For a team that averaged nearly 57 points last year, breaking 100 in two exhibition games has to be encouraging. Still, the women’s basketball team has a lot of work to do before the regular season starts next week, and head coach Paul Westhead is well aware of this.
“We need all of this week to clean some things up,” Westhead said. “We’re going to need three, four, five games into the season to really be sharp in this pressing and running system that we’re trying to put in.”
After struggling a bit in the first half of their final exhibition game against Western Oregon on Sunday, the Ducks caught fire after the intermission. Westhead was especially pleased with the individual performances of some players, particularly junior forward Nicole Canepa.
“She has impressed me in both exhibition games,” Westhead said. “I hope that this is movement forward, that she’ll get more key minutes and can help us, especially inside.”
Sophomore forward Amanda Johnson also played a key role in an early second half run that set the tone against Western Oregon.
“The second half play of Amanda was very helpful to us,” Westhead said. “If we were going to get in a struggle, she got us out of that struggle real fast. She made some real key plays and that turned the game around.”
The Ducks are still adjusting to a newly installed full-court press defense, and it is clear that the system is not firing on all cylinders just yet.
“We need to work on our communication a lot on the press,” Johnson said. “Part of our pressing scheme is to be disorganized and throw the opposing team off, but I think we need to be more on the same page and talk to each other a little bit more.”
The full-court press requires an instantaneous transition from offense to defense and this can take some getting used to. As Westhead has stressed, the only way for the team to fully adjust to this new scheme is through in-game repetition.
“Jumping into the defense, we’re still a little disorganized in our coverage,” Westhead said. “We’re a little late to the coverage, late to the steals. We need to do it over and over again, so no matter who the opponent is, we don’t have to rise to the level, we’re already at that level.”
Getting acquainted with the new run-and-gun offensive system has been no picnic either, but enthusiasm is universal amongst the players. Senior guard Taylor Lilley, who sat out for two weeks with a sore ankle, ran the offense for the first time on Sunday and couldn’t have been more excited about its potential.
“It was just everything I expected,” Lilley said. “Hopefully we can just get better from here on out. We need to, and I think we have a lot of good things to look forward to.”
As can be expected in such a faced-paced offense, turnovers have become an issue. The Ducks had 24 in their first exhibition games against Southern Oregon, and 19 more against Western Oregon.
“(There is) room to improve for sure,” Westhead said. “They have to get to their spaces and spots sooner. The reads aren’t automatic yet.”
A key facet of Westhead’s offense is the breakneck speed at which it is run. When perfected, it can simply wear opponents down, and that is what Westhead is looking for.
“It’s not really how many points you score,” Westhead said. “It’s, ‘What was your pace like?’ and, ‘How were you breaking down the other team?’ You can tell when a team is breaking down when you start getting easy drives to the basket.”
One player that could tire defenses out more than anyone else is Nia Jackson. The 5-foot-7-inch redshirt sophomore ran circles around Western Oregon’s defense, finishing with 23 points on 11-14 shooting. A few times, Jackson was able to weave through all five Western Oregon defenders for an easy layup.
“I love (this offense),” Jackson said. “That’s how I’m used to playing, I love doing it.”
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Oregon still growing to fit the run-and-gun
Daily Emerald
November 10, 2009
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