Interview with Dr. Maryalyce Jeremiah

Interview with Dr. Maryalyce Jeremiah: August 11, 2005.

Dr. Jeremiah will start her third season back as head coach at Cal State Fullerton. Dr. Jeremiah had a 112-83 record in her first seven seasons as head coach at Fullerton. She then because Senior Women's administrator, a position she held for eleven years. During that time Dr. Jeremiah was chairperson of the Women's Selection Committeee for two years. She served on the committee for an additional two years.

Dr. Jeremiah coached at Cedarville University, Dayton, and Indiana. Where she becames good friend with Bobby Knight. Coach Knight was a guest speaker at a Fullerton fundraiser back in the early 1990's because of his friendship with Dr. Jeremiah.

I had the chance to sit down with Dr. Jeremiah and talk about her team at Cal State Fullerton. I would like to thank Dr. Jeremiah for taking the time for this interview.


What drives you to be a coach?

Since I was a little kid, I’ve loved the game of basketball. If you know something becomes a part of you, you find out who you are. The game has been so good to me. Basketball has been a jumping off point for everything that I have done in my life.

I think the game is such a life lesson thing. It can impact young people in such a positive way. What we want to do is to develop the complete player which are, the physical development, the social development, intellectual development, and their emotional development of a young person. Everything in our program is based on the development of the young person in those four dimensions.

Talk about your coaching staff:

I think I have the most experienced coaching staff west of the Mississippi River. By experience being the number of years in the profession.

Barb Bausch spent tens years as head coach of Division III, Guilford College in North Carolina. They went to the NCAA many years. What’s interesting was she not only went here, (Cal State Fullerton) but she was in my coaching class that I taught. She was my student!!! She’s a tactician of the game. She’s very technical. She’s very smart. A very, very good teacher of the game.

Marcia Foster is one of the best recruiters. Both Marcia and Barb could be head coaches at Division I schools if that’s what they want. And I know that’s what they want. I told them when they came onto our staff, I will help them in any way I can to get them a job anywhere they want to go. Marcia is just great. She’s a tremendous recruiter.

Eugenia Rycraw was a tremendous player her at Fullerton. Maybe the best player ever to come out of here, she still holds five national records. She played overseas for five years and one year with the Sparks. She’s such a great role model for our players.

The thing I like about my staff the most is that they are ethical, highly principled, they wouldn’t cheat, they wouldn’t be mean to people intentionally. They are the heart and soul of this program.

Is it tough recruiting to Fullerton with it’s lack of top notch facilities?

A basketball court is 94’ by 50’. Is Titan Gym, the Pyramid? No. Is it the Bren Center? No. I don’t concentrate on that because I can’t do anything about that. In my lifetime as a coach, we’re not getting an arena. I hope somewhere down the line that there will be an arena. There has to be and I think there will be. But in my lifetime as a coach, we won’t have an arena. I think it hurts a little bit. But look at the WCC, they all play in gyms except the Jenny Craig Center and Gonzaga’s new arena.


Talk about recruiting. What do you look for?

We try to get better players than what we have. Certainly you look for talent. But we’ve passed up talent for other things. I want players who are serious, disciplined and who are committed, as much as they can be when they are 18. Now that’s the caveat. Kids who want to get a college education. Out of all the years I’ve coach, that includes hundreds of players at four different colleges plus a high school, every player, but one, who has completed their eligibility has a college degree. I have four degrees. I grew up in a college president’s home. So education is a tremendous valve and it still is. Basketball is a means to an end.

So one of the thing we have to know is that these kids want to get a degree. I’ve never talked to a kid who doesn’t want a degree. Some are a little better prepared than others. We will not just take those who are 4.0 students, obviously. We have diversity in our team and in out whole university. But we do want kids who have goals. I always ask them “If you can see yourself doing anything you want, ten years from now, what would it be?” I love dreamers. Nothing is ever achieved unless you dream about it first.

So we look for talent, kids with goals, kids who are as well prepared for the rigors of college academics as we can find. We don’t have a lot of kids who are at risk and we work very hard for the ones that are.

While we’re talking about kids who are having academic problems, can you talk about how Andrea Adams is doing?

She’s not too much at risk anymore!! She came in the year before I came back and had academic problems. Her second year she was not eligible to play the first semester. The second semester she still was not eligible. So we decided it was really important for her to get an idea of what she wanted in life and where she wanted to go. We told her, ‘You need to go get yourself prepared.’ She left the program for a year. I really felt she would go to a JC and get everything going. But she didn’t. She went to school here. But she couldn’t play. She wanted to continue to practice but I said “You haven’t proven you want to be a college student.’ She got herself eligible and she wanted to come back and play. So I told her ‘Yes’ Now she’s totally eligible, she didn’t have to go to summer school, she’s got two more years to play.

Do you think it was Andrea maturing?

I think it was a lot of things. Having something she loved taken away from her. When you have something taken away from you, you can do two things; be very bitter and mad or I got that taken away from me for something I did.

I think her parents were very supportive of her. They wanted her to go to college. They were very supportive of me.

When you were hired, they gave you a three year contract. This is the third year. What is the status of your contract?

No, they extended it to a five year contract. So I have three more years left on my contract. I don’t think about that too much. But I think it has significance for recruiting. But I love what I’m doing and if I think I’m making an impact and we’re getting better, I’ll continue doing it.


What is your philosophy about scheduling?

We have to win the conference tournament because until the conference gets stronger we’re only going to get one team into the NCAA’s. That’s why we play the schedule we play. We open with Colorado, we play USC, I hope we get UCLA back on our schedule. We’ve even talked to Texas Tech about playing there. I get to see my friends, Bobby Knight and Marsha Sharp. I want to play good teams. I know we’ll probably have a hard time beating those teams but that improves our RPI.

Our schedule to me is extremely important. I don’t want to put teams on it that we’re not going to win. We need to win. I told my assistants ‘We need to be a lot better this year. This is a big year for us. If we’re not significantly better than we have to look at what we’re doing.

You said Significantly better, can you put a number of win on that?

As far as number of wins for next year, we need to be over 500. We won eight games both years. Last year was a little bit of a disappointment, I really thought we should have won more than eight games. Are players need to learn how to play together and we have to teach them to play together.

31-0 would get us into the NCAA tournament. That will always be my goal. We were in the tournament two times in seven year and there were only 48 teams and we never won the conference. I would really like to get back there. The conference was stronger back then. Long Beach won the conference, Hawaii and Vegas were strong.


Let’s talk about some issues in the Big West:

Do you agree with having the men and women playing the same days and times?

I liked it better Thursday and Saturday instead of Friday and Sunday because of our player. I think that if you can give players one day when they don’t have to do anything it’s a great thing. When you go Friday-Sunday, you give them Monday off of practice but they still have to go to school. If I can give them a day off, I try to make it Sunday so they can do something else.

What do you think of the 2pm Saturday afternoon starts?

Well I have to wait and see what that does to our small fan base. We don’t have a big fan base and hopefully if we win it get bigger. I think the jury is still out on this.

What do you think of Davis coming into the BW?

I like it. I was on the administrative committee that went to do the review of them for three days. They have great facilities. Sandy Simpson is a good friend and good guy.

What do you think about Utah State and Idaho leaving the BW?

I loved watching Idaho play last year. Those two kids, Mitchell and Emily Faurholt were just awesome. It’s not good that we lose the competitiveness of those two schools.

But it’s good it makes us more homogenous as a conference. All schools are state schools except for Pacific.

Do you think some schools in the BW need to take women’s basketball more seriously in order for the conference to improve?

Yeah to some extent. I think everybody has tried to get on board with full staffing (Having three assistant coaches) and salaries would make a difference in the quality of your staff.

I think they need to pay more competitively but in the conference it’s relatively competitive. But when you’re competing against other conferences it might not be as competitive.

I don’t know a school that is not fully funded with scholarships. I think the big thing is quality and experience of the coaches and having a little more of a national vision. I don’t fool myself, we’re not the Pac-10, Big 10 or all those conferences. We need to be as good as the WCC and at one time we were better than the WCC.

I don’t think a lot of the coaches think about the NCAA tournament. That’s all I think about, being one of the top 64. Everything we do in this program is towards that end. I won’t feel I’ve reached the goals we set for this program until we get back to that tournament. I think they need to be a little bit more like that. Mark French (UCSB head coach) and I are about the only ones that talk about the NCAA. We know about and we want to be there. I think they other ones do too but it just seems so unreachable.

The schools need to support women’s basketball more with the promotions and marketing end of it. They also have to allow them to play who they want but make them play better teams. They need to demand excellence from us and hold us accountable if we don’t achieve it. We need to held accountable. If you’re sitting here five years from now and we’re still winning five games, you’re probably going to be interviewing someone else.

Can you talk about the three players you signed. Who do you expect to make the biggest impact?

Toni Thomas from AB Miller HS has only played basketball for three years. She averaged 20 a game both her junior and senior year. She was conference player of the year. We are really excited about her.

I think Thomas will make the biggest impact only because she plays the 4 or 5 position and we don’t a lot of strength in that position. We have go to get some bigger, impact post players.

Jessica Kallar played on Leon Wood’s team, OC Swish. A very good shooter and passer.

Weathersby is 5’2’ and she can jump out of the gym. She’s going to be our point guard of the future. I think she’ll play some, I wouldn’t be surprised if she played quite a bit.

All these kids are excited about coming here.

Talk about Charlee Underwood

One of the former assistants gave me her name. She played at a small private school. She speaks fluent French. She’s improved so much. Big player from the outside, great rebounder. She’s matured a lot in two years. She needs to step up and be a leader.

The one quote I remember from your press conference was, We’re going to be Fit, Focused and Famous. How far along are you in achieving those three things?

This year we better be more fit than we were last year. Amber has lot a lot of weight and she better have lot a lot more. I think as players they don’t know what they can do. I think we’re more fit than we’ve ever been. I’m a real stickler on that. I just don’t want overweight players.

I think we’re much more focused. We’re not famous yet.


Do you notice a change in the kids from the first time you coached?

Yeah I do but I don’t see it as a negative. I see a lot of negative things. I think they see things more as an entitlement than a privilege and we try to change that. I think they are much more willing to question what you do. They are a product of their upbringing. They are not held accountable.

I think I’m better with them than I was before. I think I’m just as hard, maybe hard. But I’m more willing to talk to them. I’m more willing to sit down and say, ‘I want to know what you think.’ I’m going to tell you what I think. Then we’re not going to talk about it after that. But I’m going to hold them accountable after that. We have a rule, if they don’t go to class they don’t practice. They will sit out as many practices as the amount of classes missed. But I don’t check up on them. But everybody on this campus knows me. I tell them, ‘I feel bad for you. You can’t make a mistake on this campus that I won’t know about. You can’t miss class without me knowing about’ The first year I was here we had 17 practices missed by kids because they didn’t go to class. This year 2 practices were missed by our kids.


Your expectations for the 2005-06 season?

I want to finish in the upper half of the conference because I want to be seeded so I can get to the final game in the conference tournament. I think that’s doable. I think it’s going to be hard. I think our players have to believe we can do it. But we have to do it. I would like to be well over .500 going into the conference.