USA Women's National Team Members & Hopefuls Continue to Impress

Las Vegas, Nev. • May 11, 2011

• Photo Gallery

Day 2 of the USA Basketball Women’s National Team training camp in Las Vegas saw the scrimmages get more intense, people know they don’t have much time together and everyone wants to earn a spot on next year’s 2012 U.S. Olympic Team. 

Teams today featured Jayne Appel, Seimone Augustus, Candice Dupree, Ebony Hoffman, Diana Taurasi and Candice Wiggins on the USA Grey squad; USA Red included Sue Bird, Rebekkah Brunson, Sylvia Fowles, Asjha Jones, Kara Lawson, Renee Montgomery, Maya Moore and Kia Vaughn; while USA White was comprised of Swin Cash, Brittney Griner, Lindsey Harding, Angel McCoughtry, Candace Parker, Courtney Vandersloot and Lindsay Whalen.

So who won today’s contests?

Taurasi. Just as in yesterday’s scrimmages, the team with Taurasi in the lineup came away with a perfect record.

With the intense two days of practice here in Las Vegas, have the USA athletes had time to go out and enjoy the sights and sounds of Vegas? Not really. Everyone with whom we chatted said they’ve spent their off time resting. Which is not surprising, given how hard they’ve been working. But don’t take our word for it, see what Appel, Cash, Moore and Whalen had to say about the competitiveness here in Vegas, resting, their Olympic aspirations, and much more. We also chatted with USA and University of Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma about practice and how the two USA National Team hopefuls, Brittney Griner and Courtney Vandersloot, are fitting into the group.

Geno Auriemma
Were you pleased overall with the way practice went today?
Yeah, I thought today was good.  We switched up the teams a little bit, used different combinations.

Talk about Brittney Griner’s  practice today:
The difference in Brittney Griner between today and yesterday was like night and day. Yesterday I think she was overwhelmed by the quickness, physicalness, like her head was spinning and her feet couldn’t move and she was not even the shell of the player she can be.

Today she was much more assertive, much more aggressive, much more confident. There are a lot of things Brittney Griner can’t do yet. There’s a lot of things at this level that are going to be hard for her early on. She can’t get the shots she wants because they just beat her up. She can’t block as many shots as she wants because these guys are smart, they don’t get their shot blocked as much. She can’t just go in the low post and do what she’s always done. But she told me today, she said “I wish we had more than three days” because I think the bug has gotten into her now and that’s all we were trying to create here. Put the bug in her and make her want to constantly work to get better, work to get better. 

If this is the kind of progress she’s going to make on a daily basis, she’s going to be unbelievable.

What about Courtney Vandersloot, what did you think of her?
It’s funny, the two newest guys, we added the tallest guy and the shortest guy. One is coming from a conference that nobody gives any respect to. I talked to her about not feeling intimated, don’t feel like you don’t belong here, and then don’t come here and try and prove anything because you don’t have to. This kid comes in – who’s this kid? Where’s she from? Let’s see if she’s any good compared to the big time players from the big time conferences. And I’ll tell you what, I must have heard from five or six coaches that watched practice and I’d say “who is the most surprising player at practice” and they would tell you Courtney Vandersloot, every one of them, every one of them. 

That says a lot for somebody who really doesn’t play that kind of game. She’s not going up and down the floor going “I just saw Sue do this, let me try it. I just saw D do this, let me try it. She does exactly what she’s good at and she does it well.  She makes other people better. She’s smart, you only have to tell her things once or twice and boom, she’s got it. And she’s a great teammate, so what is there not to like?