With half the regular season remaining, Carolyn Ganes is fast becoming the Oregon women’s basketball team’s super sub.
Her numbers are enough to impress. Despite starting just one of the Ducks’ 15 games so far, Ganes is averaging 9.1 points and 3.6 rebounds.
With 15 three-pointers, Ganes has already surpassed last season’s total of 14. She’s also getting more playing time than she managed over the last couple of years – 17.4 minutes per game.
But Ganes doesn’t view this season as a breakout year of any sort.
“I honestly haven’t thought about it that much at all,” Ganes said. “I’m just trying to come out everyday and give it my all, go out with no regrets.”
Ganes was a starter during her freshman year in 2002. But thereafter, she battled ankle injuries and back problems and saw her role with the team diminish. She ended up redshirting her junior year in 2004 to try to get back in shape and to improve her game.
“Heading into that season, we had Catherine (Kraayeveld) back from injury, and we were really deep in the post position,” Ganes said. “I think redshirting that year was a really good decision basketball-wise because it was a good opportunity to not be in competition, but to still get to play in practice everyday at a very high level against players like Catherine and Andrea (Bills).”
This year, Ganes has taken on a bigger role with the team partially because of the Ducks’ shallow roster, and a dearth of big players.
“Carolyn’s definitely matured as a basketball player,” assistant coach Phil Brown said. “Even though she had a little bit of a disruptive off-season coming off her foot injury, she’s worked really hard in the pre-season to add things to her game.
“Rebounding on the defensive end, hitting more than just the jump shot, being able to hit a post up game on the inside, and working on the perimeter offensively – they’re all the things that she’s starting to add to the fact that she’s a great shooter.”
Ganes’ shooting accuracy – an unusual strength for a post-player – has always been her bread and butter, and the 6-foot-3-inch forward credits her father with getting her to develop a deadly shot from a young age.
“When my dad was coaching me, he would always make sure I would practice shooting from the outside because when he was playing in university he found that that was one of the things that hampered him in the end: He just didn’t have a good inside-outside game,” Ganes said.
Roger Ganes coached his daughter in basketball until she was in eighth grade. And even though Carolyn Ganes doesn’t want to coach basketball after she’s done playing, she says she would welcome the opportunity to coach her kids the way her dad coached her.
“If my kids wanted to play basketball, I’d definitely coach them like my dad coached me. I really liked it, it gave us a chance to bond and I think it was a good thing that we did together,” Ganes said
Ganes’ maturation as a basketball player extends beyond her ball skills and game aptitude: her experiences playing with the Canadian national team convinced her to drop all of her elaborate pre-game rituals.
“I used to be really superstitious,” said Ganes, whose pre-game rituals used to include a nap, a shower, and a scene from “Without Limits”, the 1998 movie about legendary Oregon runner Steve Prefontaine.
Ganes said she would watch the scene in which Prefontaine competes at the 1972 Olympics.
“That movie still inspires me, and every time I watch it, I seriously think he’s going to win the race. It’s heartbreaking every time,” Ganes said. “But I found it almost kinda dangerous to start getting into rituals. Especially when you’re playing internationally.
“The most random things can happen at any time and there’s no way you can control everything, so it’s best to just be able to play no matter what.” [email protected]