University of Georgia Athletics
Another Quick Chat With ... Joni Taylor
April 11, 2016 | Women's Basketball
By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer
A year ago today, Joni Taylor was named the new head coach of the Georgia women's basketball team. Taking over for Hall of Fame coach Andy Landers, Taylor led the Lady Bulldogs to a record of 21-10, an NCAA tournament appearance and five wins over ranked teams.
It was a strong start to a new era for what has been a very successful program. After the season, Taylor was named the Advocates for Athletic Equity Women's Basketball Newcomer Coach of the Year and the Maggie Dixon NCAA National Rookie Coach of the Year.
Shortly after Taylor was hired, we sat down for a quick chat about her new job, her past and much more. Of course she was still Joni Crenshaw the first time we did this, on April 14, 2015. Here's the link to our first conversation: http://gado.gs/436.
Earlier this month Taylor and I had another quick chat, about her first season as a head coach. Here's some of what she had to say:
Frierson: Is there a sentence or word or two that captures the past 12 months?
Taylor: Whirlwind. A blur. Blessed, enjoyable, a lot of fun.
Frierson: What was the biggest thing you learned, maybe about yourself or being a head coach versus being an assistant?
Taylor: What I learned most about myself was probably that my instincts are good and to trust what I'm doing and what I'm seeing. So there were a lot of confirmation things, a lot of things that you kind of thought but being in this position you're able to make decisions for yourself and see a lot of things that your gut told you, whether that's about a play or practicing, or a player or a recruit.
And then the most important thing, too, for you to be successful you've got to have great people around you. I mean, that's the most important thing. You're only as good as the people that you have around you, that believe and share the same vision as you do for the program.
Frierson: How would you assess your first season as a head coach?
Taylor: I'm hard on myself and I look back at games that slipped through the cracks and wonder, what would have happened in this game? Or at Alabama or LSU at home, Missouri at home or Michigan State? I think back to those games.
With all that being said, overall I'm extremely pleased with our season; with what we asked our girls to do and the way they bought in and the way they accepted coaching from our assistants, two of whom were new and brought a different philosophy from a guard standpoint in a lot of ways.
You're asking seniors who have done it one way for three years to completely change and to buy into something different, and in some ways stay the same in other areas. And they didn't bat an eye.
Overall, when I think of the big picture and get over myself, being the perfectionist that I am, I'm very happy.
Frierson: When you're running a new, up-tempo offensive system there are inevitably going to be growing pains, but did you feel overall pretty good about how that went -- even despite the injuries and personnel limitations that you had late in the season?
Taylor: I do, and it's also exciting to think about year two and the players having even a better understanding of it. And you can go recruit prospects that you know can fit into what you're trying to run, not that these girls can't, but when you can specifically show prospects what you're doing and when you're watching them now you can picture them in this spot. It's exciting and it's a hard offense to guard.
Frierson: You've now gone through a full season with the rules changes ( NCAA release on rules changes), so what did you think about how they all played out?
Taylor: I liked them. I enjoyed four quarters; I thought it was exciting for the fans and I thought it gave our players a chance to have set goals for each quarter, even getting to the media [timeout]. Sometimes with a 20-minute half, you would say, let's play this four minutes into the media [timeout] and this four minutes to the media and they look up to the clock and it says 18:00. ... We did a lot with giving them goals for each quarter this year and in those timeouts they met all of them, for the most part.
I liked advancing the ball [after a timeout with less than a minute left in the fourth quarter]; I thought that was exciting. Sometimes we chose to do it and sometimes we didn't. Sometimes it was really strategic in terms of, we're not going to advance the ball because we're up and they're going to foul us, so we're going to be shooting free throws. ... And just kind of playing that game was a lot of fun. It gave us a chance to be strategic in some things.
I even liked the free throws [after the fifth foul in each quarter]. I wonder what would happen in the fourth quarter if they took it to 1-and-1, just to add some edge to the fourth quarter and put some pressure on the free-throw shooter.
Frierson: Could you see the guys going to some of these things one day?
Taylor: Four quarters, for sure. I can't speak to the rest of it, but overall I think it was pretty successful in our game. I would like to see every basketball team play four quarters and be even and on the same page.
Frierson: What did you get better at as a coach as the season went along?
Taylor: Probably not worrying. It's hard because you know the team so well from the previous years and there were teams like two years ago when we knew exactly who our team was and we knew going into a game if we were ready to go or not. Last year, from game to game, I had no clue if we were ready.
So I went into this year, even though I said I wasn't, I went into this year in the back, back, back of my mind holding on to a lot of things, like are they going to be ready, are they going to be this or that? Finally I got to a point where I was like, you know what, these seniors are on the same page we're on and they've got everybody coming along with them. They're going to be fine and quit worrying about if they're going to be ready to go or not.
Frierson: Did that immediately improve your coaching, or at least lower your blood pressure?
Taylor: Just your confidence and not being so uptight, you know, at the beginning of the game because you're all worried about if they're locked in and ready to go. It definitely made that day of [pre-game] shoot-around a lot easier to manage. That's the worst day because there's literally nothing to do and you're just waiting for the game. My mind would race all the time: what if this happens, what if we do this -- and I understand that's part of being prepared and you should do those things, and I still did that, but not from a standpoint of how they were going to be.
Frierson: Was the in-game stuff, when you're the one standing up and directing traffic and everything, was that the thrill you thought it would be, running the game from the sideline versus watching the head coach do that?
Taylor: As an assistant I never thought it would be a thrill as a head coach to do that, so that never crossed my mind, honestly. Half the time you're listening to an assistant coach and all you're doing is parroting what they told you. ... That's the thing that made it work for us, I've been fortunate that everywhere I've been I've had a lot of responsibility and I've had head coaches who didn't care who got the credit for things. If you knew the play and you knew what's happening, you go sit in the huddle and tell everyone about it. That's how I am.
Why are you going to tell me something and then me go echo what you just said? You go tell them yourself. Having the authority to walk up and down the sideline never factored for me, I guess.
Frierson: What was the most satisfying moment of the season, in terms of your first season as a head coach?
Taylor: Honestly, the buy-in from our players. There's a lot of things I could say statistically or from the games, but I knew that if we as a staff didn't get our seniors and our players to stretch themselves, not on the floor, but off the floor in terms of their team building and leadership and buying in to each other, that we wouldn't have the season that we wanted to have and we wouldn't be talking about winning at Vandy or winning at LSU or beating five ranked teams, because none of that would have happened.
What's most satisfying for me is how those girls are with each other in that locker room. They truly are sisters and they love and care about each other, and they did a lot of growing up this summer and it reflected on the floor.
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
