson made herself an offensive presence with her 12.3 points per game last season, setting two personal single-game scoring marks and leading her team in scoring 10 times. She is the core of Rutgers' notorious 55 press and one of the squad's strongest emotional leaders.

Ajavon returns with similarly striking numbers. She sat out most of that early rough patch of the season with an ankle injury, making a disastrous return in the December loss to Duke. But she turned on her firepower when it counted most, scoring more than 20 points in six of the Knights' last nine games. She was the MVP of the Big East Tournament, NCAA Regional MVP and the heir apparent to the last Rutgers point guard to lead a team to the Final Four, Cappie Pondexter.

The Scarlet Knights' third returning All-American candidate is talented center Kia Vaughn, a 6-foot-4 junior whose double-double in the national title game (20 points, 10 rebounds) was emblematic of her growth last season. Vaughn averaged 12.8 points per game, but it was her team-leading 9.3 rebounds and 2.6 blocks that made her a force to be reckoned with in the post. In many ways, it was Vaughn's development that Stringer counts as the final building block to this now-complete team.

Success came to the Knights, Stringer said, "once we got a legitimate center, guards that could handle the ball and personalities of kids who just work hard."

Carson echoed Stringer's confidence: "We are the definition of a team. It's all about chemistry and experience and focus."

What game, then, do the Knights have circled on their calendars? What team is their focus in preseason practices?

"China," Ajavon said, and set her jaw in apparent anticipation of the Nov. 8 exhibition game.

Whether it be exhibition, the Big East or the NCAA Tournament, the Scarlet Knights don't plan to overlook a single team this year. Their focus, after all, is finally on basketball.