With seven seniors gone, Miller preaches patience

Tuesday, Oct. 26, 1999 | 9:39 a.m.

After guiding the UNLV women's basketball team to 17 wins in her first season as Lady Rebels head coach, Regina Miller constantly is asked what is in store for the team this year. A conference championship? An NCAA Tournament berth?

Miller's stock reply is simple, albeit somewhat surprising: Be patient.

"Any time you have eight new players -- I don't care if they're freshmen, junior college transfers or what -- it still takes time for anyone new coming in to learn your system," Miller said. "I'd say we're going through growing pains right now.

"I've told the team that I will remain patient ... so I don't kill their confidence. This is a learning process and sometimes when people are learning, they don't play to their capabilities, things slow down a little bit for them as they go through that."

Losing seven seniors from last year's squad that became the nation's most improved Division I team after winning only 12 games combined during the previous three seasons, Miller is approaching this season as a rebuilding year.

"Last year was more of a quick fix and now we are really starting the rebuilding phase," Miller said. "I want people to be fair to the team and recognize this team for who they are. I know we set the standard really, really high (last year) but I ask everyone to be very patient as these players grow.

"We might not look as good early as we're going to look late in the year. We might look a little ragged and have a few more turnovers than not, but that will smooth out and it will be a very good team to watch."

UNLV returns only two starters from last year's team. But fortunately for the Lady Rebels, one of those players is the 1998-99 national Freshman of the Year, Linda Frohlich.

Frohlich averaged 23.5 points a game -- tops in the nation among freshmen -- and will continue to be the "go-to" player in the Lady Rebels' offense.

But Miller insists the Lady Rebels won't be a single-dimension team. Miller has recruited several potential offensive threats in an attempt to take some of the pressure off Frohlich.

"We've been able to provide Linda more help offensively," Miller said. "We have recruited a few additional offensive weapons that give us other looks offensively instead of relying on one person to handle the bulk of the scoring -- which is going to make Linda even a better player.

"Instead of her going 15-for-26, we'll give her 15 shots and she can make 12 of them, without having to face double- and triple-teams every night."

Among the newcomers whom Miller expects to make an immediate impact are 5-6 guard Dayna Gambill, a transfer from Lassen Junior College in Hawaii; Carlesa Dixon, a 6-0 freshman forward out of Texas; Constance Jinks, a 5-6 freshman guard out of Chicago; and Kinesha Davius, a 5-9 redshirt sophomore who sat out last season after transferring from Western Illinois.

Returning along with Frohlich are Erin Johansson, a 6-0 guard, Brooke Ingalls, a 6-0 forward and Courtney Swanson, a 5-11 forward.

And Miller promises that this year's UNLV team will be fun to watch.

"The neat thing about this group is we can mold them into what style of play we think will best fit their abilities, which will be up-tempo," Miller said. "We'll be more of a pressure-defense team, we'll try to create turnovers to create fastbreak opportunities.

"We have three or four players who have the ability to score 20 points a game and we're going to look to score a lot of points. We averaged 65 or 70 points a game last year with what we had and I think maybe this year we can get that thing up even higher, 80 points or so."

The Lady Rebels open the season with a pair of exhibition games on Nov. 6 and Nov. 10, then take on UC Santa Barbara, likely to be ranked in the preseason top 20, on the road in the first round of the Women's Preseason NIT.