The McGuff Press Conference

By Athletic Communications on April 6, 2011 11:12 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Kevin McGuff had a whirlwind couple of days on his first trip to Seattle as the new women's basketball coach at the University of Washington. He breezed into the Emerald City on Monday night, had meetings on campus all day Tuesday and then flew back home to Cincinnati on Wednesday.

McGuff plans to spend a couple of days in the Queen City before returning to Seattle and getting a head start on his new duties as head coach.

His press conference on Tuesday piqued the curiosity of the Seattle media, which showed up en masse when the new coach introduced himself.

Seattle Times columnist Steve Kelley made a few calls and talked with people connected with the Xavier program. Each came away with nothing but positives about McGuff, leaving Kelley to believe McGuff is the ideal fit for UW.

McGuff is so clearly the right person to lead the foundering Washington women's program that it almost doesn't need to be said.

He won't light up a news conference with a lot of glib one-liners. He won't pirouette and plié on the sideline like John Calipari, but he is as solid as a Dwight Howard screen. And his teams play an entertaining, up-tempo, defense-first system that will be reminiscent, but not a replica, of Lorenzo Romar's men's program.

In his nine-years at Xavier, McGuff built a top-10 program. The Musketeers played in the postseason every year and made six trips to the NCAA tournament. The past two seasons, his teams have been undefeated in the Atlantic-10 Conference.

An Associated Press report linked on ESPN discussed why Scott Woodward made the flight to Cincinnati to meet McGuff and came away impressed.

In the UW Daily, sports editor Josh Liebeskind points out the "overjoyed" reaction from Marjorie Heard, who is eager to play in an up-tempo physical system.

"That's the basketball I grew up with -- running the floor and hitting bodies," Heard said.