Photo by: WVU Athletic Communications
Process-Driven Plitzuweit Has Mountaineers Dancing in Her First Season
March 16, 2023 04:00 PM | Women's Basketball, Blog
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – It might be Dawn Plitzuweit's first NCAA Tournament appearance at West Virginia University, but it's certainly not her first rodeo in national tournaments.
Plitzuweit led South Dakota to NCAA trips in 2019, 2021 and 2022, including the school's first-ever Sweet 16 appearance last season.
In five seasons at Division II Grand Valley State, she led the Lakers to four appearances and a D-II national title in 2006.
Her track record of building winning programs is well documented, even if everything is new, as she said earlier this week.
"You are learning a whole new group and trying to bring everyone together and teach a new system, but also modify your system to fit the players you have," she explained. "Throughout the course of the entire year, I think our coaches have really been diligent about continuing to work on basic fundamentals to help us get better.
"At times, we've seen that," she added. "We've seen our young ladies grow and play really well down the stretch. and that will be important for us to build upon now that we have a chance to keep play."
Each experience during her stops at Grand Valley State, Northern Kentucky and South Dakota have been unique, which is no different than what she's encountered in her 10 months leading the Mountaineer women's program.
She becomes the first coach in the 49 years of women's basketball at WVU to lead a team to the NCAA Tournament in an initial season in Morgantown. That's remarkable.
"When you start in a program, you don't know what you don't know, so you're trying to learn the players and you're trying to learn what their tendencies are," she said. "You can do things in practice all you want, but when the lights are on, it's a little bit different. Players are going to play the way they are comfortable, and they are going to do what they do. Then you, as coaches, what do you do to maybe modify what you do to fit who they are naturally.
"JJ (Quinerly) is a great rebounder, for example, and in a lot of systems you might say JJ is the kid that needs to get back (on defense), but at the same time she is a really good offensive rebounder, so that doesn't really match up well," she explained. "So, we have to modify a little bit of what we do to use her gifts, her abilities and instincts in that kind of way. It takes time to realize and recognize when we get into game action what that really looks like for our team."
Plitzuweit listed some of the many known unknowns her staff has encountered so far.
"What you don't know is how hungry are they? What is their ability to fight through challenges? How resilient is your group going to be? When you face some losses or adversity, how are you going to bounce back? Who is going to bounce back? Who is going to take that initiative? You can't let it affect your next performance and all of those things are things we've learned about ourselves through the course of the year, and I think what is really fun about this group they've continued to battle and continued to progress and continued to get better," she said. "Even in our last few games there were some defensive rotations … I don't know (where that came from)? They were making great plays and flying around and helping each other."
Based on her team's performance in a strong Big 12 Conference this year that featured nine teams with winning records in double-round-robin play, Plitzuweit was confident her team was going to get into the tournament.
In her eyes, it wasn't about getting in, but rather what their seeding was going to be.
"Maddie (Madisen Smith) asked me a question after practice. She said, 'Coach, how do you feel?' I said, 'I feel good. I feel like our chances are really, really good.' We were going to watch (the selection show) in the film room and, for whatever reason during my coaching career, that's been a good spot. Maybe there is some superstition there, but I felt good about it. It worked out so that's good."
Plitzuweit is a habitual film-watcher who has been known to study video right until she walks onto the floor to coach the game. The film room has sort of become her sanctuary – a place where she can learn, reflect and improve.
"I love doing it. I love the Xs and Os of it," she explained. "I love the team building aspect of it, too. (Coaches) are athletes in a different way now so you've got to find a different way to compete in slowing this action down or taking this play away. You are like, 'Okay we found a way' or 'oh man, we didn't do a very good job there.'"
When she took the West Virginia job on the final day of March last year, she didn't have any preconceived notions or expectations for the program. During her coaching career, it always about the process and where that process leads.
This year, her process took her team to College Park, Maryland, to face seventh-seeded Arizona in a first-round tournament game on Friday.
"Because we are process-driven program, expectation No. 1 is to be your best," she said. "(Sunday's) message going into practice was the 'best do ordinary better than the rest.' Did we look at last year's team and the returners and say, 'Boy, we're in a position where we should be able to contend for this or that?' How do you even know? So, we focused on what the process would look like – getting the ball around the rim, taking care of the basketball, guarding without fouling, finishing plays and those types of things.
"As the season wore on, we kept getting better. That's kind of fun. It's really fun to be a part of that. When you achieve at a higher level, and you compete at a higher level … and we didn't always do that. Even in the middle of our conference season, we had stretches when we didn't finish plays very well and then we adjusted how we practiced."
She continued.
"We were practicing drills to address that skillset that wasn't working very well for whatever reason. So, we had to find new ways to work on it and maybe the new ways worked a little bit better. Maybe it was film work. How do you really know? But something was working and so we kept doing that something," she explained. "The fun of it is finding ways to continue to grow our knowledge base of what we want to do and the why behind what we're doing as well as the ability to actually go do that."
As for Arizona, Plitzuweit is expecting a challenging, fun-filled game on Friday.
"Both teams are very tough, defensively. I think we both try and turn our opponents over and then try and push in transition. It will be kind of a fun matchup," she predicted. "Ultimately, you talk about wanting to control what you can control and that's taking care of the basketball and getting good shots; work to get offensive rebounds and that hasn't been a strength of ours, but it's a strength of theirs. For us defensively, it's about trying to make them uncomfortable, whatever that means. We're still trying to figure that out."
Her South Dakota team last year upset its way to the Sweet 16, defeating Ole Miss and Baylor to get there. She's taking the same underdog approach with her WVU team this year.
"Last year, we were a 10-seed, too. I guess we are the underdog because that's what our seeding tells us we are, so let's go out and battle and compete," she shrugged.
Tip time Friday is noon. ESPN will have live television coverage.
Plitzuweit led South Dakota to NCAA trips in 2019, 2021 and 2022, including the school's first-ever Sweet 16 appearance last season.
In five seasons at Division II Grand Valley State, she led the Lakers to four appearances and a D-II national title in 2006.
Her track record of building winning programs is well documented, even if everything is new, as she said earlier this week.
"You are learning a whole new group and trying to bring everyone together and teach a new system, but also modify your system to fit the players you have," she explained. "Throughout the course of the entire year, I think our coaches have really been diligent about continuing to work on basic fundamentals to help us get better.
"At times, we've seen that," she added. "We've seen our young ladies grow and play really well down the stretch. and that will be important for us to build upon now that we have a chance to keep play."
Each experience during her stops at Grand Valley State, Northern Kentucky and South Dakota have been unique, which is no different than what she's encountered in her 10 months leading the Mountaineer women's program.
She becomes the first coach in the 49 years of women's basketball at WVU to lead a team to the NCAA Tournament in an initial season in Morgantown. That's remarkable.
"When you start in a program, you don't know what you don't know, so you're trying to learn the players and you're trying to learn what their tendencies are," she said. "You can do things in practice all you want, but when the lights are on, it's a little bit different. Players are going to play the way they are comfortable, and they are going to do what they do. Then you, as coaches, what do you do to maybe modify what you do to fit who they are naturally.
"JJ (Quinerly) is a great rebounder, for example, and in a lot of systems you might say JJ is the kid that needs to get back (on defense), but at the same time she is a really good offensive rebounder, so that doesn't really match up well," she explained. "So, we have to modify a little bit of what we do to use her gifts, her abilities and instincts in that kind of way. It takes time to realize and recognize when we get into game action what that really looks like for our team."
Plitzuweit listed some of the many known unknowns her staff has encountered so far.
"What you don't know is how hungry are they? What is their ability to fight through challenges? How resilient is your group going to be? When you face some losses or adversity, how are you going to bounce back? Who is going to bounce back? Who is going to take that initiative? You can't let it affect your next performance and all of those things are things we've learned about ourselves through the course of the year, and I think what is really fun about this group they've continued to battle and continued to progress and continued to get better," she said. "Even in our last few games there were some defensive rotations … I don't know (where that came from)? They were making great plays and flying around and helping each other."
Based on her team's performance in a strong Big 12 Conference this year that featured nine teams with winning records in double-round-robin play, Plitzuweit was confident her team was going to get into the tournament.
In her eyes, it wasn't about getting in, but rather what their seeding was going to be.
"Maddie (Madisen Smith) asked me a question after practice. She said, 'Coach, how do you feel?' I said, 'I feel good. I feel like our chances are really, really good.' We were going to watch (the selection show) in the film room and, for whatever reason during my coaching career, that's been a good spot. Maybe there is some superstition there, but I felt good about it. It worked out so that's good."
Plitzuweit is a habitual film-watcher who has been known to study video right until she walks onto the floor to coach the game. The film room has sort of become her sanctuary – a place where she can learn, reflect and improve.
"I love doing it. I love the Xs and Os of it," she explained. "I love the team building aspect of it, too. (Coaches) are athletes in a different way now so you've got to find a different way to compete in slowing this action down or taking this play away. You are like, 'Okay we found a way' or 'oh man, we didn't do a very good job there.'"
When she took the West Virginia job on the final day of March last year, she didn't have any preconceived notions or expectations for the program. During her coaching career, it always about the process and where that process leads.
This year, her process took her team to College Park, Maryland, to face seventh-seeded Arizona in a first-round tournament game on Friday.
"Because we are process-driven program, expectation No. 1 is to be your best," she said. "(Sunday's) message going into practice was the 'best do ordinary better than the rest.' Did we look at last year's team and the returners and say, 'Boy, we're in a position where we should be able to contend for this or that?' How do you even know? So, we focused on what the process would look like – getting the ball around the rim, taking care of the basketball, guarding without fouling, finishing plays and those types of things.
"As the season wore on, we kept getting better. That's kind of fun. It's really fun to be a part of that. When you achieve at a higher level, and you compete at a higher level … and we didn't always do that. Even in the middle of our conference season, we had stretches when we didn't finish plays very well and then we adjusted how we practiced."
She continued.
"We were practicing drills to address that skillset that wasn't working very well for whatever reason. So, we had to find new ways to work on it and maybe the new ways worked a little bit better. Maybe it was film work. How do you really know? But something was working and so we kept doing that something," she explained. "The fun of it is finding ways to continue to grow our knowledge base of what we want to do and the why behind what we're doing as well as the ability to actually go do that."
As for Arizona, Plitzuweit is expecting a challenging, fun-filled game on Friday.
"Both teams are very tough, defensively. I think we both try and turn our opponents over and then try and push in transition. It will be kind of a fun matchup," she predicted. "Ultimately, you talk about wanting to control what you can control and that's taking care of the basketball and getting good shots; work to get offensive rebounds and that hasn't been a strength of ours, but it's a strength of theirs. For us defensively, it's about trying to make them uncomfortable, whatever that means. We're still trying to figure that out."
Her South Dakota team last year upset its way to the Sweet 16, defeating Ole Miss and Baylor to get there. She's taking the same underdog approach with her WVU team this year.
"Last year, we were a 10-seed, too. I guess we are the underdog because that's what our seeding tells us we are, so let's go out and battle and compete," she shrugged.
Tip time Friday is noon. ESPN will have live television coverage.
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