Coach Troy Discusses Senior Day vs. Tennessee, SEC Championships in Gainesville
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 | Women's Swimming & Diving
University of Florida head coach Gregg Troy addressed the media this past Monday morning as part of the Gators' All-Sports Media Day.
Coach Troy shared his thoughts about last weekend's dual meet at Auburn, Senior Day this Saturday vs. Tennessee and several of the Gator swimmers.
TRANSCRIPT
On the dual meet at Auburn:
“It's never easy in the SEC. We're getting down to meets that there's no doubt there's going to be swimmers in every event that are NCAA-caliber finalists. We found that to be true at Auburn. It was their Senior Day. They (Auburn) have a real good team. The downside is we came up on the short-end of the score on both the men and the women's side. The plus side is we saw some dramatic improvements in the areas that we were working on the week before to this week. This time of year, that (improving) is one of our goals. We want to see people getting better as they go through the season and approaching the championships. We came out with some areas where we know we are weak that we need to improve upon the next couple of weeks. We still have a month before the conference meet.”
On the women's performance at Auburn:
“I was real pleased on the women's side. They (the UF women) raced extremely tough. We were in the meet the entire time and had some great swims. (Freshman) Elizabeth Beisel is starting to look like the athlete she was the first semester. Teresa Crippen keeps getting better the whole way though and we had some young girls step up real well. Sarah Bateman continues to be one of the best sprinters in the conference. ”
On the men's performance at Auburn:
“On the men's side we saw some young guys step up. We swam some unique events for a few guys because we're trying to get a feel for where we're at. Quite frankly, we don't match up real well with Auburn. We have real strong strengths and weaknesses, so we had to juggle the lineup.”
On swimming against Tennessee Saturday:
“This week is the same sort of dynamic with top-10 teams on both sides with the women and men from Tennessee. It's our last conference meet and our senior weekend, so we'll get a little boost. There will be some excitement from the seniors. We'd like to see improvement again in areas and hopefully the ones that didn't improve last week, we will start to see a little bit more from them. It's all set up getting ready for the next month, getting ready for the last month, conference meet and three weeks later the NCAA (Championships).”
On the strategy vs. Auburn:
“The matchup side, Auburn tends to approach it a little bit more from the short events and goes towards the long. They recruit a little more on the short side. It tends to make them a little bit sharper in the relays and better in the sprint events. If you look at the results you can see that. We tend to approach it a little more from the middle-distance side and have a little bit better feel in the distance events. We swim the long relay which isn't part of the dual-meet program, so it takes away our best relay. In trying to cover those matchups to win a dual meet, we have to take some of our best athletes (out). Conor Dwyer, we take him out of two sure wins and put him in his weakest events against two really talented seniors who have been top-three at the NCAA's with the hopes of breaking them up. He (Dwyer) broke them up in one event and almost won one and the other one he didn't quite break them up, but it was a really good swim for him. The upside of doing that is that it gives us a chance to swim the meet a whole lot more competitively. It's like giving up that field goal in football. You're taking some points off the board to see if we can pick up some someplace else. The same thing goes for Brett Fraser; it's the same sort of dynamic. The women's team is almost identical.”
On Tennessee's depth:
“We will face a more balanced group from Tennessee. They're a little more like us. They're pretty good every place and have a few spots that they're strong. They have no dramatic weakness. ”
On the importance of dual meets:
“As far as the dual meets, there's a philosophy that dual meets are important, but we don't treat it that way at all. The day you swim them, they are the most important thing. This is Florida – we don't plan on losing dual meets. By the same token, we had a freshman named Brad deBorde that stood up for us really big this weekend. He's probably our future in the sprint events. If we treated every dual meet like it was the end of the season and put high priority on winning, I don't think he would be the same athlete. Right now we feel pretty confident he's going to help us at the conference level. He wouldn't have done that if all fall and right now we were worried about that one individual swim. It's real important the day you do it, but it's not much fun when you're standing there at Auburn and getting it handed to you. By the same token, I'm pretty certain that if we don't approach it that way we don't win last year's NCAA meet. Every time you give up a little bit during the season, it's going to show up on the third day of the NCAA meet traditionally.”
On environment for the SEC Championships:
“The SEC meet is already sold out. There hasn't been one at Florida in awhile. Our venue, it swims better than maybe any place in the country. It's a fantastic training facility. It doesn't lend itself to crowd control very well with a massive number of seats. It puts everything right down on you. It's a very action-packed, high-energy place for the conference meet. The athletes like it, but it is a little cumbersome for spectators and coaches for people who get around.”
On the crowd environment for dual meets:
“The more we can have that dynamic (of intensity) in a dual meet, the better it is for us. We swim Auburn and Tennessee every year on senior weekends and it tends to be filled up a little more. It was kind of a hostile environment at Auburn which was great for us to be in a filled house and hostile environment. It's not exactly like football, but there are certainly a lot of distractions. It's a little bit like golf – you have a lot of attention to detail and can't be distracted by those things. Being in that (Auburn) environment is really good. By the same token, this week we're at home in that environment with a lot of positive energy, it can still be a distraction. The athletes need to learn how to handle it. It's really a good format, and every year our last two conference meets are like that. We're hoping it's like that (for Tennessee). We're hoping it's high energy and exciting. Tennessee always races us tough. They have a very, very good men's and women's team.”
On Elizabeth Beisel:
“Quite frankly, she's actually exceeded our expectations from one standpoint. She's one of the best swimmers in the world. She's not the most statuesque, but she's a powerful athlete and very compact. Her body and her training program make her a longer event swimmer. While she's extremely highly ranked in the world, she's a little more fitted and has always swum in a 50-meter pool. Twenty-five yard swimming a little bit new to her. She's relatively inexperienced and certainly not a real speed merchant. Her deal is she works real hard and can swim for a very long time at the same speed. That puts her at a disadvantage for short-course swimming, but we knew that coming in. She's actually excelled a little bit more than we thought. Her home coach saw her at home over Christmas and was very pleased with where she was physically, and at the same time was extremely pleased with what he saw around the walls. In that point, she's gotten dramatically better, which was a little bit of a weakness for her. She comes from a great training program and continues to get better. It's kind of unique with athletes like Elizabeth, Teresa (Crippen) and Conor (Dwyer). They're 18 months from the US Olympic Trials. It's nice to swim in a short-course pool, but realistically, Florida has been filled with Olympians. Our number one priority has always been extremely good performances. I think we've seen a lot of that (out of Beisel). She can be on the best (all-time at Florida). She's certainly one of the most versatile (swimmers). She might be our best breaststroke right now even though it's her weakest stroke. We dabble in it a little bit. She's a great student. Her grades are fantastic.”
On the value of personal character:
“Like I said before, our priority is tremendous performances and tremendous people. For the Ben Hill Griffin Award, we had a swimmer win on both the men's and women's sides who were both great student-athletes. The women's grade-point average (for the fall) was just shy of 3.5. The men were over 3.0, so I think when you put the whole package together, you get some real tremendous performances. If we get enough of those together, we're going to be a really great team.”
