April 29, 2025
Locked On Women’s Basketball: Coquese Washington talks Rutgers lessons from this season, new roster
Washington: 'You have to put the building blocks in place'
On today’s episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball, Rutgers women’s basketball head coach Coquese Washington joins host Howard Megdal to talk about all of the lessons learned from the Scarlet Knights’ 2024-25 season. Washington and Megdal first discussed the gains the team made during the season, particularly how they started to find their offensive identity:
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“You have to put the building blocks in place,” Washington explained. “You have to put the foundation in place and and sometimes it takes a while to for that to take hold. But when you start to talk about how we wanted to play, and getting the pieces and the players to … be able to execute how we want to play, year by year, we’re getting better in that. … you start talking about stats and analytics, one of the things we were really happy with, and it’s indicative of how we want to play, was we were number one in the Big 10 in transition offense. And that’s big for us, because we want to play fast. We want to be up tempo. And that’s one of those things that allowed us to go in the transfer portal and sign some of the kids we signed. They saw the style of play, they were able to get past the numbers, in terms of win-loss, and look at, okay, this is a style of play that fits me. And so we were able to do that because we put the building blocks in place of how we want to play and we’re getting better year by year, and [I’m] really confident and optimistic and positive that we will continue to see that kind of jump going into next year.”
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Then, Washington explained how Rutgers has so far used the transfer portal:
“We went in the portal with a three prong approach,” she said. “We wanted to get some point guards, more than one, and we wanted to get centers. I’ve been here three years. We haven’t really ever had a true point guard. We haven’t ever really had a true center. We’ve had fours that we’ve played at the center, we’ve had guards that we pushed over to the point guard. But we were like, ‘we have got to get centers, we have got to get point guards, people that, on the team, it’s what they do,’ right? It’s what they do. And then we’ll coach them to be better at it and be great at it. And then we wanted to get some depth at that wing spot, at the forward, small forward, the 2-3-4, spot, we wanted to get some depth, length [and] athleticism. And so we feel really good coming out of of April, about our ability to have handled that and having people playing in their natural positions, and them complimenting each other. You know, that’s a big thing for us in terms of recruiting. We want complimentary pieces that give us versatility, but that also help elevate each other. Because when my game compliments your game, then we can make each other better. And I think we were able to do that.”
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Tune in to hear more from Washington and Megdal about Rutgers’ plans for the upcoming season, what they learned from 2024-25 and their experience in the WNIT. Make sure to subscribe to the Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast to keep learning about women’s college basketball, the WNBA, basketball history and much more!
