6C
BASKETBALL PREVIEW
COMMENTARY
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2007
Women's season hinges on team's early success
A basketball season is a long and winding road.
The best way to ensure that it's a smooth ride is a solid start, and that couldn't be any truer for this season's women's basketball team.
Last season, the team won four of its first five games, which were against inferior opponents. It then lost six of seven before a disastrous start to Big 12 play.
The problem was that inexperience forced coach Bonnie Henrickson to put three or four freshmen on the court at once.
Throughout the year, those freshmen took their lumps and struggled to grasp the offense. Henrickson admitted to cutting the playbook in half because her young players simply couldn't remember it all.
The team bonded on the court, and with time came a semblance of balance and, eventually, victories.
Kansas started 0-9 in the Big 12 before an overtime victory against Colorado sparked a turnaround, resulting in four more victories in the Jawhawks' last eight games.
Before losing its final game of the season to Baylor, Kansas upset Oklahoma State in the Big 12 tournament, an outcome few people saw coming.
Those final games, along with the amount of experience the team brings back, has Kansas excited about the opportunities of this season.
Everything, however, hinges on how well the Jayhawks get out of the gate in 2007-08.
BY TAYLOR BERN
KANSAN SPORTS COLUMNIST
TBERN@KANSAN.COM
could put the players into the same kind of funk they suffered through last season.
Looking at their schedule, the Jayhawks have the right kind of teams in place to begin a season
They don't play any 2006-07 NCAA tournament teams until Marquette comes to Allen Fieldhouse on Dec. 6. That will give the team six regular season games and two exhibition games to prepare.
This is still a young team, and the Big 12 is still a difficult conference. If the Jayhawks don't go in with an excellent non-conference record, their postseason hopes will be in trouble.
Still, Kansas will travel to Dallas in late November for a two-game tournament. Then in mid-December, the team will head to California to play San Jose State and California.
These road trips will help Henrickson find out if her team is ready to take the next step, as many of her players feel they are.
Furthermore, a tough start
Ivana Catic, junior guard, drives around Kelly Kohn, sophomore guard, during Late Night in the Phog earlier this month. Kohn and the team's five other sophomores struggled last season as freshmen as they adjusted to Big 12 play, but this season could bring bio improvements.
The goal for the Jayhawks is the postseason, and the hope is that they'll pick up right where they left off last season.
>> WOMEN'S BASKETBALL
Women's team ready to grow up
That would be a pleasant experience for Henrickson and her young nucleus of talent. It would also be a step in the right direction for an NCAA tourney bid.
Every team that's finished 8-8 or better in Big 12 Conference history has made it to the postseason.
New leaders emerge as last year's freshmen mature after tough first season
That's definitely possible for this team. The way it's going to find out how far it can go, though, is in the few weeks, and that's plenty of reason to get excited.
Edited by Matt Erickson
BY TAYLOR BERN tbern@kansan.com
KANSAN FILE PHOTO
Freshman mistakes have been known to do that to a coach.
Kansas coach Bonnie Henrickson joked that during her team's tumultuous 2006-07 season, she noticed a few more gray hairs.
All jokes aside, last season was an ultimate test of patience for both players and coaches. Henrickson and her staff were dealing with seven players who didn't know the offense, and early on, the players saw little reward for their efforts.
"Kelly Kohn said it best when she said, 'I've never worked so hard in my life and been so unsuccessful,'" Henrickson said. "I give them credit because every day they came back and were saying, 'Okay, who are we playing next?'
"You don't have that kind of success at the end of the year if kids don't believe in what you are doing."
The Jayhawks did have some success in the end, winning five of their final nine games. Kansas could have won even more games, but it was plagued by late-minute losses.
that role.
Of its 13 conference losses, six of them were by nine points or less. However, all five of the Jayhawks' conference wins were also within nine points.
This year a pair of experienced sophomores, guard Danielle McCray and forward Sade Morris, will try to step into
They were able to scratch and claw to win some close games, but the lack of a go-to player at the end of games kept them from doing it consistently.
said of Morris. "That just show how aggressive she is right now
McCray is to the position, as she returns with a team high 10.5 points per game. Morris only emerged in August on the team's trip to Australia.
"Kelly Kohn said it best when she said, I've never worked so hard in my life and been so unsuccessful."
"I'm just talk-
ing about peo-
ple who want
to have the ball at the end, and
she wants to have it." Henrickson
BONNIE HENRICKSON Kansas coach
She is right now.
Last year she wouldn't have
said that, probably none of
her teammates
would have said that."
Consistency is something this team would desperately like to have, and it will come
because of experience.
"It was kind of tough as a
freshman being in that predicament." McCray said of close games at the end. "but if that situation were to happen again I think that we'd get over it because we've been in that situation before."
What was new and confusing is now old and familiar for this team, meaning close wins should come more often than close losses.
And nothing's better for getting rid of gray than winning.
— Edited by Matt Erickson
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