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March 24, 2006 > Sports > Indiana defeats Owls in WNIT

Indiana defeats Owls in WNIT

By Amber Obermeyer | Thresher Editorial Staff

With 12 players returning from the team that won the 2005 Western Athletic Conference championship, expectations for the women’s basketball team were high entering the 2005-‘06 season, which concluded Saturday with a loss to Indiana in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament. But those expectations changed in November, when starting guards Maudess Fulton and Whitney McCauley, both sophomores, were lost for the season with knee ligament tears.

Injuries left the Owls vulnerable to a murderous non-conference schedule that included four road games against top-60 teams. Rice went 4-7 in non-conference games overall, including three losses by less than five points.

The beginning of the Conference USA slate was no kinder to the Owls, as the vagaries of the conference’s scheduling meant that Rice’s first six C-USA games included four on the road and four against the conference’s top five teams. The Owls went just 2-4 in that stretch, culminating in a loss to Southern Methodist University that dropped the team to 6-11 overall and that included a season-ending Achilles tendon tear for junior guard Krystal Frazier.

“The low point was when we were 6-11 and had just lost our leading scorer [in Frazier],” head coach Greg Williams (Hanszen ‘70) said. “But I’ll certainly remember the way this team refused to quit and finished the year extremely strong. … I’m very proud of this team, and I think they did a fantastic job in a lot of adverse situations.”

After Frazier’s injury, the Owls — despite using just an eight-player rotation for most of their games — won 12 of their last 15 games, advancing to the C-USA championship game as well as the WNIT. Rice has now made three consecutive postseason appearances and seven in the last nine years. Williams said consistency is important for the program.

“It would have been disappointing for us not to have gotten to the postseason when there were such high expectations for the team from the beginning,” Williams said. “We returned 12 players who went to the NCAA tournament, but we’ve tried to stress that this is our third year in a row in the postseason and seventh in nine — that’s how you build tradition, and that will most certainly help in recruiting.”

In the WNIT, Rice defeated Jackson State University 64-48 at home March 15 before losing at Indiana University 67-57 Saturday. In both games, the Owls got off to a slow start, trailing by at least 10 points in the first 12 minutes.

Against Jackson State, Rice answered by using its taller and superior post players to dominate the Tigers inside, and the Owls had tied the game by halftime. But Indiana, which had strong post players of its own, prevented Rice from making a first-half run. The Owls cut the Hoosiers’ lead to six points twice early in the second half but could never get any closer.

“The Indiana game was very similar to our Jackson State game in that we came out very flat,” Williams said. “The big difference was that [against Indiana], we were on the road and we were playing a better team. … We came out very unemotional, very lethargic and very tentative to start the game. When we started playing with more energy, it was too big a hill to climb.”

One highlight of the Owls’ WNIT run was the continued development of two sophomores who played important roles in the team’s late-season run. Center Valeriya Berezhynska averaged 10 points and 8 rebounds over the team’s last 15 games, using her 6-foot-4 frame to increase her aggression. Berezhynska was the team’s leading scorer and rebounder against Indiana, with 18 and 6.

Point guard Kadie Riverin led the team in shooting percentage this season — which is rare for a guard — and the Owls’ short-handedness on the perimeter forced her to take more shots late in the season. Riverin had her best offensive game of the year against Jackson State, scoring a career-high 20 points including two momentum changing three-pointers.

“Coach had been telling me I need to be more aggressive, and I think that was the time to do it,” Riverin said. “No one else was really stepping up, so I felt that I had to.”

Due to the injuries, senior guards Amber Cunningham and Latrice Elder and junior forward Samantha Stovall played more minutes than would have been expected entering the season. Williams said he was pleased with the 6-foot Stovall’s development this year.

“When Krystal had her injury, we were playing Samantha on the perimeter and in the post,” Williams said. “From that point on, she became strictly a perimeter player. She made some huge improvements in that part of her game, and it gives us a great dimension to have someone with her size who can play on the perimeter.”

Another possible benefit from the injuries, Williams said, is that the team now has a more equal distribution of talent between classes. Fulton and McCauley both redshirted, meaning that they will be sophomores next year

“That balances our talent and our class size, and down the road that could really be the hidden blessing for the entire program,” Williams said.

Next year, Rice will have to do without the four seniors on this year’s roster: Cunningham, Elder, guard Rosyland Jeffries and center Catherine DuPont.

Cunningham was a key offensive contributor for the Owls down the stretch, scoring 12 or more points five times in their last 15 games. Cunningham played a particularly important role offensively in the C-USA championship game, hitting three three-pointers at critical times to keep the game close.

Elder, the team’s emotional leader, played as many minutes as her chronic knee problems would allow, settling the team down with her steady ball-handling and using her speed to maintain the Owls’ up-tempo game. Sometimes, after a Friday night game, Elder would be unable to walk on Saturday but would manage to play 15 key minutes on Sunday.

A shoulder injury kept Jeffries out of the team’s last 13 games, but the sharp-shooter contributed 11 points in just 22 minutes against Davidson in December. Jeffries also sank many clutch shots in her previous three seasons with the Owls, buoying them to a home win against the University of Texas-El Paso in 2004 with a cool shooting touch off the bench.

DuPont joined the team last year after four years on the volleyball team. She played just eight minutes last season as she got reacquainted with basketball, before playing that many minutes per game this season. Having four post players allowed Rice to often wear down its opponents inside, and DuPont, at 6-foot-4, presented matchup problems for other teams even when she did not score.

Williams, who was in his first season as coach this year, has signed three players, including two point guards, for next year. With the Owls’ six leading scorers returning and the team becoming more acquainted with the new coaching staff, Williams said he has high hopes for next year’s team.

“When I took the job and started looking at our roster, I knew that — even though this team had high expectations — our best team on paper would be next year,” Wiliams said. “We return our top six scorers along with Maudess and Whitney who would have certainly been in our top-eight rotation this year.”

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