Tina Thompson scored a game-high 19 points Sunday's All-Star Game. Garrett Ellwood/NBAE/Getty Images

In her 11th season in the WNBA, Thompson is one of the few veterans on the young Comets squad. The Comets endured a difficult 0-10 start to the 2007 season, but won six of its last 10 games heading into the All-Star break.

WNBA.com's Brian Martin spoke with Thompson about the team's early season struggles and her hopes for the Comets as they enter the second half of the season.

Q. What are your predictions for the second half of the season?
THOMPSON: "I don’t know if I can say I have any predictions, but our team is starting to get a little bit more familiar with each other. We had a lot of mental mistakes and just the kind of mistakes that are in reference to our immaturity. But you play the whole half of the season and you have something to build on. I feel that the second half of our season is going to be a lot more promising, so I’m looking to it."

What does your team need to do down the stretch to make a run at the playoffs?
THOMPSON: "In most of the games that we’ve played, we’ve been in them, but we’ve been losing in the last three to five minutes. I think that we just need to be a little bit more efficient and take care of the ball down the stretch. We’re playing teams that are more familiar with one another and they have that maturity that we lack. We're just going to have to be a lot more poised."

With such a young team, how much has the injury to Sheryl Swoopes impacted this team?
THOMPSON: "It’s different, but we’ve there before as well. I’ve had to play without Sheryl as well as Cynthia [Cooper] at times. The load is probably a little bit bigger, a little heavier, but she only played in the first three games and we were 0-3 then too. After probably game six or seven, it was just like we don’t know when she’s going to come back and how soon that’s going to be, so you kind of have to just move forward.

"Although its good news when you know she’s getting to the point where she’s ready to start doing things like running and stuff like that, that means she’s closer to getting back. In the meantime, you just have to push forward because if you’re worrying about when is she coming, you’re not totally focused. Being that we were kind of shorthanded, we needed to be very focused."

After the slow start the team was able to put together some wins toward the break. What do you think was the key to this team breaking through and starting to put things together?
THOMPSON: "I think that it’s just becoming more familiar and my team actually jelling a little bit better. We have a team full of players that have been in the WNBA, but not necessarily had competitive experience. They’ve been on teams, but not necessarily with minutes played. So it makes a difference when you’re thrown into the action or into the fire and you have to produce, where as your role was a lot smaller before. You got a couple minutes here, a couple minutes there and if you did a couple good things in those minutes, then job well done. But now having to put those minutes together into a 20 or 30 minute game, it makes a big difference."