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AYLA GUZZARDO – Head Coach of the McNeese Cowgirl Basketball Team
by Matt Dye
There were rumors swirling around the Legacy Center during the Southland Conference basketball tournaments that McNeese Athletic Director Heath Schroyer was ready to make a move. Already spearheading a men’s basketball renaissance with the hiring of Will Wade in 2023, Schroyer was ready to bring championships to the women’s game, and to do that, he went and got a championship winning coach in Ayla Guzzardo. Guzzardo’s story is one of grit, intelligence and a winning attitude.
Where does your love for basketball come from?
I’m competitive. I love to compete and have played sports my entire life. Basketball was something that would get me to college and help me get a degree.
I went to JuCo out of high school. Loved my junior college. Went to Shelton State in Alabama. Was there for two years, got recruited to University of Akron for my remaining two years, finished my degree at Akron and loved it so much that I decided to go into coaching.
Why coaching?
If I couldn’t play it, I wanted to coach it. I got my master’s degree at Akron, got promoted to an assistant and was there for about three years. We went to the NCAA tournament for the first time in program history at Akron. And then I was like, I’m covered in confetti, but my family’s not here. I wanted to do it back home (in Hammond, Louisiana).
So, I went home and worked in a detention center for a year trying to figure out what I wanted to do.
That wasn’t on the bio . . . .
It wasn’t. They skipped that part. But that impacted my life a lot.
I got into college ball at Southeastern, was an assistant for a year and then got promoted to head coach after the old coach resigned due to health issues. I was 28. The program was in bad shape, so it could only go up from there. But I had the community’s support and my family’s support.
And then things got better every year. Last year, 19-1 . . . .
That was tough.
The conference tournament loss?
Yeah.
But after that, that’s when Heath goes, I’m going to go talk to her.
That’s a whole different story. How much time do we have?
How many players did you bring with you?
There’s nine of them.
And how many total players are there on the team?
14. Nine of 14. I took some signees, too, so I can add those in there. So, 11.
You’re bringing a whole team! What’s that like? Because you’re rebuilding a program, but you’re not . . . .
I love the idea. Yeah, everybody’s question is where are you going to be in the preseason polls? I say I have no idea. Because last year I finished first and McNeese finished 10th.
But it doesn’t matter to me because we know what we’re putting on the court every year, what we’re recruiting, what we’re able to teach. I know we can only go up from here, but our goal is so much higher than just up. We want to bust through the roof, and we want to make sure we make our presence known here.
How would you describe your style of play?
We’re fast paced on both sides of the floor. Offensively, my break starts with my point guard, Jalencia Pierre. She’s 97 pounds, soaking wet, two-time defensive player of the year, but she gets us going.
We don’t want to live and die by the three. We want to score in the paint. We want that contact.
Our bench energy has got to be unreal every game. I watch film, and then on timeouts, I’ll watch the bench. I want to make sure that we’re up because at the end of the day, these people are paying for a ticket to watch us. We want to give them a show.
So, we’re fast-paced offensively and defensively. We create a lot of steals. We were sixth in defensive in the country last year, and we want to stay up there. We create havoc, and we want to make sure we cause it every day.
Who are some other players to keep an eye on?
It changes every day. Ty Sibley was a freshman last year. She got a lot of play-in time. She’s just a freak of an athlete.
Ariana Patton is my little bitty shooter. And she shoots the ball deep, and it’s a quick shot. So when she gets streaky, it’s scary.
Then I’ve got guards that can slice and dice. Carley Hamilton and Allasia Washington have been showing up and doing well. Kaili Chamberlain was here at McNeese, transferred, came to Austin Peay for a few months, came to me at Southeastern. Now I’ve brought her back to McNeese.
And then you go to my bigs, and the bigs are fun because they haven’t been seen a lot.
So it’s some names that Lake Charles hasn’t really seen, but they’ve been working.
With the team that you’ve brought, there’s some people who think that if you don’t win, its not a good year.
I know. And I’m going to say it’s pressure, but it’s pressure that we put on ourselves. Because if I was still at Southeastern, it’s championship or bust. For the past four years, that’s all we’ve been thinking of. It’s programmed in my head.
Our players, our coaches, our managers, the trainers, everybody’s on the same page. Championship or bust. You’ve got to have that thought process. And if you do, then it’s the only place your focus is at.
BILL ARMSTRONG – Head Coach of the McNeese Cowboy Basketball Team
by Matt Dye
On March 25, Bill Armstrong was named the new McNeese Men’s Basketball coach, charged with creating the Cowboys next era. The expectations are high, but Armstrong has a background that has more than prepared him, from his time as a player at University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to positions at Ole Miss, LSU and Baylor. It’s now his time to take the reins and lead the Bayou Bandits on that path of success, bringing McNeese Mayhem throughout the Southland Conference.
Your father was a coach. Is it safe to say that coaching has been in your blood since birth?
My dad was my high school basketball coach, and he coached me in college at UAB. Even further back in the lineage, my grandfather was a head football coach at Sanford University and a high school football coach as well.
So yes, coaching is certainly in the Armstrong blood. And basketball itself has given me so many opportunities and helped me see or allowed me to see so many different things and meet so many people. I couldn’t be more grateful for it.
When did you first pick up a basketball? Was it always your sport of choice?
I think I picked up a ball by the time I was walking. It was always basketball. You know, I played baseball all the way through high school. I love baseball, but basketball was always my passion. Baseball was something that I did as a hobby after basketball season was over just to kind of regroup.
You started as a graduate assistant in 2001 and worked your way through numerous positions. Now, you’re finally a college head coach. Tell us about your journey.
I learned a lot in all those stops, from 2001 on. At UAB, my alma mater, learning under Coach Murray Bartow, from there going on to Chipola Junior College and then to Birmingham Southern with Dwayne Reboll, who is a Louisiana native, was enlightening.
Then I went to work for Andy Kennedy at Ole Miss. I was a ball boy at UAB when he played, and my dad was on staff there, so that relationship started a long time ago. And then I was a player at UAB when he was an assistant coach. Or, you know, I was on the team.
From there, I was able to go and be with our guy Will Wade at LSU for five years. At each and every step, I learned so much.
But you have been a head coach?
Yes, I was the head coach at Link Academy for two years, which gave me an opportunity to run my own program. Link Academy is more like a college in the sense that you recruit all your players. We had 10 scholarships, and so each year we had to recruit a whole new team.
So that gave me head coaching experience. Even though it wasn’t at the college level, it was very similar in the day-to-day operations.
Then I got to my final year as an assistant to work under Scott Drew, a first Ballot Hall of Famer who’s won a national championship, and saw how he operated on a day-to-day basis.
How do you handle what can only be looked at as high expectations for this McNeese team?
I’ve been asked that question a lot, you know, and I understand the question, but I can’t imagine there being a different answer.
It’s always been a dream and a goal of mine to be a winning head coach. And to be able to come to a place that over the last two years has had back-to-back Southland Conference Championships, both regular season and tournament, then getting to the NCAA tournament two years in a row, and then last year winning a game, is a dream.
To be able to take over a program like that . . . that opportunity doesn’t come along very often. And for that to be given to me, I couldn’t be more grateful and more excited about embracing those expectations.
With all the new players you’re bringing in, what kind of identity do you see this team having?
We recruit to how we want to play. I think that’s what all good programs do. With this team, we recruited to a very similar style that you’ve seen over the last two years.
Defensively, it’ll be very similar. We’re going to try to up the tempo with our pressure and create opportunities, turning defense into offense, but defense will be our identity. We recruited length and athleticism to where we can switch everything and guard every single position on the floor.
How will that length translate offensively? Will we see a 3-point team or will it be more in the paint?
On the offensive side of the ball, we want to be playing inside out. Mostly that will be great ball movement, great player movement, great spacing, and trying to get the ball to the paint and then kicking out or dumping down for easy baskets. We want to shoot a lot of threes and a lot of layups and get fouled a lot.
Then just trying to teach the players about spacing and pace. We do want to play as fast as we can, but I think when you hear fast, people think chaotic with no rhyme or reason. That’s not what we want to do. We want to get the ball out and push it up to court and just put a lot of pressure on the defense to get back or they’re going to give up an easy basket.
