Teaching has Legerski recharged

Richard Anderson photo
Wyoming women's basketball coach Joe Legerski talks to his team at the end of a recent practice.

By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org

Joe Legerski isn’t the longest tenured head women’s basketball coach in the Mountain West Conference, but he has been around the block enough.

Legerski knows that it will take a great deal more teaching this season for his young Cowgirl squad than he probably has had to do in the last couple of years.

That has him recharged for this season.

“In the past, with the experience that we had, we were just fine tuning everything,” Legerski said. “This group has a great desire to learn. It is nothing that we have not taught in the past, but when you have eight freshmen and sophomores, reps are important, and that’s what we have been able to do. I’ve been very excited with the early indications in practice. Everyone competes at a very high level. The basketball skill level is very good.”

All Legerski has done in the past two years at Wyoming is win a Women’s National Invitation Tournament championship and qualify for the NCAA tournament for the first time in school history.

A good majority of those teams -- at least the heart of those squads -- are now gone due to graduation. A combination of previous role players and talented newcomers are now on the slate for Cowgirl basketball.

It’s a new ballgame for Legerski and his coaching staff, not only physically, but mentally.

“You really enjoy having the experience out on the floor, it makes the coaches’ life easier,” he said. “The players understand how to go through the system. Right now, we’re in a situation that the excitement is coming to practice every day and just seeing players catch on to what you are talking about. I have to have patience, though, because there are days when the frustration sets in because, how many more times do you go through the reps? I also understand that there are more positive days than not.”

The two biggest fundamentals that Legerski and his staff have to teach the younger players are the motion offense and just playing defense at the Division I level.

“The motion offense is very difficult. So much of it is based upon reads; nothing that a coach controls, but players control. That’s very difficult,” he said. “The next thing is trying to get players defensively to step up. All of our high school kids, none of them have played defense like they are asked to play now. None of them have been asked to practice at the level, the tempo and the pace of what we go through. That is understandable, that happens every year. When you have the number of young kids that we do, it is a challenge some days.”

It’s not like Legerski has never experienced this type of transition. The six-year Wyoming head coach came from Utah as an assistant, with the Utes annually MWC contenders or NCAA tournament qualifiers. He then took over a struggling Wyoming program and needed some time to build it up, not only the confidence level, but the talent level.

When last year’s senior group of Hanna Zavecz, Jodi Bolerjack and Dominique Sisk were freshmen, they took their lumps. When they were sophomores, they still struggled at times but showed signs of improvement.

Legerski said this year’s group reminds him of his team three years ago when Zavecz, Bolerjack and Sisk were sophomores and Erin Hicks was a junior college transfer.

“We spent so much time teaching and trying to get players to understand the system. That’s where we’re back to again,” Legerski said. “That’s where it even comes down to, to our fans … the patience that we ask for. We’re going to put a product on the floor that they are going to be proud of. It’s just won’t look like the experienced group that it was in the past. Some nights we’re going to look really good and some nights we have to go back to practice.”

Legerski likes the way not only his freshmen and sophomores have responded, but the response of his few experienced players -- seniors Elisabeth Dissen, Rebecca Vanderjagt and Megan McGuffey.

“We go through 2½- to three-hour practices,” Legerski said. “They give me everything they have. They are willing to learn, they want to excel, they want to do well. This whole group understands that what we have built in Wyoming, with the amount of success, we want to continue that success.”

A strong believer in rest as the year goes along, those long practices will lessen as they go, especially if the youngsters pick up what they are being taught.

The development of this Cowgirl team is what has Legerski excited the most. The end result is what they will strive for; getting there will be the fun part as well.

“I’m looking forward to stepping on the floor, but I am more looking to step back into practice and see what we can learn,” said Legerski.