Connect with us

Culture

Wim Fissette and Iga Swiatek’s partnership: What to expect and how he coaches players

Published

on

Wim Fissette and Iga Swiatek’s partnership: What to expect and how he coaches players

What happens when you pair the best player on the WTA Tour with one of its most decorated coaches?

That was the question in October, when then world No. 1 Iga Swiatek brought on Wim Fissette as her head coach. Fissette, a cerebral 44-year-old from Belgium, is widely considered one of the top coaches on the women’s tour after achieving so much success with such a range of players.

Fissette, who never cracked the top 1,000 as a player in the 1990s and early 2000s, has excelled as a coach ever since his first job with compatriot Kim Clijsters. At 29, he coached Clijsters when she won the 2009 U.S. Open having only just returned from maternity leave, and was in her corner for three major titles in total.

He has since coached an all-star list of players, taking in Sabine Lisicki, Simona Halep, Victoria Azarenka (twice), Petra Kvitova, Sara Errani, Johanna Konta, Angelique Kerber, Zheng Qinwen and most recently Naomi Osaka. Fissette and Osaka split in September when she replaced him with the other most celebrated coach on the WTA Tour, Patrick Mouratoglou.

Under Fissette’s guidance, Osaka won the 2020 U.S. Open and 2021 Australian Open, taking his Grand Slam total as a coach to six after Kerber’s Wimbledon win of 2018. He also took both Lisicki (2013 Wimbledon) and Halep (2014 French Open) to their first Grand Slam finals. In 2017, he helped Konta win the WTA 1000 Miami Open and reach the Wimbledon semifinals for the first time, achieving a career-high ranking of No. 4.

Advertisement

His first tournament with Swiatek sees him tasked with defending a title and helping to orchestrate a possible return to the top of the world rankings after she relinquished the No. 1 slot to Aryna Sabalenka having dropped points for missing mandatory tournaments. She opens her WTA Tour Finals campaign in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia against Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova, in a round-robin group also containing Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula, the latter of whom Swiatek thrashed to win last year’s event in Cancun, Mexico.

Despite his reputation and glittering CV, Fissette has remained largely anonymous, in one of few sports where it is possible for an elite coach to keep a low media profile. It’s players who conduct post-match interviews and press conferences, unlike football in which, while players will speak, it’s the manager’s opinion and feelings that are sought after every win, draw, or defeat.


Wim Fissette and Iga Swiatek’s first event together is the WTA Tour Finals. (Robert Prange / Getty Images)

Speaking to those who have worked with Fissette and seen him operate up close, as well as sources close to Swiatek, some of whom have spoken anonymously to protect relationships, The Athletic has taken a deeper look at how the Belgian operates to understand one of the most exciting coaching partnerships in recent memory as it moves from the practice courts to a stadium for the first time.

go-deeper

GO DEEPER

After two years of chaos, Garbine Muguruza seeks WTA Tour Finals normality in Riyadh


There is an alchemy in the coach-player relationship that makes it not always so easy to predict, even with someone as experienced and adaptable as Fissette. Players frequently talk about their partnership with a coach in romantic terms, making the point that sometimes you click with someone, sometimes you don’t.

Advertisement

And every player needs a different kind of coach. At the Laver Cup in September, the American world No. 15 Frances Tiafoe explained his partnership with new coach David Witt, who formerly worked with U.S. Open finalist Jessica Pegula and before that Maria Sakkari.

“I’m definitely a unique personality, especially in this sport, and someone needs to push me and hold me accountable but also make it fun for me,” Tiafoe said in a news conference.

“I’m a guy where, if you come at me with a drill-sergeant-type mentality, I’m going to go the other way.”

“So much is about the chemistry,” Daniela Hantuchova, the former world No 5 said in a recent phone interview.

“I always felt that you could never tell how it would feel with a coach until you’d worked with them for a few months and you understood their personality, and how they work.

Advertisement

“He (Fissette) is a very impressive coach but just because it works for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. It’s very personal.”

When Swiatek split with coach Tomasz Wiktorowski in early October, well-placed sources within women’s tennis tipped Fissette to replace him, given his availability and Swiatek’s apparent willingness to rip up the formula that won her four out of her five Grand Slams. Since winning a third consecutive French Open in June, Swiatek’s performances and results have been patchy, and she’s spoken a few times of mental and physical exhaustion.

After discussions and analysis with her team, Swiatek approached Fissette for talks which drew her to his keenness to learn and develop.

“Iga was keen on working with someone who is open-minded, a good leader but a team player at the same time,” a member of her team told The Athletic.

“They both are very eager to constantly work on themselves, so they have a similar mindset. That’s why Iga believes they can get along well. His great experience with Grand Slam champions and other players who were ranked No 1 in the world was an additional advantage.”

Advertisement

‘Emotional intelligence’ is a phrase that sticks to Fissette, who combines it with an appreciation for data and statistics that goes all the way back to his first job as a coach: helping Clijsters win the 2009 U.S. Open in only her third tournament back after giving birth to her daughter, Jada.


Wim Fissette (left) with Kim Clijsters after she won the Miami Open title in 2010. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

John Dolan was Clijsters’ manager at the time.

“Wim is an amazing coach. Very emotionally intelligent, and he can adapt his personality to the player he’s working with,” Dolan, a long-time WTA media liaison who is now the head of media for the British Lawn Tennis Association, said in an interview last month.

“He was a very good listener, and doesn’t talk a lot like some people. When he does say something it carries real importance and over the last 15 years his coaching credentials speak for themselves.

“If you’re a player how can you not listen to him?”

Advertisement

Knowing when to push and when to pull back is a key skill of any coach. Fissette is no hype man, so when he does really try to motivate his players, the effect is greater. With Clijsters, at her first tournament back in Cincinnati, she came to her coach with doubts about whether she was really good enough to compete. In an interview with Essentially Sports in 2018, Fissette said he told Clijsters that “there’s really nobody that is able to beat you when you’re going to be at your best.”

Ahead of her U.S. Open semifinal against Serena Williams, a player Clijsters had only beaten once in eight meetings prior, Fissette focused on not worrying and exploiting Williams’ weaknesses. Clijsters won 6-4, 7-5 in a match overshadowed by Williams being given a point penalty when down match point. Fissette had earlier that season bet Clijsters that if she won the tournament, he would shave his head. Both did their part in the deal.

“It sounds obvious but he knows how to work with tennis players,” Dolan said. “Some other coaches haven’t quite learned that reading the player is such a big part of it and a lot of coaches don’t have that. They focus too much on themselves.”


When Naomi Osaka began discussing who would coach her on her return to the tour after giving birth, reuniting with Fissette was the obvious choice. He did not say yes straight away.

He pushed Osaka on how her comeback would work and why it would be different to previous comebacks in 2021 and 2022 which ended prematurely. In the end, the second edition of Osaka-Fissette lasted just under a year.

Advertisement

An official at the WTA, who requested anonymity to protect relationships, outlined Fissette’s directness.

“He’s absolutely not a cheerleader,” they said.

“He’s very honest, and that is something some players aren’t used to all the time. He’ll say, ‘I have some ideas. If you’re open to that this is going to work — if you’re not going to be open to criticism, then it’s not.’”

“When you put in the effort, I make sure to praise it, while still being critical of errors,” Fissette writes on his website.

“I’m always looking for ways to make you better than the day before. Be positive, be better.”

Advertisement

Fissette undoubtedly has a ruthless streak. He joined up with Osaka in September 2023 having just taken Zheng to her first Grand Slam quarterfinal at the U.S. Open. Zheng said she was blindsided and heartbroken; Fissette told The Athletic in January that he was going to stop coaching Zheng regardless of Osaka. He had nothing but praise for Zheng — “a super nice girl” who always worked hard — but said that they did not click.


Wim Fissette (crouching) with Naomi Osaka in Los Angeles earlier this year. (Matt Futterman / The Athletic).

Similarly, in 2018, Fissette split with Kerber towards the end of what had been a very successful year and reunited with Azarenka shortly after. A terse statement from Kerber at the time read: “Wim Fissette is — with immediate effect — exempted from his duties as coach of Angelique Kerber. In spite of the successful cooperation since the beginning of the season, this step is necessary due to differences of opinion regarding the future of the alignment.”

A year earlier, Fissette and Konta split, with the former saying in an interview with the Times of London: “It was a good match but not a perfect match. We are kind of different and we see things a little different.”

The split was amicable with the now de rigueur posts on social media praising each other; Konta was unavailable for interview for this piece when asked by The Athletic.

Fissette’s willingness to curtail a partnership that doesn’t work — which players will share — stands in apparent contrast to the depth to which he will tailor his approach to a player’s needs. He is “very tour-friendly,” the WTA official said.

Advertisement

“He sees coaching as an art form. He understands how it works and really cares about what he does,” they added.

Fissette would get so nervous during Konta’s matches that he would have to go for a run afterwards to unwind.

In an interview with ESPN.com in 2018, Fissette detailed the spectrum on which his players would understand their own matches, with Azarenka’s desire for large amounts of data contrasting to Kerber wanting “two, three important things.”

This was partly a determination of style: Kerber’s at-times scarcely believable ability to turn defense into attack was reliant on knowledge of an opponent’s preferred attacking shots and patterns, allowing her to be strategically proactive rather than merely reacting to the ball in front of her.

When he was coaching Konta, Fissette was more prescriptive than usual. She liked clear messaging and so Fissette would have her recite the gameplan and a few key thoughts to him and herself before she went on court. But Konta was more lighthearted before matches than some of the players he’d worked with, so Fissette lent into that too. “We all tell jokes. Everybody is different,” Fissette told the Press Association during Konta’s run to the Wimbledon semifinals in 2017.

Advertisement

This is true of Fissette himself, who modelled his game on counter-punching as a player but has since made aggression one of the key tenets of his coaching. On the way to Kerber’s win at Wimbledon in 2018, he told her to up her aggression more than usual in moments where she would feel compelled to be safe; he used a similar strategy with Osaka when she came within a point of knocking Swiatek out of this year’s French Open.

“The way you think about tennis and play tennis trickles down into how you coach and how you play tennis,” Filip Dewulf said in a phone interview earlier this month.

Dewulf, 52, is a former French Open semifinalist and world No. 39; he was playing when Fissette was trying to make it on the ATP Tour. They got to know each other then and live near each other in Belgium, sometimes meeting for a drink and a catch-up.


Wim Fissette and Angelique Kerber celebrating victory at Wimbledon in 2018. (Clive Mason / Getty Images)

“He’s very data-driven. Both about his own player but also the opponent. He is preparing himself really well every match, and every practice, looking at the numbers every day,” Dewulf said.

Fissette would use an iPad between sets when coaching Kerber, and his use of data combined with the emotional intelligence that Dewulf, like most people interviewed for this article, cites as key to his success results in a drive to improve and develop, but with a real end result. Developing but losing is not Fissette’s goal.

Advertisement

“We had three nice years, we won two slams, and it was really good. But I was, in some ways, disappointed,” he told The Athletic in January of his first stint with Osaka.


How these coaching philosophies will translate into Swiatek’s game, mentality, and team will unfold over time, but those who have worked with him offer perspectives on where he fits into her way of approaching tennis. Dewulf has labelled Fissette as a “good organizer” with the ability to analyze an existing partnership from a removed perspective, appreciating its strengths while looking into its weaknesses.

Konta and Azarenka worked with a mental coach and psychologist respectively while Fissette coached them; at the very start of their first partnership in 2020, Osaka was in a dark place. She had lost to Coco Gauff in the Australian Open third round as the defending champion, and then lost her good friend Kobe Bryant, who died shortly after. The COVID-19 pandemic led to tennis being stopped a couple of months later, but Osaka found the equilibrium to win that year’s U.S. Open in September 2020 and then the Australian Open the following year.

“If they have been the same way for a long time, he works out what the weakness are and he gets other people in to get a better team around them,” Dewulf said.

This will be an interesting sub-plot with Swiatek, who has a number of longstanding team members including psychologist Daria Abramowicz. Fissette has been known to experiment: he and Osaka’s team brought in ballet dancer Simone Elliott to help her improve her movement.

Advertisement

Swiatek has said that tactical and technical adaptations to her game will come in the off-season, with too little time between hiring Fissette and the Tour Finals to implement meaningful changes, but she has already discussed what is coming.

“I for sure want to improve my serve, as I’ve been doing for past years,” she said in a news conference in Riyadh. “I think tactically there are many ways I could go and have more variety on court. Wim has some nice ideas.”

Swiatek has added more speed to her serve and abbreviated her motion in 2024, but recent defeats have been marked by an inability to change the momentum of matches, too often trying to hit through opponents in the way that usually wins her matches, instead of changing tempo or adding margin with topspin — one of her great strengths — to earn an easier ball back. This simplification of her game, introduced by Wiktorowski, brought her great success and continues to do so; it still needs an alternative for when it isn’t quite working.

Fissette worked with Kerber and Azarenka extensively on their serves, and spent time with Osaka trying to develop an aggressive open-stance backhand — a shot that a handful of players, including Swiatek, can perform reliably.

chart visualization

As Swiatek heads into defending her WTA Tour Finals title, Fissette’s generally quick starts may prove a boon. Clijsters is the most obvious example but Konta won Miami, the biggest title of her career, within a few months of working with him. Lisicki was a shock Wimbledon finalist after an even shorter time working with Fissette, while Halep reached her first Grand Slam quarterfinal in her first major with Fissette, before reaching the French Open final in her second.

This instant impact is something a few observers have pointed to as a Fissette trademark.

Advertisement

Ultimately, it’s Fissette’s record of success that sets him apart, says his coaching rival Mouratoglou, who won 10 Grand Slams with Serena Williams between 2012 and 2017. “I judge the quality of a coach on the results,” Mouratoglou said from France via a Zoom interview this week.

There are some guys who make results and some guys who don’t, and some who do it sometimes. It’s the same if you look at the football, there are a few coaches every time they take a team — success. Of course, they’re great teams, but with other coaches, they wouldn’t make that success.”

“I have a good relationship with him, he’s one of the guys that I’m always happy to see even though we are in competition,” Mouratoglou said.

“I think we have very different personalities but it’s good that there are different options for the players.”

One undoubted advantage is how intimately Fissette knows a number of Swatek’s rivals from working with them. Coaching Osaka at the 2020 U.S. Open final, Fissette felt as though he could predict every shot that Azarenka was going to hit. He will now be able to tell Swiatek precisely what her opponents will be anticipating from her because he was in the role of anticipator for Osaka only a few months ago.

Advertisement

Fissette’s expertise on the WTA Tour leads to the inevitable question about why he has never coached a male player, but the answer is that the opportunity hasn’t come up. He is open to doing so but his early success with Clijsters led to job offers on the women’s side and that’s how it’s been ever since. It’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t be a success there, given what he’s achieved in 15 years on the WTA side.

It feels difficult to envisage a situation where the partnering of two such elite practitioners won’t equate to success either in the medium term or more immediately, like some of Fissette’s previous partnerships. What makes tennis so exciting is not quite knowing how things will go — even if this feels like the closest thing to a sure bet.

(Top photo: Robert Prange / Getty Images)

Culture

Max Purcell admits doping violation: U.S. Open doubles champion enters provisional suspension

Published

on

Max Purcell admits doping violation: U.S. Open doubles champion enters provisional suspension

2024 U.S. Open men’s doubles champion Max Purcell has admitted breaking anti-doping rules and has been provisionally suspended from tennis while under investigation.

Purcell has been suspended since December 12, having made the admission and requested to be provisionally suspended December 10. The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) confirmed the suspension December 23, saying that the Australian, 26, breached rules relating to the use of a “prohibited method,” rather than any positive test for a banned substance.

Purcell said in a statement on Instagram: “I have voluntarily accepted a provisional suspension since I unknowingly received an IV infusion of vitamins above the allowable limit of 100ml. Until last week when I received medical records from a clinic showing that the amount of an IV I received was above 100ml, I was fully convinced I had done everything to ensure that I had followed the WADA regulations and methods.

“But the records show that the IV was over the 100ml limit, even though I told the clinic that I was a professional athlete and needed the IV to be under 100ml.”

According to the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA), “infusions or injections of 100 ml or less within a 12-hour period are permitted unless the infused/injected substance is on the Prohibited List.”

Advertisement

A “prohibited method” comes under three possible definitions in the WADA code: blood manipulation, widely referred to as blood doping; chemical and physical manipulation, which extends to all forms of tampering or doctoring either blood or urine samples and also covers intravenous infusions; and gene and cell doping. Purcell’s violation falls under chemical and physical manipulation.

The ITIA has not yet commented on the specifics of Purcell’s violation.

As the suspension is provisional, it is unclear how much tennis Purcell will miss but that time will be credited against any ultimate sanction when the investigation into his case concludes. He was absent from the Australian Open’s list of singles wildcards despite being ranked world No. 105, just outside the cut-off for entries to the main draw.

Doubles entry lists have not yet been released, but Purcell, who won the U.S. Open title in September with compatriot Jordan Thompson and is ranked world No. 12 in doubles was in line to enter his home major. Purcell also won the Wimbledon men’s title with Matt Ebden, another Australian, in 2022.

Purcell is the third major champion in 2024 to be charged with an anti-doping violation. Defending Australian Open champion and world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who twice tested positive for the banned substance clostebol in March, was found not to be at fault by three independent tribunals convened by the ITIA. Sinner, who also won the U.S. Open title, is awaiting the result of a WADA appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which could see him banned for up to two years.

Advertisement

French Open champion Iga Swiatek, who tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ) in August, served a one-month ban. 22 days of that ban were covered by her provisional suspension, which saw her miss three tournaments. Swiatek was deemed not to be at significant fault.

GO DEEPER

Jannik Sinner’s doping case explained: What WADA appeal means and what is at stake for tennis

(Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Culture

Always on the move, Rickey Henderson leaves legacy as one of baseball’s greatest showmen

Published

on

Always on the move, Rickey Henderson leaves legacy as one of baseball’s greatest showmen

“What Jimmy really loved to do? What he really loved to do was steal. I mean, he actually enjoyed it. Jimmy was the kind of guy who rooted for the bad guy in the movies.” Ray Liotta as Henry Hill

That’s a quote from “Goodfellas,” which premiered in September 1990, when the Oakland A’s were reigning champions and Rickey Henderson was the most electrifying player in baseball. That was his best season, too, and at the start of the next one, he broke Lou Brock’s career record for stolen bases.

Henderson yanked the base from the Coliseum dirt and raised it to the sky. He thanked God, the A’s and the city. He thanked family, fans and managers. Then, with Brock standing beside him, Henderson declared: “Today, I am the greatest of all time.”

That night, 1700 miles away in Texas, Nolan Ryan broke his own record for no-hitters with seven. The irresistible contrast made for a lazy talking point: the humble, stoic Ryan had upstaged the vain, cocky Henderson. Low-hanging fruit at its most sour.

Henderson, who died Friday at age 65, was the bad guy in that movie — and sure, he brought it on himself. He whined about being underpaid. He often referred to himself in the third person. He wore fluorescent green batting gloves. He popped his collar and shimmied on home run trots. He slashed the air after catching fly balls, his glove like Zorro’s blade.

Advertisement

And all of it — the contract stuff notwithstanding — was awesome.

“In my way of playing the game, people have called me a hot dog,” Henderson once said. “But I call it (bringing) some style or entertainment to the people. I enjoy going out there and exciting the fans, because I feel like they come out here to see some excitement.”

Was any player ever more exciting than Rickey Henderson? Was anyone a better entertainer? Certainly, no one outside of the movies loved stealing as much as Henderson or succeeded so grandly at it.

Henderson finished with 1,406 stolen bases. His last came in August 2003, for the Dodgers, off a Colorado pitcher named Cory Vance who was born in June 1979. That was the same month as Henderson’s very first steal, in his major-league debut for the A’s.

In some ways, Henderson was a lot more like Ryan than it seemed. Both played in four decades, into their mid-40s. Henderson led his league in stolen bases 12 times; Ryan led his league in strikeouts 12 times. Henderson is the only player with more than 1,000 steals; Ryan is the only pitcher with more than 5,000 strikeouts. (Henderson, in fact, was strikeout victim No. 5,000.)

Advertisement

But here’s the difference: as freakishly dominant as Ryan was in strikeouts, Henderson was far more prolific in stolen bases. Ryan has 17.2 percent more strikeouts than Randy Johnson, who ranks second. Henderson has 49.8 percent more stolen bases than Brock.

Here’s another way to frame that: Let’s say Henderson’s career had ended in 1993, which would have been a fitting capper. Henderson, then with Toronto, drew a leadoff walk in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 6 of the World Series, causing the Phillies’ Mitch Williams to try a slide-step motion to hold him on. Joe Carter took advantage with a clinching home run.

(In his absorbing biography of Henderson — “Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original” — Howard Bryant tells a great story from the following season, after Henderson had re-joined the A’s. On a trip to Toronto, players and staff reminisced about where they were when Carter hit his homer. Henderson shouted from the back of the bus: “I was on second base!”)

Through 1993 Henderson had 1,095 career steals, about 17 percent more than Brock — the same as Ryan’s strikeout edge over Johnson. But Henderson then stuck around for another decade as a speedster for hire.

He bounced back to Oakland, then to San Diego, the Angels, Oakland again, the Mets, Seattle, the Padres again, Boston and Los Angeles. He kept running even when the big leagues stopped calling, swiping 53 more bases for independent teams in Newark and San Diego.

Advertisement

All that speed naturally found its way to the plate. Henderson scored 2,295 runs, another record, just above Ty Cobb, Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth. When he set the mark in 2001, with a homer for the Padres, Henderson trotted around the bases – and then slid into home.

“It was feet-first and he was always a head-first guy; that caught us more off-guard than anything,” said Ben Davis, a catcher on that team. “But you never put anything past Rickey. I mean, that year, think about it: he got his 3,000th hit, he got the all-time walks record and he got the all-time runs scored record. The walks record was broken by Barry, but that’s unbelievable, to do all that in one year.”

Henderson was 42 then but still managed 25 stolen bases, the most ever for that age. His single-season record of 130, set in 1982, has never been seriously challenged. Even with new rules to encourage base stealing, last year’s leader, Cincinnati’s Elly De La Cruz, had just 67.

Besides Henderson, only one other modern player, Vince Coleman, has three seasons with 100 steals. After Henderson passed Brock, Coleman, then with the Mets, mused about his own chances. He thought he could do it.

“He knows I’ll be chasing his record, just like I’m chasing all the other records,” Coleman told the (Bridgewater, NJ) Courier-News. “If I stay healthy, I’m gonna average 80, 90, 100 steals a season.”

Advertisement

Coleman never topped 50 steals again. He finished hundreds shy of Henderson, and yet still had a standout career: his total, 752, is sixth all-time. Ultimately, Coleman lacked the on-base component that eludes so many base stealers. Of the 20 players with 500 steals since 1930, more than half had a career OBP under .350.

Henderson’s was .401. Only one modern player with 500 stolen bases, Bonds, reached base more at a higher rate. And while Bonds is easily the game’s greatest living player, Henderson was probably the greatest living Hall of Famer at the time of his death. The only others even in the conversation would have been Mike Schmidt or a pitcher like Johnson, Greg Maddux or Steve Carlton.

It’s jarring now to look at the career leaderboard in wins above replacement. The only living players above Schmidt, who is tied for 24th with Nap Lajoie, are Bonds, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez, whose careers were tarnished by ties to steroids. The extraordinary volume of high-impact performance is just so hard to achieve.

Henderson did it. He hit from a crouch with a refined approach that would play in any era: a seven-time league leader in walks, he also slammed a half-season’s worth of leadoff homers with a record 81, plus another in the postseason.

That came in Game 4 of the World Series in 1989, the year the A’s brought Henderson back from the Yankees in a midseason trade. That October was his showcase: a .441/.568/.941 slash line with 11 steals in 12 tries. The A’s lost just once on their way to a championship.

Advertisement

Henderson led off the clincher against San Francisco’s Don Robinson. He took two balls. With a thunderous lineup behind him, he could have worked the count. Instead he swung hard at a fastball down the middle, lashing it over the left field fence. The A’s never trailed in that World Series as they romped to a sweep.

It was their last title representing Oakland, Henderson’s hometown. Eventually the team named the Coliseum’s field in his honor, though he never got his own statue — too much permanence, perhaps, for a franchise with a wandering eye.

Now the A’s are gone, off to Las Vegas by way of Sacramento, and Henderson is gone, too. Wednesday will mark 66 years since his birth, on Christmas night 1958 in the backseat of an Oldsmobile on the way to a hospital in Chicago. He was a man on the move from the very start.

Dash away, dash away, dash away all.

(Top photo of Henderson after he broke MLB’s single-season stolen-base record in 1982: Getty Images)

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Culture

Why USC’s win over UConn is so significant: ‘This is what basketball excellence was’

Published

on

Why USC’s win over UConn is so significant: ‘This is what basketball excellence was’

HARTFORD, Conn. — As USC’s bench emptied onto the XL Center floor, with the No. 7 Trojans having defeated the No. 4 UConn Huskies 72-70, JuJu Watkins’ hands shot to the sky. Basking in her 25-point performance that lifted USC past UConn for the first time in school history, Watkins turned to the small section of supporters decked out in red and yellow inside the sold-out arena and acknowledged their support.

“It hit a little different knowing the history from last year and how they sent us home,” Watkins said.

The stakes were different this time. In April, in the Elite Eight, the Huskies knocked the top-seeded Trojans out of the NCAA Tournament. But Saturday night’s 2-point victory was meaningful nevertheless. Not only for Watkins and USC senior transfer Kiki Iriafen, but for their coach, Lindsay Gottlieb, who has long admired the program UConn coach Geno Auriemma has built.

“This is a really significant win, and it’s a really significant win because of the stature of UConn’s program and what Geno Auriemma has done for our sport,” Gottlieb said. “For my entire high school (career) on, this is what basketball excellence was. This is what we saw, and it’s challenged all of us to want to be better, to find players who want to be better and be that elite. And I don’t think that’s gone away.”

Gottlieb is in her fourth season with the Trojans, and she aspires to build a sustained program similar to the Huskies. A season ago, USC won its second Pac-12 tournament title in program history and made consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances for the first time in nearly two decades. Over her brief tenure, she has reminded onlookers not only of USC’s history of success — two national titles and three Final Four appearances in the 1980s, Hall of Fame players such as Lisa Leslie, Cynthia Cooper, Cheryl Miller and Tina Thompson — but of what it can be in the present. Watkins, last year’s national freshman of the year and a first-team All-American, is at the center of the latest chapter. Victories like Saturday’s help make lofty aspirations feel more attainable.

Advertisement

USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb wants to emulate what Geno Auriemma has built in Connecticut. (David Butler II / Imagn Images)

Gottlieb grew up just outside New York City, but she wasn’t recruited by Auriemma in high school. Nevertheless, when she was 15 or 16, she accompanied one of her friends to one of his camps. UConn was always the local draw, and following Saturday’s win, she recalled a trip she made during her senior year at Brown University, in nearby Providence, Rhode Island, when she and her father drove to Storrs to see UConn take on Tennessee.

“It was sold out,” Gottlieb said, “and I was in that building and saw this atmosphere.”

Saturday was raucous, too. And Watkins, USC’s star guard, said it might have been the largest crowd she has played in front of. Nearly 16,000 people packed inside XL Center, almost all of whom wore navy and white.

Still, Watkins added, “just to see my family here, all the SC fans, it meant the world.”

If anyone needed reminding, the Trojans’ victory reinforced their status as one of this season’s national title contenders. At 11-1, their lone defeat came at home to Notre Dame by 13 points. It would have been easy, Gottlieb said, for those inside the program to blame each other after that November loss — for the Trojans to fracture.

Advertisement

“As long as we stick together, this can make us better,” she said she told them afterward. “And (the loss) has in every way.”

Entering Saturday’s victory, the Trojans sported the country’s third-best defense and No. 15 offense. They convert in transition (nearly 20 percent of their points come in transition) and off turnovers (averaging 28.7 points per game), important measurables that could serve them well in the future. Their victory over the Huskies reinforced that they could come on the road, in one of the most-anticipated games of the season, and punch first. It proved they could surrender a 13-point halftime lead, trail by a point with just under five minutes to play and still recover.

“No one got off the treadmill,” Gottlieb said.

Of course, having a transcendent star like Watkins helps calm any nerves. Not only did she lead the game in scoring, she added six rebounds, five assists and three blocks, including one just before halftime on UConn star Paige Bueckers. Bueckers was prolific in the second half and finished with 22 points, but she also guarded Watkins as the USC star got off to a fast start in the first quarter.

“Every scouting report that you put together or every film that you watch, it’s very evident that one player can’t guard (Watkins),” Auriemma said. “When she gets into a little bit of a rhythm, you have to hope she misses.”

Advertisement

With the score within one possession with only 4:30 to play, Watkins recorded 6 of USC’s 8 points and assisted forward Rayah Marshall on the lone basket she didn’t score.

“A lot of the things she does is super hard, but she makes it look so easy,” Iriafen said. “We all know she is a superstar, so playing with her definitely relieves pressure on everybody else.”

Any remnants of pressure dissipated even further in the postgame locker room. Players doused Gottlieb with water as she entered. They leaped together in celebration.

“For me now to bring a team here, to know we could do it, and then to actually do it is incredibly meaningful,” Gottlieb said. “Really proud of the big win.”

(Top photo of JuJu Watkins driving between Paige Bueckers, left, and Kaitlyn Chen: Joe Buglewicz / Getty Images)

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending