Maryland women’s basketball team head coach Brenda Frese is turning heads online, especially among tennis fans, after an intense coaching moment with her star player, Oluchi Okananwa.
During Maryland’s second-round NCAA Tournament game against UNC, when the team was struggling, Frese seemed to be giving an earful to her star player, Okananwa, who was having a rough stretch with turnovers. Frese pulled her aside and delivered a face-to-face, emotional pep talk. Lip-readers and reports say she told her:
“I believe in you, but you gotta want this moment.”
Her hard coaching style is somewhat completely different when it comes to tennis. In here, players are actually more emotional than coaches, who are generally calm and composed. However, fans believe that some players on tour can benefit from such a hard coaching style.
“Can she coach tennis, I have a friend I’d like to put her in touch with,” one fan asked.
“Iga, I found someone to coach you. bonus: she’s blonde,” one fan reacted.
“Nah mate. In tennis this sort of thing would be an instant investigation for abuse,” one fan commented.
“Somebody need to do this to Taylor and Tiafoe,” one fan reacted.
“There would be pearl clutching if this happened in a tennis stadium,” another added.
“Absolutely nothing wrong here. Only ones crying never played sports or quit sports growing up. Sorry but will never make sports soft and never should be,” another reacted.
Oluchi Okananwa Reacts on Viral March Madness Moment With Coach Brenda Frese
After the game, which saw UNC defeat Maryland 74-66 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, Okananwa was asked about the viral moment with head coach Brenda Frese. Okananwa, who had 21 points, six rebounds, one assist, and two steals in the game, defended her coach and actually embraced the moment.
“Coach understands I’m a competitor at heart, and I’ve told her this before and I’ll keep on telling her this until forever: I love to be coached hard, and that’s what she does with me every single day,” Okananwa said.
Okananwa also explained the moment wasn’t negative at all.
“Really what that was was a regroup moment for myself, and her telling me she believed in me,” Okananwa said. “Because sometimes that’s all you really need to hear to get back out there. It’s a long game, lots of ups and downs and I feel like after that conversation, that’s when I really went back out and just did what I had to do for my team in that moment. I’m forever appreciative of that.”
Maybe someday tennis players will embrace such type of coaching where it’s the experienced ones who can get a handle on players wanting to improve.
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