KU coach Schneider optimistic about program’s future

The Kansas women’s basketball season ended Friday with a game like so many others this year for the Jayhawks: a deep hole, a late surge, and then falling short. That was certainly the formula at Chesapeake Energy Arena in KU’s 79-75 loss to Oklahoma State. Two years into Brandon Schneider’s tenure as head coach and the Jayhawks have just three league victories.

Back in Lawrence, though, optimism still remains high concerning the program’s future.

“We did a great job of building our team culture, and I don’t think anybody could say that we ever give up,” junior guard Jessica Washington said. “We always are going to play hard and our team chemistry is going to continue to build.”

Schneider, who led Emporia State to a Division-II NCAA national championship in 2010, discussed his team’s final performance and what’s ahead for the program following the game. lot of unanswered questions for us in terms of next year because we’ve signed three players, but we have three open scholarships, and plan to add as many as six new players to our team. I thought we took some steps forward defensively. We had a bunch of freshmen that played last year and they all improved. And I think obviously we were excited about the year that (Washington) had being (Big 12) Newcomer of the Year. It’s the first major award winner we’ve had since 1997. I think when she was on (Washington) you have a tremendous athlete who also has length. I thought that Jessica was aggressive, but there were a lot of shots that Omozee did a really good job of challenging, and turning routine shots that Jess normally gets into tougher looks. preached rebounding in every timeout, but we felt like we were still in the game. There’s been numerous times this year where we have been able to mount some comebacks with the press, and felt like getting to the free throw line was going to be critical in that stretch as well.