The 2009-10 season couldn’t have come any sooner for the Oregon women’s basketball team. Now, it’s finally here.
Two transfers, four new players and the hiring of an NBA and WNBA-champion head coach later, the Ducks have emerged from their 9-21 season — the worst in school history — reborn and reinvigorated. Tonight’s 7 p.m. contest against Eastern Washington at McArthur Court represents their first chance to make it count.
“We are building confidence in the girls, in themselves and in the program,” assistant coach Kai Felton said. “This offense and defense are going to bring them success.”
Oregon’s offense has gone from impotent to powerful, scoring 109 points in each of its two exhibition games. Players have bought into head coach Paul Westhead’s fast-break offense. The offensive numbers resemble drastic improvement for the Ducks, who were last in the Pac-10 in scoring.
The women still face several obstacles. Sophomore forward Jasmin Holliday, a probable starter, will not play tonight after returning to her home in Chino Hills, Calif., for what Felton referred to as a “family emergency.” Head coach Paul Westhead said he does not know when to expect Holliday back, or how she will figure into his rotation when she gets back.
With the players he does have, Westhead’s primary focus has been limiting turnovers. The Ducks committed 24 turnovers against the Raiders and 19 against the Wolves. How does Westhead plan on accomplishing this goal?
Push the pace, of course.
“Surprisingly, the faster we go, the less turnovers we have. We keep trying to get them to run the break even faster,” he said. “The faster you go, the more open your pass receivers are and therefore it’s an easier play. The slower you go, the more difficult the pass becomes, and the more turnovers can go up.”
Westhead also intends to bring the defense — a constant, full-court, man-to-man press — up to the level of the offense. Early returns are encouraging; Oregon forced 45 turnovers against Southern Oregon and 35 against Western Oregon, but the defense will have to improve with the competition.
“He says that our press is there,” guard Kristi Fallin said. “We’re just not getting into it fast enough.”
“We work our pressing defense every day,” Westhead said, “so we’re just trying to get quicker at it, going from offense to defense in a split second, rather than taking two or three seconds to figure out, where’s my man. We need to snap to it right away.”
Practice repetitions will go a long way toward eliminating those precious seconds.
“It’s everything. It’s physical reactions, it’s awareness reactions,” Westhead said of how to transition from offense to defense quickly. “Normally in basketball, when you score a basket, you feel like there’s this one, two, three-second lull that you can kind of just ease on down before doing the next thing. That lull has been eliminated. You have to snap right onto the next thing.”
Oregon does get a boost with the return of Taylor Lilley, who sat out of the Southern Oregon exhibition game with a sprained ankle. Lilley scored 13 points and dished out five assists in the following contest against Western Oregon. But Lilley’s return could lead to reduced minutes for Micaela Cocks or Nia Jackson, who has performed well in the exhibition season coming off a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee.
“We’re in the process of working on that right now,” Westhead said. “Taylor will be a key player for us, but she hasn’t now because of injury. Other players like Jasmin Holliday, she’s now out of the rotation this week.”
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Ducks opening Westhead era against EWU tonight
Daily Emerald
November 15, 2009
Jack Hunter
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