‘Our listening skills are terrible’: WSU women get brutally honest after recent game
Wichita State junior Mariah McCully provided one of the most raw postgame interviews of the season Sunday.
The Shockers dropped back-to-back games for the first time since early November with a 61-56 home loss to Tulane, a team that hadn’t won two straight games since about that same time. McCully and coach Keitha Adams took the opportunity to put the spotlight on the Shockers’ biggest problem.
“Our listening skills are terrible,” McCully said. “(Adams) can write down exactly what to do, and it will be to the point where we won’t run it. So that’s just ridiculous.”
Adams looked through the loss with hindsight. She said her team doesn’t “talk to anybody, don’t listen much.”
“They’re in their gadgets and devices, and it’s our society,” Adams said. “You see two people out at the restaurant out on a date, and they’re looking at their phones, not talking to one another.”
Adams said it is a challenge keeping the Shockers’ attention.
McCully is in her first season at WSU after a year at Odessa College and another at Wabash Valley College. Although she has played in only 15 games as a Shocker, she is already the team’s leading scorer averaging 12.9 points per game. But McCully pointed toward the WSU defense Sunday.
She said there was no excuse for how poor it was.
“We practiced every play that they ran,” McCully said. “Our listening skills just need to improve. that’s just end of story.”
McCully and Adams said the team has already come a long way from the beginning of the season when the Shockers weren’t listening or talking to one another. They have nailed down the communication, but their biggest weakness lies in the other half.
Tulane improved to 6-8 with the win in its AAC opener. And the loss sent WSU to 0-2 in conference play following an 83-55 road loss to No. 1 Connecticut.