Great coaches, great teachers, and great practitioners of any craft have a unique way of understanding success and how to attain it. What they communicate manages to convey not just the right lesson, but an element of motivation and challenge. Great coaches aren’t just people who give instructions. They make players want to improve. They make athletes want to push themselves. In our latest segment of our interview series with Lindsay Gottlieb of USC women’s basketball, the coach offers a simple but profound difference between potential and reality. You’ll see it when you read this Q-and-A segment below:
Trojans Wire: What things do the Ladies of Troy need to improve on this offseason as a team?
Gottlieb: Well first of all, there will be a target on our back, we aren’t sneaking up on anyone anymore. We have to embrace the expectations, but make sure that our daily work ethic matches our goals. We have a lot of talent, but we have to mesh together and become a winning team, not just a collection of talent. There’s so much to get better at: we want to play faster, score more, score more efficiently, defend better. We can’t wait to get to work.
Trojans Wire: What will be the major key in transition to the Big Ten Conference?
Gottlieb: We have so much respect for the teams in the Big Ten, it’s a really, really good conference. We also are excited to be showcased on the biggest stages, both on national TV platforms and games across the country. One big key is to show up as the best version of USC, not trying to mimic anyone else’s style.
We will study the teams this offseason, as there are a lot of teams we need to familiarize ourselves with; so the coaches will have a lot of prep work to do. For our players, we want to make the travel as seamless as possible, get them prepared, so they just need to own our goals and our style of play and bring that each and every night to this new conference. If we do that, I think it will be a really challenging but fun transition.
Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, and Ducks Wire. Follow our newest sites, UW Huskies Wire and UCLA Wire.
Check out more NFL draft coverage with the USA TODAY Sports NFL Draft Hub.