PATE WANTS TO BE HEARD THIS SEASON

THE BADGERS' SENIOR POINT GUARD SEEKS

TO BECOME A VOCAL LEADER ON THE FLOOR.

Wisconsin State Journal

Oct 24, 1999

Authors: Jon Masson Sports reporter

Before practice began this season, University of Wisconsin women's basketball

coach Jane Albright had a chat with Dee Dee Pate.

Their talk, appropriately, had to do with communication.

Albright wanted the senior point guard to be more vocal - to direct and

motivate her teammates.

"That's one of the characteristics of any real point guard," Albright said.

"It is like a sergeant in the Army. They have to have the same sort of

verbal dictatorship."

"She had personal bests in conditioning. She set team records. But when

she gets on the floor, she has to tie the other positions in together.

She needs to really let them know what she wants. She needs to be an extension

of me on the floor, and tell them what she sees and what it is she likes

and doesn't like."

This will take some adjustment for the 5-foot-5 Pate, who has let her actions

speak more loudly than her words in the past.

"With all the scoring power (Wisconsin should have), I want to dish off

a lot of assists, get a couple steals a game with my speed and the way

we are pressing the ball, and just be a leader of the team," Pate said

after a recent practice. "I have to work on verbal communication skills.

I'm not verbal at times. I set my leadership by example."

Pate, who started 23 games last season, is seeking to control her game,

including eliminating careless charging fouls, while also keeping her teammates

under control.

"I'm kind of like the quarterback of the team and do all those little things

a point guard is supposed to do - see the floor, make sure everybody is

in position and make sure everybody is in the flow," said Pate, who played

high school basketball at Milwaukee Washington.

Pate is expected to be the Badgers' starting point guard, with guard-forward

Tamara Moore also able to play the point. Freshman point guard Candas Smith

is recovering from nose and lip injuries suffered in an Aug. 28 car accident.

"I definitely feel it's my team," said Pate, who averaged 3.6 points and

3.5 assists per game in 1998-99. "Any point guard would say that. I've

listened to the coach. Anything she communicates to anybody on the floor

goes through me. That's why I think it's my team."

Pate, whose single-game highs at UW include 13 points, 13 assists and seven

steals, wants her final season at Wisconsin to be a special one. That's

why she spent extra time working on her conditioning, ballhandling and

shooting, especially off the dribble.

This is Pate's last chance as a college basketball player, a fact of life

she and apartment roommate Kelley Paulus, a senior off- guard, have discussed.

"It means a lot to us," Pate said. "We definitely want to make the most

of it."

Paulus, who also was Pate's dormitory roommate as a freshman, said: "We

want to put it all together. I'm looking forward to good things out of

myself this year."

Albright said experience has told her that point guards grow more, particularly

in confidence, between their junior and senior years; that was true with

Pate.

"She's done a nice job," said Albright, whose team opens against Athletes

in Action in an exhibition game Nov. 9 at the Kohl Center. "She's focused

and real intense. She's being a real good leader and she's not making mistakes."

Make no mistake, Pate has high expectations for herself and the team.

"When you look at players and whether they get what they want or not, Dee

Dee hasn't gotten what she wants here," Albright said. "She hasn't made

her mark. She is very hungry. That's why I think she worked so hard this

summer. If you have a kid who has gotten what they wanted in the first

three years, a lot of times they come back not really hungry for their

senior year.

"Dee Dee, in particular, she wants to have a championship team and we really

haven't been that yet. She wants to have a team that plays at the highest

level here and we haven't done that yet.

"I think she feels partially responsible, because I think all point guards

feel responsible for how far their team goes. I think she's more into the

success of our team than the success of Dee Dee Pate. But I think she's

smart enough to know there is a lot of correlation between a point guard's

success and the team's success."

Pate, however, isn't thinking about where she'd like the Badgers to be

at the end of the season while practice is going on in October.

"We want to take it a game at a time," she said. "The Final Four and the

Big Ten championship ... that stuff is a long way down the road. We're

going to concentrate on games one by one. We are going to be able to gradually

work and improve and by the end of the season get clicking, and that will

determine what we'll do next."