Question: We know what A’dia (Mathies) gave you talent wise last year but does she have to become more of a leader this year? Is that something she needs to work on?Mitchell: I think for her personal development as a person, we always need to be pushing ourselves. I had a really engaging personality and met people easily but had to work on my organizational skills and my self-discipline on different things. The part that came naturally for me doesn’t come naturally for A’dia and some of the things that she does really well didn’t come naturally to me. I just try to tell her that all of us have areas in our life that we personally need to grow. It would be important for our basketball team and for A’dia as young women to be more assertive and more vocal at times when she doesn’t want to be because I think that anytime we get out of our comfort zone we are growing. For many reasons she needs to be a more vocal leader. I have coached three kids now, with A’dia being the third, who I thought were extremely intelligent and who I thought knew where everybody was on the court and needed to be. Those are rare players and A’dia is one of those.

Question: Is there such a thing as a sophomore slump and is that a worry for someone who had such an amazing freshman year?Mitchell: I am sure that there is such a thing because I guess there are some sophomores who don’t do that well. I don’t subscribe to luck and all those things. I think that you are just trying to create something if you buy into that. If I am trying to guard against her going into a sophomore slump then I am almost creating an out for her. I am not going to talk to her about that and I don’t believe in a sophomore slump. Maya Moore didn’t have a sophomore slump and Tamika Catchings didn’t have a sophomore slump and Chamique Holdsclaw didn’t have a sophomore slump. A’dia is that level player in my mind. She is one of the more extremely talented basketball players in this country. If A’dia wants to be and makes the right choices day in and day out, then there will be no sophomore slump. If there is a slump, it won’t be because she is a sophomore but because there are certain actions that she needs to engage in every day.

Question: Is there a returning player that will surprise us when the season starts as to how much she will grow or improve?Mitchell: I don’t know that yet. That is a hard question for me to answer. I found that the more I do these preseason things the less information that I try to give because I go back and read some of my predictions. My first year here I was just really confident that some things were going to happen. I don’t know. I think that there are players that have improved. I think that Carly Morrow has looked phenomenal in preseason. Will she look good in five-on-five, I don’t know. She is shooting the ball better than she ever has. Keyla (Snowden) looks like she is moving better. There is a lot of competition there. Keyla and Carly will have to fight for minutes to get on the court. Those are some returning players. I think that Brittany Henderson has a chance to be a really good player for us in the role that we have her in. I don’t know if that will surprise people or not. I am not for sure if I have a good handle on which returning player will surprise us.

Question: You have talked about the externals that you can’t control. What are the things that you can do to not make that stuff go to their heads?Mitchell: I think that it’s incumbent upon me to make sure that the environment is right. If you will come to our practice today, it will be a very difficult situation to be in. If A’dia or Victoria think that they are going to roll in and say, ‘Hey I am SEC Player of the Year,’ they are going to be humbled today. It is going to be extremely difficult. My goal today is for today to be the hardest practice that these kids have ever been through. That is the mindset. We are going to run up and down that court today. I am trying to develop a culture of leadership. If the leaders don’t know what is coming then it is hard to get the troops prepared. It is going down to the lieutenants and they know what is happening and know what the orders are going to be. We play this style so there are certain things that you have to have ingrained as habit. That helps them that they do know what is coming. They know that we are going to do layups every single day and you are going to have to run your tail off until you can make layups. You can’t go on to the next thing. If you want to play fast and up-tempo then you better be able to run, pass, and catch and lay the ball in the basket. Last Friday, that drill went for about 10 minutes and it is a drill that needs to go about two minutes, but it went 10 because everybody needs to make their layups. They know it is coming today.

Question: Last year you were able to surprise and sneak up on so many people. How does that change this season?Mitchell: I don’t know. I just don’t have any feedback on people on how much sneaking up helped. I don’t know if that helped at all. Everybody says it did but I don’t think that we were sneaking up on people in the league. When we played Georgia down there in overtime and we beat Vanderbilt the first weekend and had seen what we did in the preseason, I think that people were pretty clear that we were for real. Did that help us early on? You know, we were down 10 points to Chattanooga. If we lose that game, does that affect us? I don’t know. These are questions that I think about and are valid questions, but I don’t have the answer. There are things that I use to think were really clear like all these clichés. The more I go, the more I find that they don’t have a whole lot to do with much if I do my job the right way. Today’s focus is that I want them to achieve excellence and there is some ways to measure that. There is some really special ways to measure that as far as championships, but there are some other things. We had remarkable games last year and we could play that way this year, but they could just go the other way. That doesn’t mean we are a bad team. I think that those questions can maybe be answered after the season, but I don’t know if we are going to sneak up on anybody. I think that we will be able to answer that if the thing just doesn’t work this year. Then we can go back and say that we were just surprising everybody. If it works then maybe it is because the fundamentals are really good.”

Question: Do you think that there is a chance that last year was a fluke?Mitchell: No, what that team accomplished wasn’t a fluke because they put the work in. What I am saying is that I don’t have any idea that what the team accomplished is because they surprised people.

Question: Who is the fastest player on the team?Mitchell: Oh, man, we have a lot of fast ones. It just depends on what you are doing. (Maegan) Conwright is really fast. A’dia is really fast but Conwright is really fast. Riley is really fast. We have a lot of fast players. That is a fun question for me to thank about.

Question: Who eats the most?Mitchell: Oh, I don’t know. We have been talking to them about how nutrition is a big, big step for us right now. We need to take a big step forward as a program in fueling up right.