Tim Downer

This week John puts Lady Norse point guard Elizabeth Burrows in the Hot Seat.

JR: You went from a freshman averaging around three points a game, to the starting point guard on the national runner-up. What changed during the transition from your freshman year to your sophomore year? EB: Coach Winstel hated my freshman year. She said she was going to write the NCAA and see if I could get that year back since I was so bad. A lot of it was confidence and adjusting from high school to college. I had more confidence in my teammates than I had in myself.

JR: Coming to NKU as a shooting guard, how hard was it for you to adjust to becoming a point guard? EB: Even though I was a shooting guard, I’d always rather pass the ball. I think it was a big change on my responsibility. I had to do exactly what Coach Winstel wanted me to do, like making sure I went to the other side of the court when passing the ball, instead of looking for the pass back like I did in high school.

JR: In the game against Bellarmine, you just missed a triple-double by one rebound. Did you know you were that close during the game? EB: I didn’t have a clue. I was thinking more about how much we were down by.

JR: Connie Myers said that out of Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio, Indiana has the best high school basketball. Do you agree with this statement? EB: Definitely not! All of our freshman came from Ohio. Ohio is the best by far!

JR: So far in previous Hot Seat articles, Jessica Brock and Connie Myers both said they would beat assistant coach Brian Neal one-on-one. Can you also beat him? EB: Brian has a lot of height on me. You got to love Brian, because he works his heart out every day in practice. Brian congratulated Quanita (Hailey) today because he said that she was the first player to block him in practice.

JR: Down by one, and given two free-throws, who on the team do you want to take them? EB: I’d say Karyn Creager. She’s a pretty good free-throw shooter. In the preseason she would make something like 100 in a row. She just has to have the confidence in herself that we have in her. JR: What’s your funniest Coach Winstel story? EB: One time in the health center she took her shoe off and just threw it. Another time, after we had thrown the ball away a couple times, I came over to the sideline to get a water bottle. She jumped high enough to get the rim if she was under the basket and said that “she had it up to here.”

JR: What player has the weirdest pregame routine? EB: No one really has any thing that I know of. Bridget (Flanagan) was real superstitious last year, but we don’t really have any players this year.

JR: You’ve made a couple big shots recently. Why don’t you shoot the ball more? EB: I think I shoot when I’m open contrary to popular belief. I just always look to pass first. I think what has happened, is that the last three years I haven’t shot the ball too much, so for some reason they don’t guard me anymore. I feel kind of bad that they are doubling the post players so I’m trying to shoot the ball more so they leave the post players alone.