Temple women's basketball head coach Dianne Richardson talked to reporters Tuesday afternoon during a media availability session to recap her first season on North Broad Street.

The Owls finished with an 11-18 overall record and ninth in the American Athletic Conference under Richardson in her first year and fell 71-61 to Wichita State in the opening round of the conference tournament in Fort Worth.

Richardson’s first year at the helm for Temple was not short of challenges and bumps in the road, with players like Jasha Clinton and Aniya Gourdine being dismissed from the team while also having one of the tougher nonconference schedules in the country.

Richardson talked about multiple topics Tuesday, including the ups and downs of the season along with the team’s response to them, the type of players Temple is looking for in the transfer portal, and the Owls’ nonconference schedule.

Richardson also confirmed that senior guard Aleah Nelson will be returning next year for her fifth year. Nelson averaged a team-high 15.4 points and 4.4 assists on a career-high 37 minutes per game.

“It’s going to be great,” Richardson said. “Aleah is looking forward to it. She’s ready now that the monkey is off our back to just be ready to play and ready to be a leader, and welcome our new players in. … It’s going to be exciting for her to have a full roster and be able to do some things that she couldn’t do this year because she had to run the point the entire 40 minutes of the game.”

You can listen to Richardson's session with reporters here and read some excerpts from the interview below.

Richardson on the ups and downs this season:

“It was definitely a learning process, we had a lot of ups and downs. Quite frankly, I’m glad it's over. I’m planning next season already. It was a transition. We had some things happen that don’t typically happen, so we had to respond and rebound from it.

Richardson on what Temple is looking to add this offseason:

“We’re looking to solidify our post and then add a couple of guards. We’re going to solidify our post, because we did lose a lot of games based on people going inside on us. We didn’t have enough personnel in the post.”

Richardson on Temple’s plans for the nonconference schedule:

“We’ve got a lot of playbacks. We’ll be playing Ole Miss again, we got the Big 5. We’re adding Northwestern as well, and we’re planning a trip to Arizona State and we’ll play some teams out there to kind of get us tough again, but this year we’ll have more personnel to finish it out.”

Richardson on the team's response to the ups and downs:

“Any time there’s a transition and a new coach, there’s going to be some differences. So we were prepared for the typical transition years, having to lose players and having players off the team was a little bit different midseason. Then,of course, completing the season with only eight players, but I’ve got to tell you – those eight players stepped up and did more than we asked them to do. We didn’t back down from anybody. We played those games and they stepped up.

Richardson on her first season at The Liacouras Center:

“It was great. I mean, the atmosphere was great, and something we had looked forward to before the season. It was a great atmosphere and hopefully we can get those fans and many more out next year.”