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Collegehoopsnet Interview w/ Jim Jabir
On
April 8th, Dayton announced the hiring of Jim Jabir as the
new women’s Head Coach. Jabir, who has 16 years of D1 head coaching
experience, inherits a Flyers team that went 14-14 last season.
CHN)
First of all, congratulations on your new position. You’ve spent the
past two months putting together a new coaching staff, including the
addition of former Detroit Shocks Head Coach Greg Williams as an
assistant. Could you tell us a bit about the process of having to
rebuild a coaching staff from the ground up?
JJ) I'm very excited about the coaching staff we've been able to put
together at Dayton. This is the most experienced staff I've ever
worked with. I finally have someone on my staff older than me! It
shows a real commitment from our administration. I've known Greg
Williams for a long time. We met when we were building our respective
programs at Marquette and Colorado State. His experience in the WNBA
is valuable but his work ethic and knowledge of the game is what I
love about him. Jill Rooney is so valuable to our program because of
her technical and recruiting experience. She knows the Atlantic 10
better than most. She played at St. Joe's for Jim Foster and was the
recruiting coordinator at UMass for 11 years. We were also able to
bring Stacie Terry, a young lady who came over from Louisville. I
think Stacie will be a star in the coaching ranks. Her energy and
personality make a huge difference in our program. We've also been
able to bring Frank Goldsberry in as our Director of Basketball
Operations. Frank is one of the winningest high school coaches in
Ohio and is coming off a state championship at Chaminade-Julienne.
CHN) How much time have you already spent with your
new players? Does it take awhile to form an appropriate comfort level
with the players?
JJ) Getting to know our players is very important because we want to
set a tone and help them understand what expectations we will be
placing on them and what goals we have set for the program. We've
been able to do some individual workouts with the kids when we first
got here before they went home. We have some great kids in the
program who are hungry to win. So far they've been very receptive to
what we've been asking of them. We've been able to spend some time
with five or six of the players who are staying for the summer.
CHN) What type of offensive & defensive schemes do
you plan on employing now?
JJ) I'd like to play the way we played when I was coaching at
Marquette. We ran Paul Westhead's transition game he used at Loyola
Marymount. We want to always be on the attack offensively and
defensively, very aggressive and very disciplined. We'll see how it
goes. We are going to be pretty small this year so I can see us
trapping and doubling down trying to be disruptive.
CHN) Do you plan to focus on recruiting in the
southern Ohio region, or using your connections at past jobs to sign
players from a broader area?
JJ) I think recruiting is the key. Ohio is loaded with very talented
athletes and we will always try to recruit all of Ohio first and as
hard as we can. Having said that I've been able to make a lot of
contacts nationally and I think Dayton is the type of school that we
can sell to a national recruiting base.
CHN) Last season, Dayton was 2nd in the
A10 in attendance with 1606 fans per game (Just 55 fans behind leader
Xavier with 1661). Are you excited about the fan support in Dayton and
the quality facilities?
JJ) Aside from the people, the commitment and the facilities, the one
thing that really impressed me about Dayton was the community. The
city of Dayton is a basketball town. They are very supportive and
will support a viable, winning women's basketball program. I saw
that UD drew 9,000 a night when they hosted this past NCAA tournament.
Not too bad. What people came to see was good basketball and that's
my job to bring it here.
CHN) Lastly, could you offer any predictions of how
you envision this team finishing next year?
JJ) We lost 5 seniors, about 46% of our offense so a lot of young
kids are going to have to play. Those young kids are athletic and
hard working. My prediction is that we will be the hardest working
team in the Atlantic 10. We'll see after that where we go. Thank you
for your time.
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