Q&A with NU women's basketball coach Amy Williams

The start was frantic, with Williams quickly working to stabilize the current roster and hit the road to meet with the players who had signed with Nebraska. The pace will pick up again now during an important month for recruiting.

When Williams was hired, the season had concluded, but now the coaches have been able to spend a few hours each week with the team.

Williams already had a familiarity with Nebraska, having been a player here in the 1990s. And she was a college head coach at the NCAA Division I level at South Dakota, so there haven’t been many major surprises.

“A lot has changed since I played here, and they’ve completely raised the bar,” Williams said. “It’s always been a special place to be a Husker and be a student-athlete, but I guess maybe I’m surprised that you could take something that I thought was the pinnacle of good and find ways to completely raise the bar from that.”

The program has experienced some more setbacks since Williams was hired and is down to 12 players. Natalie Romeo, the Huskers’ second-best returning player after Jessica Shepard, transferred to Washington. Two of the best players from the Huskers’ 2016 recruiting class, point guard Kathleen Doyle and guard Mi’Cole Cayton, ended up elsewhere.

Williams recently met with the Journal Star for an update on her first months on the job.

Q: How would you describe your first months on the job?

AW: It’s just this incredible mixture of busy and crazy and excitement and pinching myself about this, really, because it’s a dream come true. There are some highs, and then there are some lows. I’ve enjoyed getting to know the young women that are currently in the program, and our incoming freshmen.

Q: What are those highs and lows?

AW: There are the highs of when you have great accomplishments, like when one of your players made a great grade on their first test in summer school and you’re high-fiving and you’re excited about those things. And victories in recruiting. And then also the disappointments with players deciding to pursue other avenues. It’s those same typical high and lows that you feel all the time in our profession.

Q: Are you excited about anything you’ve seen from the players in the limited time you’ve had on the court?

AW: I’m excited about being able to see the seniors stepping up and having a little sense of urgency, knowing that this is their last go-around. And our upperclassmen have been extremely vocal and have a lot of intensity and communication and have energy, which is a great example for our incoming freshmen.

Q: Will you still try to add players to the roster for the upcoming season?

AW: It’s possible. I think there is some things we’re looking at right now that we’ll see if they pan out that could bring some depth, at least in practice for now. We’re exploring all options.

Q: Rachel Theriot graduated, Romeo transferred and you also lost the point guard recruit in the class (Doyle). Who can play point guard this season?

AW: Yeah, we’re going to have point guard by committee, right? Fortunately, some of our system and schemes, we like to have our guards be interchangeable. We have several kids on this team where it may not be their true position, but they have some experience of being able to play in that position, and for us just certain characteristics that we can find ways to piece that together.

Q: When during the process did you find out that Romeo was considering leaving?

AW: Really the day of my (introduction) press conference. It was very early on. I had a great opportunity to sit down with her the day of my press conference, just her and I one-on-one, but she had indicated to me at that time that it was her intention to not return to Nebraska, and that she was looking for another place to go. She felt like there was too much to overcome here.

Q: Did it feel like a loss?

AW: It feels like a loss, absolutely. Anytime that you lose players, we take that very seriously. Yeah, that’s a loss. A player of her caliber, it’s a definite loss.

Q: Were there things working against you to not be able to keep two of the five players from the signing class?

AW: I think so. There is absolutely things working against us. Those players, when we sat down and talked to them in the process, had been reading the papers and reading all the blogs. And the team members and coaches that they had signed to be a part of was kind of blown up, and in turmoil, and that’s a difficult thing to overcome.

Q: Did you know when you took the job that you’d bring all three of your assistant coaches from South Dakota?

AW: Yes. It’s the reason why we’ve had so much success. It’s just a team that works really well. It’s an incredible model for our team of how teamwork really works and how there are no egos. There is just people who work well together and understand our system and know how to recruit to it. And it’s an incredible group of people that I enjoy being around on a daily basis, and I think that’s really, really important in our profession.

Q: Please tell me about your coaching staff.

AW: Tandem Mays played when I was an assistant coach at the University of Tulsa, and then came to work with me at Rogers State when I first became a head coach. We’ve been together for nine or 10 years. She pretty much knows everything I want before I even want it. She’s the jack-of-all trades, and has a fun personality. She’s kind of a jokester, prankster and has the girls all laughing all the time, but she never lets anything slip through the cracks.

Chuck Love was with me the whole time at South Dakota. He’s high-energy and high-passion. He’s beating the streets and is a tremendous recruiter and is turning over all stones. He just is so critical to our staff.

And then Coach (Tom) Goehle is the calming presence on staff. He’s my senior, just by a few years. He’s just kind of experienced and calm. When I get a little heated on the sideline about a bad call or something, he’s kind of like, "Ah, coach, that was a good call." I’m like, "Really?" He knows exactly how to calm me down. And then after the game he’ll say, "That was a terrible call, I just didn’t want you to get kicked out.”

Q: Has your family been able to join you in Lincoln yet?

AW: They’re kind of part-time here, and part-time not. We’ve bought a house in Lincoln and are just kind of trying to finish up some last things, painting and trying to get that stuff done before we move our stuff into the home and my 11-year old and 6-year-old are trying to put their hands all over the paint. Hopefully, sometime in mid-July we’ll have that process completed.

Q: Did I hear a story about how you and your husband, Lloyd, coached your daughter’s softball team together for two years while you were the head coach at South Dakota?

AW: We did, together, but I’ll tell you what ended up happening was he coached the team and I turned into the director of softball operations, somehow. It was like, "Oh, my daughter’s uniform is too small," that all got shoved off onto me, but when it came to practice, that was kind of his responsibility. It was kind of a fun thing that we were able to do in Vermillion, South Dakota. It was one of the times of the year where after our season was over, kind of that small window of time where we could make something like that happen. It was a fun deal.