Oregon State Women's Basketball: Update for the 2011-2012 Season
by rvm on Jan 25, 2012 10:37 AM PST
in Oregon State Women's Basketball
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With most of the attention being garnered by the men's team (both good and bad so far this season) I wanted to take a moment to update everyone on the women's season so far. Not totally sure it is the mid-way point overall, but the women are also on the final stretch of their 2011-12 season.
The women this season are also having their struggles in conference play with a record of 3 and 5. Much like their counterparts the men the team started out well in non-conference play going 9 and 2 and winning their first six games (including a non-record counting exhibition game). Funny enough the women also have paralled the men with some tough conference losses, such as a double OT loss to Washington State and a last second loss to Arizona. At the same time they have had some impressive overall performances such as beating Arizona State and playing the 4th ranked Cardinal tough in a 67 to 60 loss that the Beavs were winning at half time (35 to 31).
I was at the Arizona loss and it was interesting in how much it reminded my of watching the men's team this year in that the Beavs and WIldcats played a pretty rough first half, then things got going in the second half and actually looked as if OSU was going to take control, but then some sloppy last minute play and execution on both sides of the ball ended in a heartbreaking loss much like what happened when the men played Arizona! But from my brief observations this season I was impressed with the inside game of the Beavs, especially on defense such as Patricia Bright (featured in the upper right) who has a mind-staggering 66 blocks to date! (But wow is women's basketball officiating the polar opposite of men's in that they actually let them play?!?)
Some highlights so far this season for the Beavs include: Patricia Bright's average of 3.5 blocks per game that leads the Pac-12 and is fourth in the country (and is the sixth-most in a single season challenging the record set last season by El Sara Greer). Sage Indendi (right) making her 100th career three-pointer (now is at 102). And the team's leading scorer being Freshman Ali Gibson. Additionally for the most part, except for two games (losses to pretty good St. Marys and California teams), the team has not lost games by large margins and have been in the middle of almost all their games. Of course all these individual accomplishments and team minor victories does not mean they will all end up translating into a winning record, but the signs are there for a possible strong final run this season.
Following are some season stats and a few more pics, and just to note that women's Civil War game will be televised live this Saturday on FSN at 4:00 in what looks to be an important game for both teams in terms of conference standings.
RECORDALL GAMES: (12-7 overall) (7-3 home) (5-3 away) (0-1 neutral)
CONFERENCE: (3-5 overall) (2-2 home) (1-3 away)
NON-CONFERENCE: (9-2 overall) (5-1 home) (4-0 away) (0-1 neutral)
TEAM and INDIVIDUAL STATS
Retrieved from: http://www.osubeavers.com/sports/w-baskbl/stats/2011-2012/teamcume.html
Oregon State's Leading Scorer Ali Gibson (Freshman)
More in the post play: ShaKiana Edwards-Teasley (Junior)
Again it is a bit strange and interesting the ways in which both basketball teams this season started strong, have had issues in conference play, and in general are teams demonstrating inconsistent and frustrating swings of performance. One good example is how the women snapped an 18 game losing streak to ASU this season just as the men snapped their losing streak to UCLA. Overall the women, much like the men, still have a chance to make a run to a postseason berth (NIT being the best bet), but it is going to take a good amount of work and the women's team needs to find some consistency and confidence playing to their strengths that to me look to be their in the post game.
And again remember the CW game is coming up this Saturday at 4:00!
Go Beavs!
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kudos
to Rueck. He has taken a program that was in complete disarray and turned it around very quickly.
Great post.
The parallels define a pair of teams
that both have a lot of young players still learning how to play to their potential with consistency.
The women’s Pac-12 has an perpetually elite team (Stanford), and a real good team (California) that is always chasing them. But after their coaching change kind of brought UCLA down a notch, we have a 10 team dogfight behind the top 2 where who wins any given game often comes down to individual matchups and who has a player get hot at some key stretch.
Watching coach Rueck’s teams last year and this, one can see real progress as far as what the idea is that he’s trying to do. A lot of the close losses, like with the guys, can be very frustrating to sit through, but in both cases, the inexperience factor at this level is something that still is impacting things.
The losing-streak busting win over Arizona St. and the overtime win as USC are indeed signs that that next step is beginning to be taken against better teams.
Coach Rueck has expressed to me before the difference between teaching players to be able to play competitively, which he, like Coach Robinson with the men, has done, and teaching how to be able to pull out close games consistently, the task currently at hand.
Lack of depth was a huge deal for the womens’ team last season, where too many key players were playing a few too many minutes out of necessity.
Some JC additions this year have helped, but its easy to see that the leap in the womens’ game from some JC programs to the DI power conference level is a much bigger jump than in the mens’ game.
I would love to have seen Coach Rueck get Shakiana Edwards-Teasley and Thais Pinto as freshmen; watching and comparing their progress from early in the preseason up to a recent conference game makes me think they will be gone just about the time they are really getting up to full potential.
Andy Wooldridge, andy_wooldridge@yahoo.com
BuildingTheDam.Com
Go Beavs!
let me add,
they played Stanford close for much of the game and they just lost by 7 pts.
by ximiankernel on Jan 26, 2012 2:17 AM PST up reply actions
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