The Lady Griffins enter the 2009-10 basketball season looking to win their first ever WVIAC title as well as a bid in the NCAA Division II tournament in March. Their high hopes, however, lay far beyond the vision of what head coach Ferne Labati sees as the team’s most important game.
By Sean Maiolo
Staff Writer
The Lady Griffins enter the 2009-10 basketball season looking to win their first ever WVIAC title as well as a bid in the NCAA Division II tournament in March. Their high hopes, however, lay far beyond the vision of what head coach Ferne Labati sees as the team’s most important game.
“One game at a time” coach Labati said, when asked how far her team could go this season. The head coach refused to look any further than the next game on the team’s schedule.
“Circle them all. There’s no game that’s more important than another game, she continued. “Every game is a huge game.”
Unlike Division I basketball, there are no bubble teams. As Coach Labati explained, a postseason selection is based upon a team’s entire body of work from start to finish, making each game that much more important.
“The most important thing in division two, whether you’re a men’s team or a women’s team, is that from the very first game that you’re successful. The key is that you got to be ready to play [every game],” Labati continued.
“That’s why the whole emphasis is one game at a time. The whole emphasis is the fact that you’ve got to be ready to play and extremely focused.”
“You got to keep your focus throughout the season,” said assistant coach and graduate student Courtney Callas. “[But] the kids that are older have been through it all.”
Last year, the Lady Griffins went 18-11 and were fortunate not to lose any players to graduation. This year’s team will heavily rely on its strong group of seniors and upperclassmen to go even further.
“I think we have very good leadership,” assistant coach Tony Grenek said. Our seniors and juniors have worked hard. It’s easier for the coaches now because the younger players come in now knowing what’s expected of them.”
Having such a large group of experienced upperclassmen gives coach Labati and her staff lots of talented depth, something she thinks will prove very beneficial over the course of the long season.
“You can keep players fresh. They don’t have to play a large number of minutes,” Labati said. “Any time you have a situation where you have so many kids that can rotate in you never miss a heartbeat.”
One of those talented seniors is forward Katie Lintner, who led the team in scoring last season on her way to earning first team all-WVIAC honors.
“We’re all really excited because we didn’t graduate anyone last year so we pretty much have the same team,” said Lintner. “I definitely think as a team over the years we’ve gotten a lot better, we’ve gotten to know each other better, we pass better, we know each other’s tendencies and we’re able to work off that.”
Perhaps one of the team’s most valuable experiences came just a few weeks ago when they battled the nationally ranked Division I, University of Pittsburgh Lady Panthers at the Peterson Events Center in Pittsburgh. The game had extra meaning for freshman guard Clare Berenato, whose mother is the head coach at Pitt.
“We had been talking trash on each other all summer long since we found out that we were playing each other,” Berenato said jokingly. “We really broke them down in the first half. I know personally my mother was not too happy with them.”
The coaches were very pleased with Berenato’s handling of the situation, but were equally impressed with the team’s overall performance on the big stage.
“It went pretty well. We played hard and I thought we did not play scared,” said Grenek, noting their seven-point lead with only five minutes to play in the first half. “We looked like we belonged.”
“Everything was positive about it,” added Labati. “It gave tremendous recognition to the school, to our program. It was just a really good experience.
“It’s really important for people in the Pittsburgh area to know who we are.”
The coaches are especially proud that the girls’ on-court efforts mirror the work they put in the classroom as well. In the last two years, the Lady Griffins finished third and sixth out of 280 NCAA Division II programs in academics.
“It’s a pretty big honor for us to be in the top ten two years in a row,” Labati said.
“We’re not going to have any [academic] problems,” Grenek added. “That’ll never be a problem in our program because we stress the importance of academics. That comes first.”
Labati and her staff hope to gain the support of students and others in the community this season as they look to bring home national recognition equivalent to that of their academic reputation. She expects fans to be drawn by winning, something her team expects to do a lot of this year, one game at a time.
