Winning a Habit For Izzo-Brown
October 30, 2011 08:10 AM | General
Lately, Nikki Izzo-Brown’s West Virginia soccer teams seem to have fallen into a pattern of losing early season games to really tough teams, figuring things out, and then going on big runs heading into postseason play.
Last year, West Virginia was 2-3 after its first five games and 4-4-1 after nine before running off 14 straight victories to claim another Big East title and an NCAA tournament Sweet 16 appearance.
In 2009, a very young Mountaineer team struggled out of the gate, going 2-2-4 through the first eight games before winning five of their next seven and once again reaching the national tournament.
In 2007, when West Virginia reached the NCAA tournament Elite Eight, the Mountaineers were only 3-2 after their first five games before winning 12 of their next 15.
So when her team began this season with losses to 10th-ranked Virginia, Penn State and 18th-ranked Ohio State, Izzo-Brown did what she always does - she rolled up her sleeves, got the players to work a little harder and eliminated the things they couldn’t do well.
She also remained positive.
“The only way you learn lessons is by playing the best you can play,” she explained. “I just think early on if we can schedule some of the best teams in the country and see where we need to improve before conference play, that’s what we’re going to do.
“Unfortunately, sometimes it puts us in tight situations where we don’t always end with the ‘W’ but I think we win because we learn from them.”
Izzo-Brown’s WVU program is certainly learning a lot from winning. The Mountaineers’ 14-4 record heading into today’s Big East tournament quarterfinal match against Seton Hall at Dick Dlesk Stadium represents the 10th time in the last 12 years they have won at least 14 matches in a season. In fact, Izzo-Brown’s Mountaineer teams have won at least 10 matches and earned an NCAA tournament bid every year since 2000, and just as impressively, she has never had a losing season in 17 years as a college coach.
Izzo-Brown has won so much - and won so frequently - that double-digit-win campaigns and NCAA tournament appearances are becoming the expectation around here. Make no mistake, winning 14 games in the Big East and reaching the NCAA tournament is just as hard today as it was when she was a much wider-eyed, 20-something-year-old head coach back in 2000.
“It’s so hard to do what we do,” Izzo-Brown explained. “Everybody wants to play against the best. Even we do. We want to play Stanford. We want to play North Carolina. You want to line yourself up against the best and when you get to that consistent level everyone brings their best game against you. That’s hard.
“There is an expectation now that we are going to be in the NCAA tournament. It’s not like it’s just because we’re good – we work. These girls work hard.”
What makes West Virginia’s yearly success so remarkable is that Izzo-Brown has never been able to beat the North Carolinas and Stanfords for A-list players. Even within the Big East, she still hasn’t managed to pry a top recruit away from Notre Dame, although she admits she is still at the plate swinging away.
“Maybe someday we will,” she says.
That doesn’t mean West Virginia isn’t getting great players – Blake Miller passed on Florida State to play at WVU and Bri Rodriguez was a Parade All-American who had a long list of suitors – but Izzo-Brown is still fishing from a different pond. The recruiting evaluations just require a little more clairvoyance on her part.
“You want the total package,” she said. “You want them athletic, technical, hard-nosed and competitive, there is no question, and then what is important to me is recognizing if there is potential to get them better here in our environment and see if they fit with my personality. I do want kids who are going to grind and be super competitive - and also want to be put into an environment that is going to challenge them.”
Izzo-Brown is also not married to a specific style of soccer. Sometimes she has used a direct style when she has had bigger and faster players; other times she has gone to a possession style for the players that are skilled but might not be quite as fast. And the set pieces she chooses to use in games are cloaked under a veil of secrecy almost bordering on paranoia.
If you can get your hands on one of West Virginia’s game tapes, you will notice her team’s attack this year is probably a lot different than her 2007 team, or the 2008 or 2009 teams. To borrow a football analogy, the spread offense she is using one year may turn into the power-I or a pro set the next based on the players she has and what they can do best.
“You have to adapt to the players,” she says. “It’s just like everything else. We want to put ourselves in the best position and put our players in the best position to perform at the highest level. We’ve got to kind of see what people are doing and the only way to see it is early on and then we go from there.”
And while each team might be a little different, the results are always the same - they all win.
“The one thing about this team that separates them from some of the other ones is they just work so hard for each other,” Izzo-Brown noted. “We’ve got really good chemistry. There is no separation. No seniors or freshmen, no line that is being drawn.
“Last Friday (against Pitt), Blake Miller is running to our 18-yard box defensively and she is our forward (to help protect WVU’s lead). You’ve got Mallory Smith running down balls inside our attacking 18. Kids are just stepping up at different times and helping each other out, and I think that is super important at this time of the season.”
Perhaps Izzo-Brown’s best coaching trait is her uncanny ability to flip a negative into a positive. Twice this year her teams got whacked over the head, losing a 5-0 ambush at Penn State back on Aug. 26 and earlier this month dropping a 4-1 match to a subpar Villanova team when one of her players received a red card and the team had to play the rest of the match a man down.
Both times West Virginia immediately rallied.
“My thing is you don’t want to kill them with negativity, but you also say, hey, we just had a great opportunity and we got our butts whipped and we’ve got to work even harder because someone just put four or five goals on us,” she explained. “Where were the breakdowns and who is going to step up and be more focused for us?
“For me, as much as you’re saying to yourself, oh my God, this is awful. I hate losing. But it’s also like, OK, we’ve got to figure this out collectively and that’s what these girls did. There are areas we obviously had to get better at and we had to do it quickly.”
The bottom line is that the true competitors - the players Izzo-Brown wants in her soccer program - despise losing.
“Athletes don’t want to fail,” she said. “It’s like sometimes you go to football games and you hear these fans screaming at the players. It’s like ‘do you really think Geno Smith wants to fail? No. That’s what I’m thinking. Do these kids really want to be bad? Of course not, so how do I make sure they are better and I’m maximizing their potential?”
Fortunately for Mountaineer soccer fans, that is a question Izzo-Brown always seems to have an answer for.
Last year, West Virginia was 2-3 after its first five games and 4-4-1 after nine before running off 14 straight victories to claim another Big East title and an NCAA tournament Sweet 16 appearance.
In 2009, a very young Mountaineer team struggled out of the gate, going 2-2-4 through the first eight games before winning five of their next seven and once again reaching the national tournament.
In 2007, when West Virginia reached the NCAA tournament Elite Eight, the Mountaineers were only 3-2 after their first five games before winning 12 of their next 15.
So when her team began this season with losses to 10th-ranked Virginia, Penn State and 18th-ranked Ohio State, Izzo-Brown did what she always does - she rolled up her sleeves, got the players to work a little harder and eliminated the things they couldn’t do well.
She also remained positive.
“The only way you learn lessons is by playing the best you can play,” she explained. “I just think early on if we can schedule some of the best teams in the country and see where we need to improve before conference play, that’s what we’re going to do.
“Unfortunately, sometimes it puts us in tight situations where we don’t always end with the ‘W’ but I think we win because we learn from them.”
Izzo-Brown’s WVU program is certainly learning a lot from winning. The Mountaineers’ 14-4 record heading into today’s Big East tournament quarterfinal match against Seton Hall at Dick Dlesk Stadium represents the 10th time in the last 12 years they have won at least 14 matches in a season. In fact, Izzo-Brown’s Mountaineer teams have won at least 10 matches and earned an NCAA tournament bid every year since 2000, and just as impressively, she has never had a losing season in 17 years as a college coach.
Izzo-Brown has won so much - and won so frequently - that double-digit-win campaigns and NCAA tournament appearances are becoming the expectation around here. Make no mistake, winning 14 games in the Big East and reaching the NCAA tournament is just as hard today as it was when she was a much wider-eyed, 20-something-year-old head coach back in 2000.
“It’s so hard to do what we do,” Izzo-Brown explained. “Everybody wants to play against the best. Even we do. We want to play Stanford. We want to play North Carolina. You want to line yourself up against the best and when you get to that consistent level everyone brings their best game against you. That’s hard.
“There is an expectation now that we are going to be in the NCAA tournament. It’s not like it’s just because we’re good – we work. These girls work hard.”
What makes West Virginia’s yearly success so remarkable is that Izzo-Brown has never been able to beat the North Carolinas and Stanfords for A-list players. Even within the Big East, she still hasn’t managed to pry a top recruit away from Notre Dame, although she admits she is still at the plate swinging away.
“Maybe someday we will,” she says.
That doesn’t mean West Virginia isn’t getting great players – Blake Miller passed on Florida State to play at WVU and Bri Rodriguez was a Parade All-American who had a long list of suitors – but Izzo-Brown is still fishing from a different pond. The recruiting evaluations just require a little more clairvoyance on her part.
“You want the total package,” she said. “You want them athletic, technical, hard-nosed and competitive, there is no question, and then what is important to me is recognizing if there is potential to get them better here in our environment and see if they fit with my personality. I do want kids who are going to grind and be super competitive - and also want to be put into an environment that is going to challenge them.”
Izzo-Brown is also not married to a specific style of soccer. Sometimes she has used a direct style when she has had bigger and faster players; other times she has gone to a possession style for the players that are skilled but might not be quite as fast. And the set pieces she chooses to use in games are cloaked under a veil of secrecy almost bordering on paranoia.
If you can get your hands on one of West Virginia’s game tapes, you will notice her team’s attack this year is probably a lot different than her 2007 team, or the 2008 or 2009 teams. To borrow a football analogy, the spread offense she is using one year may turn into the power-I or a pro set the next based on the players she has and what they can do best.
“You have to adapt to the players,” she says. “It’s just like everything else. We want to put ourselves in the best position and put our players in the best position to perform at the highest level. We’ve got to kind of see what people are doing and the only way to see it is early on and then we go from there.”
And while each team might be a little different, the results are always the same - they all win.
“The one thing about this team that separates them from some of the other ones is they just work so hard for each other,” Izzo-Brown noted. “We’ve got really good chemistry. There is no separation. No seniors or freshmen, no line that is being drawn.
“Last Friday (against Pitt), Blake Miller is running to our 18-yard box defensively and she is our forward (to help protect WVU’s lead). You’ve got Mallory Smith running down balls inside our attacking 18. Kids are just stepping up at different times and helping each other out, and I think that is super important at this time of the season.”
Perhaps Izzo-Brown’s best coaching trait is her uncanny ability to flip a negative into a positive. Twice this year her teams got whacked over the head, losing a 5-0 ambush at Penn State back on Aug. 26 and earlier this month dropping a 4-1 match to a subpar Villanova team when one of her players received a red card and the team had to play the rest of the match a man down.
Both times West Virginia immediately rallied.
“My thing is you don’t want to kill them with negativity, but you also say, hey, we just had a great opportunity and we got our butts whipped and we’ve got to work even harder because someone just put four or five goals on us,” she explained. “Where were the breakdowns and who is going to step up and be more focused for us?
“For me, as much as you’re saying to yourself, oh my God, this is awful. I hate losing. But it’s also like, OK, we’ve got to figure this out collectively and that’s what these girls did. There are areas we obviously had to get better at and we had to do it quickly.”
The bottom line is that the true competitors - the players Izzo-Brown wants in her soccer program - despise losing.
“Athletes don’t want to fail,” she said. “It’s like sometimes you go to football games and you hear these fans screaming at the players. It’s like ‘do you really think Geno Smith wants to fail? No. That’s what I’m thinking. Do these kids really want to be bad? Of course not, so how do I make sure they are better and I’m maximizing their potential?”
Fortunately for Mountaineer soccer fans, that is a question Izzo-Brown always seems to have an answer for.
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