Royce Chadwick is in his ninth season as coach of the Marshall women's basketball team. A 25-year veteran of coaching with stops at Panhandle State, Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin, he has won 514 games in his career, and he is 114-108 at Marshall. He led the Herd to respectability in the Mid-American Conference and has shepherded the program to its move to Conference USA, but he is still seeking his first NCAA tournament berth at MU.
Royce Chadwick is in his ninth season as coach of the Marshall women's basketball team. A 25-year veteran of coaching with stops at Panhandle State, Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin, he has won 514 games in his career, and he is 114-108 at Marshall. He led the Herd to respectability in the Mid-American Conference and has shepherded the program to its move to Conference USA, but he is still seeking his first NCAA tournament berth at MU.
Marshall did make the C-USA semifinals last year, finishing 17-16. He has the Herd at 9-6 heading into Wednesday's contest with West Virginia, and it is 2-1 in the conference after sweeping a Southern Methodist/Tulsa road swing.
During a layover Sunday at Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport, he talked briefly about the state of the program.
Q. Does this season seem to have more pronounced peaks and valleys? You lost by 23 at home to East Carolina, then won two big ones on the road.
A. We have really experienced a lot of ups and downs this year. Conference USA travel is brutal, when you play a game on Thursday and then you spend all day the next day trying to get to your next game, then you play Saturday afternoon. Then you've got about 40 hours to try to get your feet back on the ground and try to get ready for opponent No. 2, so that second game is always a gut-check.
Then you spend your next day like we're spending today, trying to get home. So it's been wild.
Q. What type of team do you have this year, and how does it differ from, say, the last two, three seasons?
A. Well, we've got a young team, we've only got one senior. So it's a situation where we're trying to learn on the fly, with a lot of freshmen playing a lot of minutes. Because of that, we don't have everything in that we'd like to do with our offense and defense right now. But they're learning on the fly, they're getting better every time they play, and our deal's going to boil down to March.
I think it's a situation where you look across our league, and what we have to accomplish, it's going to be a situation where you be right when March rolls around and you can put on a show at the tournament in New Orleans. Whoever wins that tournament is certainly going to have earned it, because it will be a huge battle. There are a lot of people playing a lot of good basketball in Conference USA right now.
Q. How much of a leadership role does Alyssa Hammond [fourth-year junior, 36 points in last two games] have, compared to some of your better players in the past?
A. Alyssa Hammond is an outstanding young lady, number one, a tremendous student-athlete. She's a pre-med major and the kind of girl you would like to tell your daughter, 'Hey, that's who you want to be when you grow up.' She's just a role model and a great young lady and on the floor, she leads by example. She's a girl that grew up in a big family with brothers, and she's just a rough-and-tumble kid - played a lot of football in the backyard.
She's a girl that goes out and she's a competitor.
Q. Talk about your lone senior, Casey Baker [8.6 points, 4.3 assists, 2.1 steals].
A. She's fought through a ton of injuries and a lot of setbacks to be out there, playing multiple positions, doing all kinds of things for our team. She led Conference USA in steals last year, and she's tried to back up her steal situation to try to play more controlled defense because last year, we could kind of bail her out with Kizzy Hart, knowing she's going to go for the steal and 'If you don't have it, I'm going to back you up.' Now, we've got freshman guards out there with her, so she's had to play [with] more control and stay between her girl and the basket and not go for so many steals.
Royce Chadwick is in his ninth season as coach of the Marshall women's basketball team. A 25-year veteran of coaching with stops at Panhandle State, Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin, he has won 514 games in his career, and he is 114-108 at Marshall. He led the Herd to respectability in the Mid-American Conference and has shepherded the program to its move to Conference USA, but he is still seeking his first NCAA tournament berth at MU.
Marshall did make the C-USA semifinals last year, finishing 17-16. He has the Herd at 9-6 heading into Wednesday's contest with West Virginia, and it is 2-1 in the conference after sweeping a Southern Methodist/Tulsa road swing.
During a layover Sunday at Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport, he talked briefly about the state of the program.
Q. Does this season seem to have more pronounced peaks and valleys? You lost by 23 at home to East Carolina, then won two big ones on the road.
A. We have really experienced a lot of ups and downs this year. Conference USA travel is brutal, when you play a game on Thursday and then you spend all day the next day trying to get to your next game, then you play Saturday afternoon. Then you've got about 40 hours to try to get your feet back on the ground and try to get ready for opponent No. 2, so that second game is always a gut-check.
Then you spend your next day like we're spending today, trying to get home. So it's been wild.
Q. What type of team do you have this year, and how does it differ from, say, the last two, three seasons?
A. Well, we've got a young team, we've only got one senior. So it's a situation where we're trying to learn on the fly, with a lot of freshmen playing a lot of minutes. Because of that, we don't have everything in that we'd like to do with our offense and defense right now. But they're learning on the fly, they're getting better every time they play, and our deal's going to boil down to March.
I think it's a situation where you look across our league, and what we have to accomplish, it's going to be a situation where you be right when March rolls around and you can put on a show at the tournament in New Orleans. Whoever wins that tournament is certainly going to have earned it, because it will be a huge battle. There are a lot of people playing a lot of good basketball in Conference USA right now.
Q. How much of a leadership role does Alyssa Hammond [fourth-year junior, 36 points in last two games] have, compared to some of your better players in the past?
A. Alyssa Hammond is an outstanding young lady, number one, a tremendous student-athlete. She's a pre-med major and the kind of girl you would like to tell your daughter, 'Hey, that's who you want to be when you grow up.' She's just a role model and a great young lady and on the floor, she leads by example. She's a girl that grew up in a big family with brothers, and she's just a rough-and-tumble kid - played a lot of football in the backyard.
She's a girl that goes out and she's a competitor.
Q. Talk about your lone senior, Casey Baker [8.6 points, 4.3 assists, 2.1 steals].
A. She's fought through a ton of injuries and a lot of setbacks to be out there, playing multiple positions, doing all kinds of things for our team. She led Conference USA in steals last year, and she's tried to back up her steal situation to try to play more controlled defense because last year, we could kind of bail her out with Kizzy Hart, knowing she's going to go for the steal and 'If you don't have it, I'm going to back you up.' Now, we've got freshman guards out there with her, so she's had to play [with] more control and stay between her girl and the basket and not go for so many steals.
So I think her steals are down, but her team defense is actually better.
Q. How does Conference USA stack up on the national scene this season?
A. I think when you look at what we've accomplished, we've had some big wins. SMU beat Virginia Tech and they beat TCU and we've played some very good people on the road. We played Mississippi State and had a shot at them but we couldn't quite get over the hump [73-65 loss], and they were undefeated at the time. It's a good, young league and our league is getting better and better every single year.
All of our teams right now - look at the schedule Central Florida played. They had four teams that were in the BCS in football. So we're in a situation where we've got a lot of people who are paying dues in the preseason to be really good when the conference rolls around. That's what makes our March tournament so good.
Q. You've lost three in a row to West Virginia, but you hung pretty tough last year against a 12th-ranked team. How does WVU stack up, and what will you have to do to win Wednesday?
A. It's a rivalry game and it's always a battle. Mike [Carey] does such a good job with his kids, and he always has them ready. They always fight tooth-and-nail, and there's an awful lot of state pride riding on the game. It comes at such an inopportune time because everybody in C-USA this week is playing their travel partner, so everybody gets a break, except for us. We're playing a rivalry game on Wednesday, while everybody else is sitting at home and trying to get their ankles to stop swelling, and their backs to get back in place.
So it's a very difficult game and it always is a battle, and the fans love it. So it's a deal that we have to prepare for and, honestly, we're trying to get home. We're focused on the C-USA schedule and we knew this SMU-Tulsa thing was going to be a very difficult road swing. We left on Wednesday and we're still on the road on Sunday, and we won't be back in Charleston until 6 o'clock [Sunday]. So we haven't really changed our focus from anything in Conference USA yet, and we have to do that by Wednesday.
Q. Getting back to home, are you satisfied with the level of support in the community? Is it better or worse than it has been, in your time there?
A. I think Marshall people bleed green, no matter what the situation is, whether you're playing five freshmen or five seniors. They've been there for us, our booster club is doing great things; we've got a record number of members in the booster club, and I think the people live and die with Thundering Herd sports. We're very excited with the way we're playing right now, and I think our fans are excited. They've been with us through thick and thin, and I'm glad this weekend we're giving them a little bit of thick.
Q. When you came to Marshall, did you think you would have stayed nine seasons? And have you accomplished what you thought you would?
A. Well, I had an old coach tell me once, 'When you go somewhere, you act like you're going to be there forever.' I know full well how transient this business can be. You know what, the people at Marshall made this feel like home for me, and I love the boosters. I've got the best administration you could ever have. Dr. [Stephen] Kopp and Bob Marcum, they have done everything they could to give us opportunities to compete in Conference USA. West Virginia is a friendly place, everybody has done everything they could to give us a chance to win and that's all you can ask for as a coach, is opportunities.
I'm proud to stand in the coaching box at Marshall. There's a ton of history there, from Cam Henderson on down to all of the people that have come through the women's basketball program. We're excited to be doing what we're doing, and hope we can make an indelible mark in Conference USA.
Reach Doug Smock at 304-348-5130 or dougsm...@wvgazette.com.
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