SEATTLE — Of all the things weighing on Kevin McGuff as he prepares for tonight’s unofficial debut as head coach of the University of Washington women’s basketball team, he doesn’t believe nerves will be among them.
“If it were my first game ever, probably,” the new face of UW women’s basketball said Monday when asked whether he would be nervous for tonight’s exhibition opener against Concordia. “I think all coaches probably say the same thing, but ready or not, we do need to play somebody else, and we need it to be in front of a crowd. So I’m just happy we can take that next step and put ourselves in a position where we can learn a lot about ourselves.”
As far as learning curves go, McGuff probably has as much knowledge as could possibly be expected from a coach who traveled 2,300 miles to take over a new program, in a new conference, in an entirely new part of the country. The Cincinnati native has spent the past nine seasons at Xavier University, but he did get to take this UW team through a trial run of exhibition games in Scandinavia over the summer.
That makes tonight’s exhibition opener a bit less of an unknown for the Huskies’ new head coach.
“Anytime that you turn the bright lights on, it’s interesting to see how people react,” he said Monday. “But I do have the advantage of probably knowing a little more about them than I would otherwise — if we didn’t have a trip to Europe.”
While that trip may have answered a few questions about his newest challenge, it also added a very large one to the table. Star senior Kristi Kingma, a Jackson High School product who was UW’s leading scorer last season, suffered a season-ending knee injury during a game in Norway and won’t be on the court tonight — or anytime in the near future.
McGuff said he’s still analyzing how the Huskies will replace their senior leader and go-to scorer, but tonight’s game probably won’t provide an easy answer.
“I think we’re still kind of a work in progress on that front,” he said Monday. “Overall, it’s certainly going to need to be a collective effort. At the end of games, we’re still kind of working on who that’s going to be. And I think at some times, it might even be a little different day to day, depending on who we’re playing against, how they play and the type of shots we’re trying to get in a game.”
Having already established himself as the winningest coach in the history of the Xavier program, and turned the Musketeers into a top-10 national program, McGuff will begin another challenge tonight at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.
He’s not expecting to roll out a national championship contender overnight, but McGuff is hoping that tonight’s exhibition performance is a small step in the right direction.
“I want to see us play hard, I want to see us play with great passion on the defensive end, I want to see us rebound with aggressiveness, and I want to see us play with a consistent pace,” he said. “In summary, I want to see us take the right steps toward implementing the identity that we want to have for this team.”
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