ASU's Vincent says her nice team needs to play mean

Story by Tommy Bowman, WSJ

Nice gals finish last.

Well, maybe not last. But Appalachian State’s women’s basketball team – a mostly-veteran team expected by many to repeat last season’s Southern Conference title run – trails Chattanooga, Davidson and Elon heading into this year’s league tournament.

The Mountaineers were in fourth place earlier this week and coach Darcie Vincent said her team needs to get meaner.

“Generally, these kids are sweet kids – they’re actually too sweet,” said Vincent, frustrated with what she said is a talented team not playing aggressively enough.

“I want the nastiness, I want the basketball player in them. Not the friend, not the girl, not the whatever. And right now we have not evolved into that. We’ve lost that toughness with our graduation last year…

“I don’t know if you can play this game at this level and play in this conference as good as it is and not want to throw an elbow when you need to throw one, or set a screen when you need to set one, or knock somebody to the ground when you need to or D it up or just talk a little trash sometimes. Those things to me, when you label those things, I think of the word fun…”

Losing isn’t fun for Vincent, whose ASU teams have won 90 games in four seasons.

“Actually, after the Chattanooga and Samford swing, we came back for practice and we had lost two games in a row – we don’t lose two games in a row, that’s not who we are and not what we do – and I brought a whiteboard out, a big chalkboard, and I said, ‘This is day one of your understanding of how to hate to lose.’”

Interesting. I guess when that's the only approach you know, that's that only approach you go with, but it seems to have struck out with this current group of players, especially during the latter part of this season.

I think there are lots of coaches that are shouters, yellers, get-on-their-butts kinds of coaches, but they usually do that before and after games -- not in the public media. If you're going to beat the players down, then at some point you've got to lift them back up. Darcie seems comfortable just beating them down, and to do so in public without saying much at all positive about them makes me scratch my head.

If the current seniors weren't seniors, I expect some of them would either transfer or quit.

I think she needs for something positive to happen before she can lift them back up. It used to be that a coach could use Darcie's tactics and a team would respond to prove the coach wrong or prove them right but make the corrections. Nowadays kids just pout because they're being called out or make excuses. I see it coaching church basketball. Kids these days really think they know everything and don't need any guidance. I was probably the same way but I also had coaches that scolded more that praised and I remember responding positively and working harder instead of turning on the coach and pouting about how mean he was.

Did your coach go on the radio and call you stupid? I have no problem with a hard-nosed coach who gets on his/her players but I think it is another thing to publicly berate them as she has done lately in her in postgame interviews. Did you listen to Saturday's postgame on GoASU.com?

Again, I don't think anyone is calling for Darcie's head. I just think some of us are concerned with her behavior lately. I know she is frustrated and rightly so. Right now, however, the atmosphere surrounding the team seems pretty toxic.

The beauty of the postseason is that one can wipe away some of the ills that take place in the regular season. The opposite has been the case the last two years for us (at least in the SoCon tourney). Perhaps, this is an opportunity for something good to happen.