Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
College Station, Texas — It’s not so much a case of ignorance is bliss, as it is the belief: Why clutter your mind with stuff that does not matter?
“This is not the Texas A&M team that won the national championship,” Wright State coach Katrina Merriweather said Thursday. “I don’t even know if our kids even know they won a national championship. We haven’t talked about it. We haven’t said anything.
“All we’ve literally talked about is this team here.”
She was referring to the No. 4-seeded Aggies who face 13th-seeded Wright State on Friday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Reed Arena on the campus of Texas A&M University.
Merriweather has dissected A&M’s current 24-7 team with her players, but has not focused on the storied history of the Aggies, who are making their 14th straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament, made their sixth appearance in the Sweet 16 last year and won the national crown in 2011.
Meanwhile the 27-6 Raiders are in their second NCAA Tournament in program history.
“But this (Aggies) team starts four sophomores and their bench is not very deep,” Merriweather said “Now I’m not going to discount their level of play. And I have a tremendous amount of respect for their coach Gary Blair. But there are some things that make this a winnable game for us.
“Sometimes when you walk in and compare two teams, you just can’t quite figure out where you have an advantage or how anything is going to work.
“Our kids are confident. They know they’re going to have to play well — that this can’t be one of those 0-for-19 starts — but they believe we have a chance to win.”
