Last Sunday Presbyterian beat Radford 60-37 in the Big South women’s tourney title game to earn an automatic bid to next week’s NCAA tournament. The Blue Hose had never made the NCAA tourney before but now they have made history. Earlier today HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to speak with Presbyterian women’s coach Alaura Sharp about winning the biggest trophy at the smallest school.
You were an NJCAA Academic All-American at Fort Scott Community College and graduated magna cum laude from Southwest Minnesota State in 2006: how much importance do you place on academics? Academics are important and I think of our team GPA as a stat just like any other: we want to be top-25 in the country. I also put an emphasis on basketball IQ because I like smart players.
As a senior you led your team with 3.5 SPG: what is the secret to playing great defense? Effort is #1 and communication is #2: you want to hear a good defense before you see a good defense. We have a “truth chart” that looks at our stance and wings, which I stole from Coach Nick Nurse after hearing him on a podcast. We also look at allowing straight line drives vs. forcing people to the baseline. I watched a lot of Coach Donnie Tyndall’s matchup zone during college and have tweaked some things: we have always had a pretty good defensive team.
Prior to your current job you made the WNIT several times as an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech/Southern Miss: what did you learn during that time about what it takes to win in March? We lost 2 title games at Southern Miss, which taught me a lot. I worked for Joye Lee-McNelis and saw the creation of a program. In March you really need to trim things back: you should not over-prepare too much. Our staff focused on the other team and I just focused on our team, which I think was good for creating a scheme and cleaning some things up.
Last December you lost to top-ranked South Carolina by 70 PTS: where do the Gamecocks rank among the greatest teams that you have ever faced, and do you think that they will win it all? They are the best team that I have ever coached against. They have been the hardest to scheme for: if you take away the post then they will shoot it from outside, which is really challenging. We played South Carolina State the previous night so I think we could compete better under a normal schedule. They are definitely the favorite for every bracketologist but I just want to put our best foot forward and try to survive and advance.
Due in large part to that game you were outscored this year (1988-1984): is your team capable of winning a high-scoring game or do you need to keep it around 60 PTS to have any chance to survive and advance? No doubt: we must lean into our defense. We broke the school record last year for PPG and brought almost everyone back but had a lot of injuries: we had about 30 PPG sitting in crutches/ACL braces on the bench. When we are successful we keep our opponents in the 40s/50s.
You did not win more than 13 games in any of your 1st 5 years as head coach at Presbyterian: what changed in year #6? Returning all 13 players from last year helped us with maturity/defense. We had to adapt in the middle of the season after losing 4 guards. We changed our offense a lot but the matchup zone defense helped us take the next step.
Presbyterian is the smallest D-1 school in the country: how are you able to compete with much bigger programs? The power of human connection: I got my 1st head coach job at age 24 and had to get a CDL so that I could drive the bus…and I also had to tape the ankles! I am very relational and lead with my heart. You cannot work for me unless you care about the person 1st and the basketball 2nd. They play hard for each other and the more injuries we had the harder everyone else played…which is insane! We have an old gym that literally got air conditioning this fall. For most of our players we were their only D-1 offer. We do a ton of player development, which I saw the benefits of during our tourney run. You cannot overcome all that adversity without that human connection. I am hands on with 1-on-1 film time: I try to watch film with at least 7-8 players each week. They knew I had a vision for them even if they were not getting many minutes. As exhausting as it is for a head coach, I am glad that I did it.
In the 2024 Big South tourney title game you had a 23-PT win over Radford: how big a deal was it to make the 1st NCAA tourney in school history, and what was the reaction like when you got back to campus? I have a vision box here in my office which has an apple/ticket/net, which represents everything that I came here to do. There will never be another team here that gets to do this for the 1st time: we are leaving our legacy. There is so much other history that we can make so we are excited for that challenge. I was 7-24 during my 1st year but now I am floating. The story is awesome and dates to last year and the spring before when some of our players decided to come back to campus rather than leave via the portal. People kept showing up for us even when we did not have a lot of wins, but I knew that we were on the right track. Now we know that we can do it I finally stopped crying yesterday! There are a lot of emotions from my family to my hometown friends to our boosters: we have a cool story to tell.
Your roster has players from 3 different foreign countries and 9 different US states: what sort of recruiting philosophy do you have? The reason I got hired at Southern Miss is because I had players from all over…which is because I have been all over. When we had to sign a bunch of players 2 springs ago I did not have a budget so I did a lot of recruiting zooms and we filled our roster for a few thousand dollars. That is the JUCO in me: I want a blend of athleticism/skill/maturity so you have to reach into different parts of the country. We play a position-less motion offense so maturity is important.
What kind of seed do you think you deserve, and what kind of seed do you think you will get? I know that everything is based around the NET ranking, and ours has really dropped due to some poor losses. I do not care what our seed is: I anticipate being in the 1st 4 and am excited for that regardless of the quick turnaround. We will focus on ourselves and put a scheme together. Our players will represent our school the right way and embrace the chance to win a game. We have 20 wins but our conference NET is so low.
The Hoops HD Selection Committee – Thursday, March 14th
Tonight was the first night that the Hoops HD panel met via Zoom conference call to begin deliberations on who we feel should be in the 2024 NCAA Tournament. As we wrote earlier, one of our initial tasks was to hand out two annual awards: Mississippi Valley State won the Centenary Award for worst team in Division 1 (they beat out Detroit-Mercy for the award) and DePaul won the 2024 Stallings Award for worst power conference team in Division 1.
After a motion was made to remove all the lower-conference regular season champions from the Under Consideration board (except Appalachian State), our committee began debating on which teams were to be added to the at-large board. The first group of eight teams that were the top 8 vote-getters were Boise State, Washington State, San Diego State, Gonzaga, Nevada, Clemson, Wisconsin and Florida. Each member of our panel then ranked the teams one through eight; the top four teams (Gonzaga, San Diego State, Washington State and Clemson) were subsequently added to the tournament field. The remaining four teams were carryovers into the next round of at-large voting.
Before moving on to the next round of voting, a motion was passed to remove Butler, UNLV, Memphis and Virginia Tech from the Under Consideration board.
In the next round of voting, each committee member nominated eight teams to nominate for the field; the top four teams in this round were Florida Atlantic, Nebraska, Northwestern and Dayton. The next task was to rank these four teams and the four carryovers one through eight; this time Nevada, Wisconsin, Boise State and Florida were added to the tournament field. The last round of voting saw Colorado State, Texas, TCU and St. John’s added to the nomination board along with the four previous carryovers. In this round of ranking the teams 1-8, Texas, Northwestern, Dayton and Nebraska were added to the field. There were only three carryovers (TCU, Colorado State and St. John’s) at this stage; Florida Atlantic returned to Under Consideration after failing to advance to the at-large board for two consecutive rounds.
This completed our night of deliberations; tomorrow we will likely add at least four more at-large teams (plus any potential bids that may open up) into our field. We will also begin the task of seeding up to the top 8 lines on the Master Seed list. Also pay attention to the teams highlighted in orange on the Under Consideration board; these teams are still playing at the time this article posted to the website.