This week we’ll look at the Washington Huskies and their new Coach, Tia Jackson. When June Daugherty was fired after the past season, for a lack of buzz, Tia inherited a top 10 recruiting class. And quickly that some of this class, all of whom had signed binding Letter of Intent, started to have doubts. Katelan Redmon, an outstanding Wing from Spokane, had very serious doubts, as did New Zealand import Jess McCormack. In addition commit for the 2008 class, Krista Kingma also had doubts.
Fast forward to today, and all appears to be well at udub. Redmon and McCormack are practicing with the team and Kingma, an outstanding “1” or “2” has recommitted to the Huskies. And this turns out to be good news for Tia, as Kingma has a younger sister who could become a Division 1 prospect. Also Redmon’s father is a well known High School and Travel Girls Basketball Coach.
Now it’s up to Jackson to coach this team, and move them into the first Division of the Pac 10 and back into the NCAA’s. And this is Tia’s first Head Coaching job. Of course the actual coaching may be a welcome relief after her great re-recruiting effort.
Washington lost six players from last year’s team; well you have to lose some to bring in so many. Key losses include solid players Jill Bell and Cheri Craddock, and the outstanding Cameo Hicks. Hicks scored 17.2 points per game and wanted the ball in crunch time. However Washington brings in that outstanding class, Top 10 to be sure, and several will play key roles right away.
At the Center position and the “4” will be six players with a chance to play solid minutes. Returning is 6-2 Sr Andrea Plouffe. Andrea averaged 10 points per game last year. Also returning are 6-2 Soph Laura McLellan from the San Jose area, and 6-3 Jr Heidi McNeill. McLellan only scored 2 points per game, but based on her outstanding High School career, I think she will be a solid player for the Huskies.
The excitement comes from the three Frosh post players. Jess McCormack is on the New Zealand National team that recently qualified for the 2008 Olympics. She’s 6-5 and played on the New Zealand National team at ages 15, 16 and 17. Then there is incoming frosh, 6-5 Kali Bennett, ranked # 36 in her class by HoopGurlz. Fellow frosh MacKenzie Argens is 6-3 and also an outstanding prospect.
Katelan Redmon is a true wing, 6-1 and athletic. She is another incoming frosh and ranked # 102 by Hoop Gurlz. She and transfer Michelle Augustavo, a 6-0 JR who transferred from the University of San Diego could be the “3’s”. Michelle holds the single game scoring record at USD, 42 points. In that game she made 10 of 19 three pointers. However she was only 35 of 116 or 30% the rest of that season. Which Michelle will it be this season for the Huskies?
At the Point is the very good 5-5 Sr Emily Florence. OK, Emily’s not a good shooter, but the rest of her game? Wow. She has started all but 3 games during her three years, she led the Pac 10 in steals and was 2nd in assist to turnover ratio and for the 3rd year in a row was the Husky Defensive Player of the Year. In summary, Emily is the perfect Point Guard for this young team.
Off Guards, or “2’s”, are 5-8 Sr Dominique Banks, and 5-10 Soph Sami Whitcomb. . Banks had pre-season surgery a year ago for two stress fractures and came back to average 4.4 points per game. Banks scored over 7 points per game during her first two seasons at Washington. Whitcomb scored 4.3 points per game, and scored her career high of 13 against Stanford. Jr Stephanie Clark left the team at some point after late August. However this could open the door for Frosh Candice Nicholas, ranked # 83 by HoopGurlz. Nicholas cousin, and here’s a trivia question, is Baseball Hall of Famer Eddie Murray.
The back up’s at Point for Florence have encountered injury problems. 5-9 Sara Mosiman is out for the 1st half of the season with stress fractures. Her back up is 5-8 Frosh Sarah Morton, # 66 ranked by HoopGurlz. Sarah is recovering from a leg injury, but could be back soon.
Washington doesn’t look to be a 3 point shooting team, but a team that pounds it inside for their talented post players. It will be interesting to witness Tia’s style of play. The former Stanford, UCLA and Duke Assistant is now in charge.
October 30, 2007
October 18, 2007
Preview of the Pac 10, Washington State
Each week we'll preview the other nine Pac 10 teams as we approach the pre season and continue toward the start of league play. The Pac 10 appears to have 3 Top 12 or so teams as practice starts in the world of College Basketball. Stanford, Cal and Arizona State will all be highly ranked, and USC and maybe UCLA have a chance at the Top 25. There are new Head Coaches at Washington State and Washington, and top recruits joining the Pac 10 as frosh.
We'll start with Washington State, with their old/new Coach June Daugherty. June and husband Mike have moved from Seattle to Pullman. Fired from Washington due to a lack of buzz in the Husky program, they are already creating a buzz at Washington State with a fine recruiting class who will sign their Letters of Intent next month. Change will come slowly in the Palouse, but it has started.
WSU returns their Center from last year, Ebonee Coates, a 6-4 Jr. Coates averaged 4 points and 5 rebounds a game. She will never be a scorer, her high is only 11, but she is a fine rebounder with a high of 14 and about 10 per 40 minutes last season. The back up will be 6-4 Jr Sabrina Shired. She has played little at WSU, but does provide size and some experience.
Outside of the two post players and Forward Heather Molzen a 6-3 Jr, WSU has no players with experience over 5-9. Molzen has played very little in her two years, but the opportunity has certainly presented itself. Fr Katie Calderwood at 6-0 has a chance to see a lot of playing time. She was a fine High School player in Colorado.
Another possibility at a Forward position is Gonzaga transfer Salena Dickerson. Salena is a 5-11 Frosh, not clear why a frosh after transferring from Gonzaga, where she did not play. She was the state of Washington's leading scorer as a High School Sr, averaging 26 points a game. She could add firepower to a team really looking for firepower.
The losses of Kate Benz to graduation and the transfer of top scorer Marisa Stotler of Boise State will ready hurt this year's team in the post area. Marisa transferred just before school started.
You can see why WSU will probably play a 3 guard line up. Returning is 5-8 Jr Katie Appleton who averaged 8 points per game and is a fine 3 point shooter. The other two starters should be 5-7 So Nakejia Kelly who averaged 7 points per game and 5-9 So Colleen Betteridge who averaged 5 points per game. Appleton shot 37% from 3, Kelly lettered 3 years at the famed Christ The King HS in New York City and Betteridge hit 33% from 3.
Other Guards include two frosh, 5-9 Jasmine Williams and 5-6 Kezia Kelly. Williams is a local Washington woman, and a good prospect. Kelly is a recent signee, coming from New Zealand. Kelly played for their National 19U team, and in HS played netball. A Hot Dog if you comment on what netball might be.
WSU suffered a major defection when Amanda DuRocher transferred to an NAIA school. She scored 8 points per game as a frosh last season. Dani Montgomery who scored 4 points per game last year also left the team.
June has a very young team, no Srs and 4 Jrs among the 11 player roster. But she has a fine class coming in next year, four solid players and she's on a mission to prove her past Athletic Director so very wrong. For this season however, the cellar looms for the Cougs.
WSU does have a pretty easy pre-season schedule with a game on the road against North Carolina State and a home against Texas Tech the only major opponents.
We'll start with Washington State, with their old/new Coach June Daugherty. June and husband Mike have moved from Seattle to Pullman. Fired from Washington due to a lack of buzz in the Husky program, they are already creating a buzz at Washington State with a fine recruiting class who will sign their Letters of Intent next month. Change will come slowly in the Palouse, but it has started.
WSU returns their Center from last year, Ebonee Coates, a 6-4 Jr. Coates averaged 4 points and 5 rebounds a game. She will never be a scorer, her high is only 11, but she is a fine rebounder with a high of 14 and about 10 per 40 minutes last season. The back up will be 6-4 Jr Sabrina Shired. She has played little at WSU, but does provide size and some experience.
Outside of the two post players and Forward Heather Molzen a 6-3 Jr, WSU has no players with experience over 5-9. Molzen has played very little in her two years, but the opportunity has certainly presented itself. Fr Katie Calderwood at 6-0 has a chance to see a lot of playing time. She was a fine High School player in Colorado.
Another possibility at a Forward position is Gonzaga transfer Salena Dickerson. Salena is a 5-11 Frosh, not clear why a frosh after transferring from Gonzaga, where she did not play. She was the state of Washington's leading scorer as a High School Sr, averaging 26 points a game. She could add firepower to a team really looking for firepower.
The losses of Kate Benz to graduation and the transfer of top scorer Marisa Stotler of Boise State will ready hurt this year's team in the post area. Marisa transferred just before school started.
You can see why WSU will probably play a 3 guard line up. Returning is 5-8 Jr Katie Appleton who averaged 8 points per game and is a fine 3 point shooter. The other two starters should be 5-7 So Nakejia Kelly who averaged 7 points per game and 5-9 So Colleen Betteridge who averaged 5 points per game. Appleton shot 37% from 3, Kelly lettered 3 years at the famed Christ The King HS in New York City and Betteridge hit 33% from 3.
Other Guards include two frosh, 5-9 Jasmine Williams and 5-6 Kezia Kelly. Williams is a local Washington woman, and a good prospect. Kelly is a recent signee, coming from New Zealand. Kelly played for their National 19U team, and in HS played netball. A Hot Dog if you comment on what netball might be.
WSU suffered a major defection when Amanda DuRocher transferred to an NAIA school. She scored 8 points per game as a frosh last season. Dani Montgomery who scored 4 points per game last year also left the team.
June has a very young team, no Srs and 4 Jrs among the 11 player roster. But she has a fine class coming in next year, four solid players and she's on a mission to prove her past Athletic Director so very wrong. For this season however, the cellar looms for the Cougs.
WSU does have a pretty easy pre-season schedule with a game on the road against North Carolina State and a home against Texas Tech the only major opponents.
October 2, 2007
Rating the Pac 10 Coaches
Our first article of the new season will be rating the other nine
Pac 10 Coaches. The other nine? Yep, you all know who is # 1. I have used an A, B, C grade to be polite, and to better make my point, without causing too much of an uproar.
The C's:
Tia Jackson is the newest Head Coach to the Pac 10 and the Washington job will be her first as a Head Coach. She does have Pac 10 experience, having been an Assistant at both Stanford and UCLA. She moved from UCLA to Duke as an Assistant before coming to Washington. The C grade has not been earned, but she simply hasn't been a Head Coach before. However her start in the recruiting area hasn't been great, as she has had to talk several commits into staying with their signed LOI and their verbal (Kingma). This year I believe she only has one Scholarship remaining, so we will see her recruiting impact with the 2009, next year, class.
Tia replaced June Daugherty in an effort to pump up fan interest in the program. With an outstanding incoming frosh class (recruited by June), Tia and the Huskies could get off to a good start toward building both excitement and a post season team. We'll see how she performs as a Head Coach.
Oregon's Bev Smith has been at Oregon for a while now and it's been pretty ho hum lately. This is a program with good fan interest, but the results the past two years have been disappointing. Oregon's recruiting over the past few years consists mostly of importing players from overseas. 8 of this year's 12 players are foreign. And Oregon has no players from the state of Oregon.
I appreciate that good players can come from abroad, but it hasn't produced results. So that's either suspect coaching or suspect recruiting methods. Neither lead me to believe Smith is above average as a Coach.
Kathy Olivier of UCLA is a Coach we fans often critize. She had a great players just 2 years ago and it fell way short of expections, and last year was even further away from what Bruin fans expect and hope for. But, and this is big, she can recruit. UCLA has an outstanding 6 player group coming in as frosh this season. The huge question is will they improve and will they play as a team and would playing as a team even be the plan. Kathy seems to use the star system, pleasing a few players. But it has not translated to post season wins.
LaVonda Wagner of Oregon State will be cause for debate here with her C grade. I base this on her lack of ability to retain 2 of her top 3 scorers from last season. After only one season at Oregon State, Smith and Lomax left. 7 of her 12 players will be new this year (one of the seven returns after a year off). Yes her players play hard and yes she seems to coach her team up. But she must recruit better and keep her recruits to move up a grade in my mind. The potential is there. But recruiting is a big part of Coaching, and she is not doing well there.
The B's:
June Dougherty was fired and I give her a B? Yep. It is de javu all over again. June has a great class coming in and gets fired, much like Caren at Cal 3 years ago. But the real ironic thing is that June is a good game coach. It will be very hard to do well at Washington State, so hard to recruit, and she's not off to a good start in that area. Too many players considering Gonzaga and not WSU.
June's Washington teams ranged from good to average. But they could always be counted on to play the tough teams tough. She should be a great addition to the Washington State program, and if anyone can recruit to Pullman, I suspect it's June. And hot off the press, she has 4 solid commits for the November Signing Period.
Joan Bonvicini seems to be only able to recruit the Top 100-200 players at Arizona, but she gets a number of those. He teams play hard, they stay in their game plan and they slightly over achieve. I'm being a bit inconsistant, but if Joan could land a Top 25 player they'd move to the top half of the Pac 10 immediately. Recruiting top players hasn't been her forte since Polk enrolled. Joan handles the in game coahing very well though, thus her B grade.
Joanne Boyle has done a fine job in her two years at Cal, but is really at a crossroads now. She recruited but couldn't keep Sanford, a Top 25 player, who has been by far her highest ranked recruit. With six weeks to go to Letter of Intent Period, Cal has only one committment. However Boyle proved her coaching and leadership ability last year when Cal lost Gray-Lawson in Dec and still advanced to the NCAA's with a very young team. Cal will have 10 openings this year and next, so the pressure will be on to sign several top players.
Mark Trakh has done a fantastic job recruiting, sadly injuries have struck heavily on USC. Last year he lost two and possibly a third player who would have been starters, and this year he has lost two starters already. However unlike last season when USC had to start a walk-on late in the season, this year he will have a solid group of 8-9 players. A 20 win season is very possible, and a trip to the Dance. In fact to keep his # 3 in the Conference rating, he had better reach the NCAA's.
What I like most about Trakh is that he keeps his cool and the fact that a walk on was able to play a number of minutes demonstrates his coaching ability. I'm big on calm game coaches. I like those who do their coaching in practices and don't pace the sideline yelling instructions.
The A Coaches:
Of course that leads into Arizona State's Charli Turner Thorne. She's a pacer, she's a yeller, she's a hockey coach with hockey substitution patterns. But she can coach. Her teams are extremely competitive, very well coached and by goodness are they aggressive. Arizona State has been a very strong Pac 10 contender and competitive on the national level. Players develop well, of course they also know that if in the 10 deep they will play.
ASU is a team that will contend for the Pac 10 title for the foreseeable future, and could well advance deep in to the NCAA tournament. Charli has formed an excellent foundation for the Sun Devils.
Pac 10 Coaches. The other nine? Yep, you all know who is # 1. I have used an A, B, C grade to be polite, and to better make my point, without causing too much of an uproar.
The C's:
Tia Jackson is the newest Head Coach to the Pac 10 and the Washington job will be her first as a Head Coach. She does have Pac 10 experience, having been an Assistant at both Stanford and UCLA. She moved from UCLA to Duke as an Assistant before coming to Washington. The C grade has not been earned, but she simply hasn't been a Head Coach before. However her start in the recruiting area hasn't been great, as she has had to talk several commits into staying with their signed LOI and their verbal (Kingma). This year I believe she only has one Scholarship remaining, so we will see her recruiting impact with the 2009, next year, class.
Tia replaced June Daugherty in an effort to pump up fan interest in the program. With an outstanding incoming frosh class (recruited by June), Tia and the Huskies could get off to a good start toward building both excitement and a post season team. We'll see how she performs as a Head Coach.
Oregon's Bev Smith has been at Oregon for a while now and it's been pretty ho hum lately. This is a program with good fan interest, but the results the past two years have been disappointing. Oregon's recruiting over the past few years consists mostly of importing players from overseas. 8 of this year's 12 players are foreign. And Oregon has no players from the state of Oregon.
I appreciate that good players can come from abroad, but it hasn't produced results. So that's either suspect coaching or suspect recruiting methods. Neither lead me to believe Smith is above average as a Coach.
Kathy Olivier of UCLA is a Coach we fans often critize. She had a great players just 2 years ago and it fell way short of expections, and last year was even further away from what Bruin fans expect and hope for. But, and this is big, she can recruit. UCLA has an outstanding 6 player group coming in as frosh this season. The huge question is will they improve and will they play as a team and would playing as a team even be the plan. Kathy seems to use the star system, pleasing a few players. But it has not translated to post season wins.
LaVonda Wagner of Oregon State will be cause for debate here with her C grade. I base this on her lack of ability to retain 2 of her top 3 scorers from last season. After only one season at Oregon State, Smith and Lomax left. 7 of her 12 players will be new this year (one of the seven returns after a year off). Yes her players play hard and yes she seems to coach her team up. But she must recruit better and keep her recruits to move up a grade in my mind. The potential is there. But recruiting is a big part of Coaching, and she is not doing well there.
The B's:
June Dougherty was fired and I give her a B? Yep. It is de javu all over again. June has a great class coming in and gets fired, much like Caren at Cal 3 years ago. But the real ironic thing is that June is a good game coach. It will be very hard to do well at Washington State, so hard to recruit, and she's not off to a good start in that area. Too many players considering Gonzaga and not WSU.
June's Washington teams ranged from good to average. But they could always be counted on to play the tough teams tough. She should be a great addition to the Washington State program, and if anyone can recruit to Pullman, I suspect it's June. And hot off the press, she has 4 solid commits for the November Signing Period.
Joan Bonvicini seems to be only able to recruit the Top 100-200 players at Arizona, but she gets a number of those. He teams play hard, they stay in their game plan and they slightly over achieve. I'm being a bit inconsistant, but if Joan could land a Top 25 player they'd move to the top half of the Pac 10 immediately. Recruiting top players hasn't been her forte since Polk enrolled. Joan handles the in game coahing very well though, thus her B grade.
Joanne Boyle has done a fine job in her two years at Cal, but is really at a crossroads now. She recruited but couldn't keep Sanford, a Top 25 player, who has been by far her highest ranked recruit. With six weeks to go to Letter of Intent Period, Cal has only one committment. However Boyle proved her coaching and leadership ability last year when Cal lost Gray-Lawson in Dec and still advanced to the NCAA's with a very young team. Cal will have 10 openings this year and next, so the pressure will be on to sign several top players.
Mark Trakh has done a fantastic job recruiting, sadly injuries have struck heavily on USC. Last year he lost two and possibly a third player who would have been starters, and this year he has lost two starters already. However unlike last season when USC had to start a walk-on late in the season, this year he will have a solid group of 8-9 players. A 20 win season is very possible, and a trip to the Dance. In fact to keep his # 3 in the Conference rating, he had better reach the NCAA's.
What I like most about Trakh is that he keeps his cool and the fact that a walk on was able to play a number of minutes demonstrates his coaching ability. I'm big on calm game coaches. I like those who do their coaching in practices and don't pace the sideline yelling instructions.
The A Coaches:
Of course that leads into Arizona State's Charli Turner Thorne. She's a pacer, she's a yeller, she's a hockey coach with hockey substitution patterns. But she can coach. Her teams are extremely competitive, very well coached and by goodness are they aggressive. Arizona State has been a very strong Pac 10 contender and competitive on the national level. Players develop well, of course they also know that if in the 10 deep they will play.
ASU is a team that will contend for the Pac 10 title for the foreseeable future, and could well advance deep in to the NCAA tournament. Charli has formed an excellent foundation for the Sun Devils.
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