 "Photo: Will Schneekloth/ Associate Photography Editor")
Plopping herself down in front of the room of reporters at the Louis Brown Athletic Center for yesterday's Rutgers women's basketball media day, C. Vivian Stringer gave a loud sigh.
After 34 years of coaching, Stringer is past the days of sweet-talking the media and giving the expected response, and yesterday she made clear her concerns and confusions for the upcoming season.
"You probably want to know a lot of things, but right now I really don't know as much as I would like or wish that I could know at this particular point," Stringer said matter-of-factly in her opening statement.
"It's mainly because we've had so many injuries and they've been to players that have been on the floor a great number of minutes, and the players we've lost [to graduation] were major, major losses."
It's not as if she didn't know what kinds of questions were coming her way.
How do you replace Cappie Pondexter?
What should we make of Epiphanny Prince, the freshman who scored 113 points in high school?
What do you do about all these injuries?
But in reality, Stringer - inducted Monday into the Women's Sports Foundation Hall of Fame - probably had more questions than the reporters and didn't try to hide it.
The injuries, for one, are all over the place.
Wade Trophy Watch List candidate Matee Ajavon had surgery to repair a lingering stress fracture in her leg and is now on crutches. Sophomore center Kia Vaughn is battling through a rotator cuff injury she suffered defending Oklahoma star Courtney Paris during USA Basketball practice this summer. Rookie DeeDee Jernigan, who Stringer believes may have torn her rotator cuff, hasn't seen action on the floor besides walk-throughs and will undergo tests Monday. And Essence Carson is recovering from a shoulder injury and a bout of bronchitis.
"That's four players who potentially could have started," Stringer said. "There, I gave the prognosis, you can draw your own conclusions."
Stringer said that for her team, consisting of no seniors and five freshmen, the leadership role this season will be a group effort.
"Anyone who's not a freshman will be a leader," Stringer said. "Leadership by committee."
Ajavon - expected back as soon as December but probably later, as well as Vaughn and Carson when they are 100-percent - will be a key trio.
For the three of them and all the returning players, now is the team to gauge how well they've been prepared by players like Pondexter and Campbell who, together, accounted for 46-percent of RU's total offense last season.
"It's like when you go to college for four years and then you have to go out and get that job and see what you know," Carson said. "This is what the team needs right now, and I'm willing myself as a junior, and we as a class, to step up and say each day that we are the leaders."
The coach also pointed to players like Katie Adams and Heather Zurich who, despite their limited action in the past are among the most experienced, to head the leadership train and take on some of the new scoring responsibility.
"I hope that I'll be a leader first of all," Adams said. "I want to be consistently the hardest worker on the floor so I can lead by example and hopefully that will be my role. I'm going to step up.
"Losing Cappie is a big thing - she was a great leader, she pushed me to be a better player and a better person, she showed me what it's like to really work hard. I'm going to step up this year and hopefully fill some of her role. Everybody is going to do that."
Finishing last season 16-0 in the Big East en route to their second straight conference regular-season title, the Scarlet Knights ended 27-5 overall and fell to Tennessee in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.
Pondexter left the Banks for the WNBA after garnering All-America and Big East Player of the Year honors as a fifth-year senior.
Heading into this season, Stringer knows it will take time to get a feel for what lies ahead. Right now, she's asking the same questions everybody else is.
"The biggest thing now is to find out what things we can do, and do them well," Stringer said. "We need to establish a little bit of confidence and go with it, find people's strengths and just build. We have to have a tremendous amount of patience with the players."
Rutgers will have a tough early test when it faces 2005-06 Final Four participant Duke at the RAC on Dec. 4 to start the season after early tournaments, and Big East play begins Dec. 7 against DePaul on the road.
"I won't know until the lights come on," Stringer said. "Some people will play for the lights and are driven by that, and some people will shy away from the lights. I really don't know what's going on just yet."
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