In her freshman year, she was thrown into the deep end. What she probably felt was, “Sorry, we’ve a bunch of injuries, you need to play and we are counting on you to be good!” Well, initially she was not good. There was so much that she was trying to do, so much to learn, so much that she felt was all depending upon her and she was just not there yet.
Maybe a quarter of the way into that freshmen season, I recall seeing an interview with Geno Auriemma. He indicated that he pulled her aside and spoke with her. He said to her, “Last year in high school, what was your role on your team? You were the scorer for them, right? You primarily scored the points?” Ashlynn indicated that yes, that was her role. She scored a lot.
Geno finished that by saying, “Listen, we would like you to play great defense, and be a great rebounder, be able to steal the ball, block shots, and pass, but let step back from all of those right now. Why don’t you help our team right now by concentrating on doing what you did last year?”
“I know you can score Ashlynn. I watched you score. I recruited you. I don’t want you sloppy on any of the other facets, but what we need from you is to shoot the ball. And let's be clear about something, you are going to miss some, and I don’t care. I just don’t care if you miss. Why, because I have confidence in the fact that you are an above average shooter. And even if you miss some, I would rather it be Ashlynn taking the shots then others we have. You just need to go do it. Can you help us score?” -Ashlynn Shade turned out to be Big East Freshman of the Year.
In her sophomore year, last season, her scoring seemed to take a step back. It bothered me! I think if you look at Ash’s statistics, game by game, and plotted her scoring you would find that she was (is) probably amongst the most inconsistent scorer UConn had (has). She has had games, example against Audi Crooks and Iowa State where Ashlynn scored 58 points in the first quarter … okay, well maybe not that many, but she single handedly beat Iowa State so bad in the first 10-minutes that they were unrecoverable. Then the next games to follow; Ash would score 2 pts. Then back it up to scoring 9, then not score at all, score 4 in the next, then not even take a shot …
At that point, last season, I was still envisioning Ashlynn as being one of the teams “Primary Scorers” and that was based upon the Auriemma interview I saw in her freshman year. Last year, she was just not a consistent 12-point per game scorer which is what I envisioned of a "Primary Scorer". And her lack of consistency in scoring, well, it bothered me.
I will say right now, it does not bother me anymore! And in hindsight it should not have bothered me last year (what a fool I was). It does not bother me because she has morphed her game. She is not just a ‘primary scorer’. In fact, that is not really what she is about at all. She is so much more than that, she is not one dimensional!
Perhaps she will get to 1,400. But, if she doesn’t, I don’t care. And frankly, I don’t think she would care either because she really is so much more than that. Being the primary scorer on the team is not what she is about. Ask her about winning; I think that is what she cares about!