Brooks: Lappe Can Relate To Her Team's NCAA Ascent

BOULDER - It's been a long time between NCAA Tournament appearances for the Colorado women's basketball team, and third-year coach Linda Lappe wants her players to understand and embrace the significance of seeing their school in the March Madness alignment.

Lappe can relate. She isn't fond of spinning stories of how it was "back in the day," but during her early career as a CU player the Buffs were working their way out of an NCAA dry spell much as her current roster has encountered.

The Buffs didn't make the NCAA Tournament from 1998-2000, with Lappe arriving in Boulder in the first year of that absence. But the rich NCAA history of the women's program wasn't lost on her.

"I remember it being something that as a player, walking into our locker room and seeing every picture of the teams that had been to the NCAA Tournament," she told me in her office earlier this week. "And I remember thinking, 'We have to get better.' It was a Colorado tradition to be in the NCAA Tournament. We all came to Colorado to be able to carry on that tradition and win. I came to Colorado because I thought we had a chance to win a national championship."

Her last three CU teams made strong runs in that direction, appearing in three consecutive NCAA Tournaments (2001-03). The 2002 Buffs reached the Elite Eight, the '03 Buffs the Sweet 16. In 2004, CU made its last NCAA appearance before reaching the tournament this season. The Buffs open against Kansas on Saturday at 4:40 p.m. at the Coors Events Center.

So after re-entering the NCAA field in her third season - both as a player and a coach - Lappe knows something about returning to the good times after slogging through the bad.

"To be able to break through and get to the NCAA Tournament, we felt was a huge accomplishment," she said of her playing career. "It wasn't like we came here and it was something that just happened; we had to work much like Brittany and Ashley (Wilson) and Rachel (Hargis) and Chucky (Jeffery) and Meagan (Malcolm-Peck) had to work at it this season.

"It was a fun experience and finally we got to the NCAA Tournament - this thing that we'd been hearing so much about. Memories of it were very fond; it's being a part of March Madness, a part of the best tournament in the country and knowing you're one of the best 64 teams . . . and it's about playing new teams - teams from different conferences, different players."

That's what the Buffs will encounter Friday against the Jayhawks, a once-familiar foe from CU's Big Eight/Big 12 era. This KU team features three seniors - guards Angel Goodrich and Monica Engelman, forward Carolyn Davis - who were on the roster when Lappe's first Buffs team played the Jayhawks in CU's final Big 12 season.

Not coincidentally, that trio tops KU in nearly every statistical category, with Davis the leading scorer (14.7 ppg) and rebounder (6.7 rpg), and Goodrich next in scoring (14.2 ppg) and the team's runaway leader in assists (216 total). Davis, said Lappe, is a study in fortitude, only one season removed from a torn ACL. But Goodrich, she added, is KU's key.

That brief scouting report aside, Lappe is more attuned to how her players respond to their realization of a season-long goal to reach the NCAAs and play on their home court. She feels confident that her team's mindset needs very little (if any) adjusting.

"We control how we enter the game and our mindset entering the game," she said. "I think it's important that our players understand that. We want to make sure we enter this game like every other game . . . we want to make sure we stay consistent in that way, mentally and physically. We want to be playing our best ball entering the NCAA Tournament.

"There's a lot of things we can't control - who we play and where . . . but we can control our mindset. Our objective as a staff is to have us do what we've been doing all year long. There doesn't need to be any additional pressure. Now it's about having fun, playing hard, having effort and playing together - things we've been talking about all year. At the end of the year you should be playing your best basketball - and I really think we are. Now that we're there, it's about going out and playing. It's about who can do what they do better."

An extended stay in the NCAA Tournament requires playing confident and loose, and senior guard Chucky Jeffery believes CU can do both - once they settle in. They haven't played since their final Pac-12 Conference Tournament game (March 9) and Jeffery concedes the layoff as well as the normal tournament "jitters" must be overcome.

"After the first two to four minutes when we get the ball in our hands we'll calm down and get back to our common factor and start executing," she said. "It's just the initial thought of being in the tournament and that first game."

Added sophomore forward Jen Reese: "I think everyone's ready to play . . . it's been such a long time since we played against someone else. I know I'm ready to play again. No one on our team has had this experience; we can all understand how we're all feeling."

Lappe sees that commonality as a team strength. She believes the Buffs "understand that it does take something special to get to the NCAA Tournament. We've done a lot of things this year we haven't been able to do the last couple of years . . . this has been our mission and we've been able to accomplish it.

"I think that's what has made this team so special. You could see that in different players and in groups of players that stepped up. We had a lot of different players step up. And I think players understanding that we're going to do it as a team was big. There are a lot of little things that you don't talk about - you just 'get' it. You can't always put your finger on it. This team just 'gets' a lot of things and that's why we're in the position we're in."

Lappe said if this team exceeded any of her expectations, it would be the improvement that came quickly in non-conference play. She thought it might "take a little longer to get going," but getting up to speed faster than expected brought perhaps two more non-conference wins than she figured.

"In general, I knew we had a lot of the components it takes to make a good team," she said, adding that having "juniors and seniors who understand defensive system is really big."

In her review of last season, she said the Buffs "were this close" to a breakthrough, holding her right thumb and forefinger a quarter of inch apart. "But that's really far away. It's hard to get this much more. This much more is a mindset. It wasn't a score, not that maybe we lost four games by five points total. It was a mindset of why we lost those games. What's changed this year is our mindset in expecting to be a top team, expecting to win, to be uncommon and do the things that it takes to reach that next level."

Lappe and the Buffs reached it when she was a player and again as a coach. When I asked her if she had shared her NCAA memories with her team, she laughed and said, "Not too much; I try not to bring up the old days. When you've been through it, you don't have to bring it up to be able to convey that it's not an easy thing to get to and you've got to work at it. Those are the things that we've tried to convey to them."

The 2012-13 Buffs appear to have gotten the message. Lappe senses an "excitement" among her players, and Jeffery, as she inches toward the conclusion of a brilliant CU career, says her coach is picking up the right vibes.

"We're all very, very excited about this," Jeffery said. "I'm not sure it's hit me yet. When it's over it's going to soak in and I'll say, 'Wow, that's one of the best times I've had in my life.' But right now, I'm trying to live in the moment; I'm just going to ride this excitement."

If getting there is half the fun, staying as long as you can makes it that much better. That's what Lappe and the Buffs intend to do.

Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU