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Contact Information:
Center For Tomorrow
Buffalo, NY 14260
Phone: 716.645.3312
Fax: 716.645.3838
A New Philosophy
by Cheryl Dozier
I came to UB a few years ago from Michigan State. Bob Arkeilpane decided to take a chance on a young coach. I was 31 at the time and had never been a head coach before, and UB's women's basketball was moving into a new era in athletics. We were moving into the Mid-American conference.
I think his choice had a lot to do with the fact I was at Michigan State, where I was an assistant in the Big Ten and had won a Big Ten championship. I think he felt that I knew what it was going to take to get us where the program needed to be. Before we took over, UB was very successful in the Mid-Continental conference, but they never actually got over that plateau of winning championships.
The biggest thing that we tried to instill in our players when we got here was a new philosophy. It was a different philosophy than the gentleman who was here before me; he was more of an offensive-minded coach. Everything we do lives and breathes with our defense.
So getting our kids to change mentalities a little bit about what were going to be the important factors that would allow us to win games was first and foremost. Secondly, it was getting the kids who had been recruited for the Mid-Con conference to believe that they could compete in this new conference that had all this new hype. We were stepping up three levels.
The biggest job was to get those kids to believe that they could compete at this new level, and they've done that. The first year we were pre-season picked to finish dead last, 13th in the new conference. We came out at 15-12, and we were 8-8 in the conference. We finished 6th.
Last year, we got off to an unbelievable start. We were 13-1 to start the season. Near the end, we were 17-5 with five games remaining, and then we came down with some injuries and ended up losing the last five games. But we still won a tournament game. We won our first MAC tournament game. Now we've got to try and get to the second and third rounds, and hopefully to get to the top, so we can win a MAC championship.