When Katie Burrows took over as head coach of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women's basketball program in May 2018, she knew there would be challenges. She had spent the previous eight seasons on staff at her alma mater, first with Wes Moore as head coach and then with Jim Foster, but moving from an assistant's chair to the lead spot led to a lot of learning.
It hasn't been easy. Burrows is 39-44 since taking over, but she has averaged nine wins against Southern Conference competition, and her third team - led by a trio of All-SoCon selections in forwards Abbey Cornelius, Bria Dial and Eboni Williams - went 14-9 overall and 9-5 in league play during the regular season despite the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. The Mocs are seeded third for the SoCon tournament that begins Thursday in Asheville, North Carolina, and they will face sixth-seeded Furman (10-13, 6-8) at 7:15 p.m. in the opening round. The tournament semifinals are set for Friday, and the title game is Sunday.
Burrows sat down this week for an interview with the Times Free Press:
Q: What did you not know that you've learned since taking over as head coach?
A: It becomes more evident how much more the psyche of your players is the most important thing. As an assistant you can kind of gather that, but you don't have to answer as many questions as the head coach does about, 'Why this? Why that?' or how to keep them engaged. You have to see the overall picture with that while as an assistant, (but) you've got your little bubble of kids that you really focus on their development. Now it's the overall group, and they're looking to you to have the answers to all that, and while I still don't have all the answers, I know I've gotten better with it. I don't think you ever perfect it, but I think that each year you become a little bit closer to figuring out how to mentally keep them in check.
Q: Where do you feel you're better?
A: The communication is much better. I would say my mentality was very much old school like a Pat Summitt, where it's like 'You will do it my way.' I'm not saying that I've been the law, because there's some things that I don't bend at all, but what I have learned is that everyone communicates differently. I might be able to scream and yell at you to get my point across, and you'll be like, 'I'm going to get it done.' But there's this one over here that if I scream and yell at her, she completely shuts down, so I have to figure out how do I most effectively communicate with her to get optimal performance from her. It might not be that it's coddling, but it might be that I have to go right next to her and get her and say, 'Hey, did you think about this?' or 'What were your thoughts there?' That's the kind of thing I've had to develop, and while I'm not always there, I very much have had to kind of pull back from the 'my way or the highway' kind of attitude that I grew up with and could handle myself, because not everyone is like me. That's what I've gotten better at, but I've still got a long way to go."
Staff file photo by Robin Rudd / UTC women's basketball coach Katie Burrows is in her third season in charge of the program at her alma mater, and the Mocs earned the No. 3 seed for the Southern Conference tournament.Q: Your team is both a 3 seed and quite possibly the biggest mystery going into the tournament. Is that something you embrace?
A: You're probably right, we probably are the most unpredictable. I'd say that other teams may be looking at us and know that if we're on, they're in trouble. I believe that about my kids: If they're on and they're doing things the right way, other teams are in trouble because we have the capability of beating each and every one of those teams, we've proven we can beat them all. But at the same time, we've proven that most of them can beat us if we're not doing the right things, so I think that's kind of an advantage for us because maybe it kind of plays mind games with our opponents, and I hope it gets in their head a little bit in that they overthink it."
Q: What's been the greatest challenge this year?
A: I think it's just always the unknown, not knowing if we're going to be able to play. I don't know that we ever got comfortable, but we weren't ever really comfortable with our own skin because you were just on edge all the time wondering, 'Is this the day that we're going to be knocked out? Is this the day?' That how we (coaches) felt, but the girls may have gotten a certain comfort level, but then last Thursday it's 15 minutes before the game starts and we've got somebody in the locker room throwing up in the locker room, and you're like, 'Oh crap, now what?' but you do the right thing, and you've got to test and you get to communicate and then you end up with only two officials - (and) they did a great job - but I feel like it's just that unsettling feeling all year long of are we going to be able to do it or not, being able to just let go and play?
Q: What else would you want TFP readers to know?
A: I just hope that people understand perspective. These kids, specifically, there's been very few teams that have gotten through this entire season without any hiccups, but once we got started, we had no hiccups. That's a main responsibility they (the players) took on to really try to keep themselves isolated to the point of not exposing themselves. That's important, but also understanding that what these kids have all gotten through this year has been amazing. It's been bigger than basketball, but I think that basketball has been such a great outlet for them. At least they get to be with this group of people. Can you imagine being a freshman going into college, your first year ever in this environment and not have that camaraderie, not having that connection? I think that when people say, 'It's just basketball,' yeah, to an extent, like we've got to make sure that we keep it in perspective, right? But it's not to them; it might have saved so many of these kids this year, and so I think people need to really appreciate the fact that the NCAA, that our conferences have been able to do what they've done to get the kids back out on the playing surface, and so I'm just thankful for that. And it's a testament to these kids and their commitment to it as well, because they could have just said, 'I quit,' but they didn't.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.