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Baldwin plans to hit the ground running
From a story that appeared in the Spring 2002 edition of
Pirates' Chest
By
Ron Ferrell
�2002 Pirates' Chest
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Sharon Baldwin maps out plans
for her first season as East
Carolina's women's basketball
coach. (Photo: ECU SID) |
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Sharon Baldwin is quick to tell anyone who asks that she is not a patient
person.
There isn't a lot for East Carolina's new women's basketball
coach to get started with now as she shuffles through the piles of paper on
her desk, looks at walls in her office that have only hooks where photos and
memorabilia belong and steps over still full boxes that she hasn't had time
to unpack yet.
Baldwin doesn't have a secretary, and it was just this week
that
she added the first two assistant coaches to her staff.
There is still a lot of confusion and organizational work to be done, but
the 34-year-old Georgia native is ready to take on the job of building the
Pirate women's program into a contender in Conference USA.
It's no small task, by any measure.
The lows overshadowed the highs during ECU's tumultuous 6-21
run last season, the school's first as a member of C-USA, but Baldwin is
ready to attack the job. As a player and assistant coach at the University
of Georgia, and as head coach at Life and Mercer universities, Baldwin was
accustomed to winning and she has no plans to do anything else at East
Carolina.
"We want to turn this thing around as quick as we can do
it," Baldwin said recently. "I don't think there is going to be a quick fix.
Heavy recruiting starts July 8 and we have got to sit down and really focus
on the kind of players that we really need to come in here. We have a couple
of scholarships that will be open for next year and we have got to be able
to access our needs. I don't know what those needs are at this point."
Baldwin said she hasn't had time to review a lot of game
tape from last year, but she is looking forward to getting started with a
group of Pirates that lost no one to graduation yet has only one senior,
Tali Robich, returning.
"We have a long way to go and we are at the bottom at this
point in time with RPI and everything else," she said. "Our goal is to be
competitive this year. I don't want to wait around and be competitive in
four or five years. I want to win and be competitive this year. After that,
we can move up and the sky is the limit.
"Conference USA is a great conference and there are a lot of
good teams and it will be hard to move up, but we are on the bottom and
there is only one way to go."
Baldwin said her teams have always played a running style
with lots of pressure on the defensive end, and she hopes to play the same
way at East Carolina.
That is similar to the style that former coach Dee Stokes
tried to implement so it shouldn't be a drastice change for the Pirates.
With last year's seven freshmen now a year older and wiser, however, Baldwin
said she banks on that experience and the more demanding conditioning
regimen she will insist upon when the squad returns to school in the fall.
"I like to press and really run up and down the floor. I
like to be aggressive offensively and defensively," Baldwin said. "The kind
of players you have sometimes dictates how much of that style you can run.
When we were at Life, we were able to press � a lot of full court and half
court � and we ran a lot.
"At Mercer, the players kind of dictated more of a half
court style and we played a lot of matchup man and zone, but we still ran
the ball consistently. It really depends on your personnel and what you can
do, but that is what I like to play.
"One thing we have to do is get in better shape. Everybody
wants to run up and down the floor, but people don't want to get into the
kind of shape it takes to do that. You have to be able to do that. The last
thing you want to do is wear your team down by halftime running up and down
the floor. With the number of freshmen they had last year, they were not in
the kind of condition they needed to be in. I am hoping that this year they
will come back in a little bit better shape where we can work with them."
With a still very young team that didn't experience a lot of
success last year, Baldwin believes it will be important from the very first
practice to try and instill a belief that the Pirates can win. Baldwin, for
one, has seen the way winning teams are built and she has brought that
quality out on the floor.
Baldwin served seven years as an assistant under highly
successful Georgia coach Andy Landers. She gained a reputation nationally of
being a top notch recruiter, attracting a class to Athens that was ranked
No. 1 nationally in 1993.
Georgia won two Southeastern Conference titles and advanced
to two Final Fours during her time there. For her work, Baldwin earned a
Naismith National Assistant Coach of the Year Award in 1996.
Baldwin then started a program at Life University in
Marietta, Ga., where she went 53-14 in the school's first two years of NAIA
competition. Her final squad there finished with a 31-3 record and No. 1
national ranking in two final polls.
At Mercer, Baldwin took over a team that went 6-23 year
before last and turned that into a 16-13 effort last year. She led that team
to the semi-finals of the Atlantic Sun Conference tournament and earned
conference Coach of the Year honors for her efforts.
Baldwin said her recruiting efforts will focus primarily on
high school juniors when serious recruiting begins in July and she will be
looking to bring some top flight athletes to Greenville.
"We are going to go nose to nose with some of the top
programs in the country and see how well we can do," she said. "I think that
if we are going to recruit North Carolina, we have got to go against Duke,
North Carolina and N.C. State. We will go where we have to to get the
players we need.
"This is a very attractive campus. All of the students and
all of the players love East Carolina. It is a college town, which to me is
an ideal place for parents to want their kids to go. Everything in the town
pretty much revolves around East Carolina, so I think that is a good selling
point.
"The biggest job this year, though, will be to turn around a
team that ranked near the bottom of most statistical categories in
Conference USA a year ago. I'd like to be competitive this year. I'd like to
be in the top half this year. That would be a tremendous jump and whether...
that is realistic or not, I don't know, but that is where I would like to
be.
"If it takes a year or two, we will just have to work it
out, but I really would like to be competitive this year. I think they
played in some close games with good teams and if we can continue to do that
and get better, then maybe we can compete with the top half of the
conference.
"I don't like to lose, but I do think that you have to teach
and learn a lot of basic things and that takes time," Baldwin said. "As a
team, you have got to believe that you can win. You have got to be able to
play Xs and Os and you have got to be able to put the ball in the basket and
that sort of thing. There is no doubt about that, but you have to believe
that you can compete. We have to start working on that confidence as soon as
we start practice."
The potential of East Carolina is one of the reasons Baldwin
decided this was the job for her. With the support and facilities now in
place, she believes ECU can challenge the C-USA and national elite sooner
rather than later.
"With the parity in women's basketball these days there are
a lot of teams that are good. It is not like the top 10 are that far from
the next 10. I think that is something that both helps and hurts in
recruiting," she said. "A lot of the Conference USA teams have really come
on in the last couple of years and we hope to do that. There is more of a
balance and you see more upsets every year as opposed to in the past when
the dominant team always won. The good players are being spread around a
little bit more.
"The potential is one of the reasons I came here. Mike
Hamrick has done a wonder job with all of the athletic programs at East
Carolina. All of the programs are doing well and are on the way up. We have
first class facilities here and I think we should be able to recruit against
anybody and be able to get some players in here that will really help us."
The Pirates will get to see how they measure up right off
the bat in November as they open the season with a trip to Duke to face a
Final Four participant from last year that lost only one player to
graduation.
Baldwin will be ready, though, and she will have high
expectations both for herself and the Pirates.
Send an e-mail message to Pirates' Chest editor Ron Ferrell.
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