On Women's Basketball

A season on the brink

Posted by: Tony Bleill

Monday, February 8, 2010 6:21 PM

Thoughts from Sunday's Illini-Indiana game at the Assembly Hall ...

--Spent part of Sunday pondering whether the Illini will find a way not to finish in last place. Illinois hasn't finished last since Kathy Lindsey's final season (1994-95), and if I had to guess -- you all know how bad my predictions have been lately -- I'll say that Illinois finishes 10th.

The road ahead isn't bright. There are three road games: at Iowa, which has been playing much better lately and already owns a win against Illinois; at Michigan State; and at Northwestern. The home games are against Purdue, which has been awful on the road, and Northwestern. I could see Illinois winning as many as two of the remaining five. My top candidate to finish last is Minnesota, which has hit the skids to an even greater degree than Illinois, as we saw a week ago in Minneapolis. The Gophers have lost six in a row and their remaining schedule is brutal.

--Looking for a reason to maintain hope? I mentioned before that the last time Illinois finished 11th in the Big Ten was '94-95. The roster that season? It included freshmen Ashley Berggren, Krista Reinking and Nicole Vasey, among others. Two seasons later, they were the nucleus of a team that won a Big Ten title. Could it be that Amber Moore, Adrienne GodBold and Karisma Penn are the Berggren, Reinking and Vasey of this group?

Hey, I'm tryin' to give you some hope, here. Cut me some slack.

--Had two people on Sunday ask me about the status of Jolette Law's contract. So, in case you're wondering, too, here it is: Law's contract runs through April 30, 2012, which means there are two seasons remaining. She makes $300,000 annually.

--For whatever it's worth, UI AD Ron Guenther was at Sunday's game, the second straight home game he has attended. In my 12 seasons on the beat, I can tell you this: Guenther's appearances are rare. He usually shows up for one or two of the biggest games during the season and then for Senior Day. Terry Cole, the UI's senior associate athletic director who is in charge of women's basketball, is at every home game.

--As bad as the play on the court was, the scene in the stands was uplifting. Great to see a good turnout on an important day, the Pink Zone game to raise funds and awareness for breast cancer.

--As we have discussed previously, Illinois' dysfunctional offense has myriad problems, but there's one that is, to me, almost unsolveable until the personnel changes: Illinois has very little accuracy from the perimeter. Indiana dared the Illini to win the game from the three-point line -- and Illinois tried, with little success. "When the lights come on, you've got to be confident enough to knock down shots," Law said. Fair enough. By this point, we have ample evidence that Illinois doesn't have the wherewithal to make those shots consistently, whether those players are sporting confidence or not. It seems to me that when you're missing shots, you lose confidence. When you're making shots, you have confidence. It's pretty hard to be confident when you're missing shots; that's just human nature.

Illinois misses a lot of shots. Many of those shots are essentially uncontested, mostly because teams choose to leave the UI's perimeter players unguarded. So, what's Law to do? Option A: Get the players in the gym to work on their shooting. I think it's safe to say that Law has taken that route. Whether the players are putting in the extra time required during the offseason or at other times is pure speculation, but we all know that the harder you work, the more you'll get out of it. Option B: Recruit players who can shoot. That area, outside of Amber Moore, appears to have been neglected.

So let's go a little further. How is it that a team like Iowa -- which doesn't have a high school All-American on the roster -- consistently can find effective offensive players (in general) and shooters (in particular)? It's two-fold: Lisa Bluder mines the Iowa-Minnesota-Missouri corridor for kids who can put the ball in the hoop. Then she plugs them into an offensive system that emphasizes spacing and cutting and shooting. It's about recruiting the right  player and then utilizing that player's skills to your advantage.

--Spent Thursday and Friday at the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis participating in an NCAA-sponsored "mock bracket." It was spearheaded by the selection committee's chairwoman, Jane Meyer of Iowa, and Sue Donohoe, the NCAA' s vice president for women's basketball. I'll be writing about the experience for Sunday's News-Gazette and IlliniHQ. Click here for a brief video of the event (the guy sitting to my right is Dayton coach Jim Jabir.)

 

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