We are keeping our fingers crossed in the hope that we can return to a “normal” version of college basketball this fall: fans in the stands, announcers without masks, etc. Nobody knows exactly what is going to happen but we will try to restore some order with season previews featuring the best players/coaches in the country. We conclude our coverage with new Vanderbilt women’s coach Shea Ralph. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Coach Ralph about winning 7 titles and her expectations for this season.
You set a North Carolina state record by scoring 39.1 PPG as a junior at Terry Sanford High School: what is the secret to being a great scorer? I do not think there’s a secret: like anything, being really good at something takes patience/work/having great teammates. When I was at Terry Sanford I learned the value of making sure that I focused on making the other players on my team better by setting good screens, cutting hard, and trying to get every rebound. I just did a lot of things that I knew our team needed and could put them in positions to be successful on the court. By proxy of the team that I played on I just had to score a lot of points. Thankfully, that was something that I really liked to do! I do not think that there was a secret to it: part of it was just me liking to score points and see the ball go through the net, and par of it was that it was what my team needed me to do. It was much more difficult in college: everybody can score points in high school. College was much more difficult and it took me a lot longer to learn how to be a complete player.
You won the 1995 Dial Award as the top high-school athlete/scholar in the US with a 4.2 GPA and in 1996 you were named the national High School Player of the Year: how did you balance your work on the court with your work in the classroom? I do not think I always balanced it well. It took some time for me to learn because I loved being on the court so much, especially later in my high school career. Sometimes I needed a little bit of nudging from my mom or my teachers. 1 of the traits that I am attracted to in players that I am recruiting is people who want to be great at everything they do. That includes wanting to be great basketball players, great students, great people, daughters, sisters, friends, teammates: all of those things. It is just something that you have inside of you. Thankfully, that was a trait that I was given by God, and I am grateful for it. It did not always come easy. I had to learn how to balance and time manage because I loved to play basketball so much. Fortunately, I had great guidance and my parents/teachers let me know that there would be no basketball without making sure my studies were aligned and everything was taken care of because one day the ball will stop bouncing…and they were right. It is something that I try to emphasize to our players now.
You were a player/assistant to Geno Auriemma at UConn: what makes him such a great coach, and what was the most important thing that you ever learned from him? Those are tough questions and I do not think there is simply one answer to either one of those. There are a lot of things that make him a great coach and there are a lot of important lessons that I learned from him. One of the things that I think separates him is his ability to know his players and know which buttons to push to absolutely maximize their potential. That is not a skill: it is just something innate that he has in terms of knowing people and relationships and all of that, like understanding what drives people. He was given that and has done really well with it and obviously developed it over the years with the different kinds of people that we worked with. He just has an innate ability to connect with people and figure out how they need to be pushed to be great. To me, that separates him from a lot of other coaches. In terms of what I have learned: I could talk to you for the next half hour about that, but as I enter this role at Vanderbilt it is about resiliency/consistency. Knowing that people are looking at me now everyday I have to figure out what they need from me in everything that I do. I have to set a standard not only for my players but for my staff and myself every day, and make sure that I take care of them both on and off the court. I think you need that with any great leader, but that was one of the things that I took away that I really am able to apply right now during this rebuild.
What are your memories of your final college game, which some have called “the greatest women’s basketball game ever played” (the 2001 Big East tourney title game where you tore your ACL in the 1st half before Sue Bird made a buzzer-beater to clinch a 2-PT win over Notre Dame)? Um, I remember that we won! I remember finding Sue after the game after she hit that shot and we exchanged a few words. That meant a lot to me as a player, but you know a lot of that is a blur. I do not think in that moment I thought it was going to be my final game and I was not ready to accept that. I thought maybe I could try to figure out a way to keep playing because I did not yet know that it was my ACL…again, so I did not view it as the end. One of the takeaways from my career at UConn was that they made me a better person and a better teammate. Obviously, I had a lot to be disappointed about in that game, but that is not what I felt. At the end, I felt excitement and joy for my teammates for what they overcame. I know it was not easy for them to see what happened to me, but they all stepped up and accomplished something really cool. And we celebrated all night: I remember that. I mean, it was a joyous moment and that will always be my memory of that night.
You won the 2000 NCAA title as a player and 6 more titles in an 8-year span from 2009-2016 as an assistant coach: what is the key to winning championships? If there were tangible answers to that question that a lot of other people would win championships. I think a lot of teams would be really good and win if it was an exact science, but it is not. The key to winning anything and being great at anything for a long period of time is people, so you have to find the right ones and create the kind of culture that promotes growth/integrity/leadership. We get a lot of credit as coaches but I think that we probably get too much credit sometimes. What we do as coaches is really important in terms of helping our players succeed but we cannot play for them. Great players make great coaches. There were a lot of things that went into that long period of success. Most of it was finding the right players and the right staff, putting them all together, and then constantly feeding it every single day. That is the case for any great team/organization. UConn was lucky to do it for a really long period of time, which speaks to the kind of leadership that they have, but also to the players. You do not win that many championships without great players: you just don’t. One of the things that I talked about earlier was Coach Auriemma’s ability to connect with people. He is a great recruiter: he knew the kind of people that he wanted to have on a team and on a staff and he went out and got them and then developed them. That is how you win championships but it is not easy to do because it is not an exact science. We made some mistakes at UConn and we did not win championships every year but I learned that it is not as easy as people make it seem. UConn is this powerhouse and they steamroll people. It is very hard to stay on top: you are constantly having to challenge yourself and your players and find different ways to define your success because anything less than a championship is a failure. That is a lot of pressure but when you find the right people who welcome that and embrace it, then it is also really, really hard to top a team like that.
You were hired by Vanderbilt last April: why did you take the job, and how is it going so far? I took this job because I think it is one of the best jobs in the country (if not the best) for a lot of different reasons. Vanderbilt University speaks for itself academically. We are in the best competitive conference in women’s college basketball, and at the end of the day it was about the people: you win championships with people. So, talking to the leadership, not only in athletics with Dr. Candice Lee, but with Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and all of the other coaches/professors throughout the university, it was abundantly clear that this place is extremely special from the very top down…so it was absolutely a no-brainer. It has been challenging: this program was in need of something different so that is a process and a journey, and you cannot skip any steps. I know that to be true because I have been part of it. UConn was not “UConn” when I got there. They were not where we are now, but they were also not the program they are now. It is going to be exciting and there will be hills and valleys. For me the key is going to be consistency and resiliency. This is not going to be easy but it is going to be amazing and I am excited with the people that we have on our staff. I am excited for our players to approach this season, especially after COVID and all of the things they went through during the last couple of years to finally have a season where they can get out and play with their teammates and compete. We just want them to be their very best every single day, and to me that will be a win.
Your non-conference schedule includes a trip to the Paradise Jam in November for 3 games in 3 days vs. Arizona/Rutgers/DePaul: how do you plan to get through that coaching gauntlet featuring Adia Barnes (2021 NCAA tourney runner-up)/Doug Bruno (made the postseason every single year since 2003) [note: Rutgers recently announced that Vivian Stringer (5th-most wins in women’s college history) will be sitting out this season due to COVID concerns]? I am going to coach the way that I coach every day. I am excited about the competition and am looking forward to the trip with our players because it is over a holiday and we will be together and be somewhere really nice. We are grateful to our athletic department for making this trip happen for our team. It will be challenging but that is the only way that you get better. I will not coach any differently at a tournament that I do today or tomorrow or any other day and hopefully my players will feel that way and feel that for me. Again, consistency will be there for them. My approach and my demeanor every day is that we are going to prepare like we would prepare for any game and my concern is never our opponent: my concern is always about our own growth.
Your husband Tom Garrick played in the NBA and is now 1 of your assistants: what is the best part of having your husband as an assistant? We obviously talk a lot about having a family environment in schools: we literally are a family environment because he is my husband, right?! He is a great guy…although I am a little bit biased. I know that to be factual, but even more than that I know he is an incredible coach so I need him on this staff. He has been a head coach before and our demeanors/styles complement each other. At the end of the day I know that he is going do whatever it takes to make sure not only that I succeed but that we succeed as a team and a program here. We talked about doing this for a very long time and just had to find the right place so we are enjoying every moment. The coolest part is that I know he is the exact person I need next to me in a job of this magnitude.
Your mother Marsha was an All-American basketball player at North Carolina: who is the best athlete in the family? I am totally not answering that: it is a trick question because we are all great athletes!
What are your goals for this season, and what are your expectations for this season? Instead of calling them goal we call them “standards”. We need to really shorten our view and take a day-to-day approach with this team. Are we better today than we were yesterday? And if not, then what do we need to do to become better tomorrow? What are the lessons that we learned today? My standards and expectations for the team, always, are to do what you can do well and control what you can control. Do that every day to the best of your ability: that includes our effort, attitude, consistency, how we treat each other, and how we respond to both success and adversity. At the end of the day, for me and this team, we will define success by whether were we able to reach our full potential. What does that look like for this team? We have no idea. Most of these kids did not play last year and if they did it was in a small role, so we have a lot to learn about ourselves. I am not going to box our expectations in by numbers that you see on a stat sheet in terms of wins and losses or points per game: all of that is yet to be determined. I just want this team to reach its full potential both on and off the court.