BADGERING...
MORGAN PAIGE
���� WOMEN���S BASKETBALL
Junior guard Morgan Paige leads the Badgers at 16.1 points per game. The Marion, Iowa, native has
recorded double-digit scoring in all eight of the Badgers��� games this season, netting a season-high 24 points
in Wisconsin���s 69-50 win over Alabama last Saturday. Paige comes from a basketball family ��� her mother
was her coach and her brother, Marcus, is a freshman at North Carolina.
Your scoring has increased this season. What changed for you this year?
���I have always been told that I have a scorer���s mentality and need to make sure I am taking open shots. In
the off season, having come into a leadership role, being an upperclassman and having experience now, I
am expected to do a little more. I would say it is a natural thing right now. I am not trying to press or do
anything crazy, just letting the game come to me.���
Is the offense giving you a better opportunity to score?
���We are still really young, so we sometimes have a made-up offense where we are not really running
anything, but it still ends up okay. For the most part, the transition of getting the new kids to understand
the offense and having a year under our belt has been a lot better. It���s a lot easier to score and get the offense
ready.���
Now that your brother is playing in college, do you ever give him any advice?
���We actually talk a lot, probably three to four times a week. Whether it���s a text or a funny email or Facetime.
It is always fun to say ���I���ve done this and I���ve been through these kinds of situations, so if you are going
through something similar I can help.��� It is relatability. We are both now in a position where this is our lives,
this is our everyday and it is almost the same.���
Has your relationship changed now that he is playing a sport in college like you?
���We���ve gotten closer. Now the intensity of what we are doing is so high that it���s hard not to bond over it. It is
all we are doing. It is a full-time job to be a student-athlete. He is on the road, he has study table and we are
on the same type of schedule.���
24 �� VARSITY
D EC E M B E R 6, 2012
