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Women's basketball off to slow start

Optimism still high for SIU

After an off-season in which seven new players and three new assistant coaches came aboard, the SIU women's basketball team is still trying to adapt through the first portion of its non-conference schedule.

The Salukis have dropped their opening four games - all on the road against Southeast Missouri State, Middle Tennessee State and Alabama-Birmingham and Long Island in New York - by an average of 13 points per game.

Despite the poor start, the Salukis understand it is a long season, but more importantly, they remain focused on improving.

"We're still optimistic," junior guard Danette Jones said. "Obviously we are disappointed we've lost our first four games, but we have a long way to go."

SIU head coach Lori Opp doesn't take it as if it's the end of the world, either. In fact, she talks as if the slow start was somewhat expected.

"We played inconsistently ... like a team that has three new coaches and seven new players," Opp said. "It's not anything I'm overly concerned about just because I'm there. I see it and I know what it's going to take to get better."

After all, it's not like they haven't done well in flashes.

The Salukis exploded to a 7-0 lead in the season's first game against SEMO on the strength of three jumpers by Jones then did likewise versus UAB in New York, using six early points by Tiffany Crutcher to jump out to an 11-0 advantage.

But foul trouble put Jones and many others on the bench at SEMO, giving way to a big run, and a first-half spurt by UAB negated the lead on its way to a 10-point advantage over the Salukis at the intermission.

In both cases the Salukis put up additional runs of their own to make the games competitive - SIU got to within six of the Otahkians before falling 73-64 and went on a 14-4 run late against UAB that closed the gap to 10 - but in each case, it was too little too late.

"We definitely know we can play with these teams and sometimes better than these teams, but we haven't been able to string 40 minutes of basketball together," senior forward Katie Berwanger said. "We had stretches where we played really good ball, but at other stretches we just didn't."

Key to playing consistently for 40 minutes will be protecting the basketball. After averaging 21 turnovers per game during last year's 7-20 campaign, the Dawgs have committed an average of 23 so far this season.

Just like a year ago when the Salukis started off 2-2 in the first four games, the key to getting on the winning track this year is cutting down on the turnovers.

The Dawgs committed 21 turnovers in the 64-48 loss to Long Island, 26 in the 85-72 loss to UAB, 17 in the 76-62 loss to MTSU and 28 in the season-opening loss to SEMO, a game in which the Otahkians applied immense full-court pressure on the ill-prepared Dawgs.

"They took us out of our flow and we played helter-skelter," Opp said. "They dictated the tempo of the game."

As a result, the Dawgs saw some pressure from their following opponents, but Opp had her team more prepared this time around and it broke the press with relative ease.

But the mistakes are still coming. Many of the turnovers have been the result of mental lapses. While it is frustrating to have so many avoidable miscues, it relieves Opp that the errors are just that - fixable.

"We just shoot ourselves in the foot," Opp said. "We make a little run and we'll travel; we'll make a little run, and we'll throw the ball out of bounds. They're silly turnovers, so they're easy to fix."

Opp has been working many different lineups to try to find the right combination of ball control, scoring and defense. Nearly every Saluki has seen action to this point with none being more impressive than Jones, who has evidently taken over the scoring load in the backcourt left vacant by last year's leading scorer Molly McDowell.

Jones leads the team with 11 points per game and is one of only two Salukis with a positive assist-to-turnover ratio.

"Coaches tell me when I get in the game to just pull the trigger, and that's something I've concentrated on, not passing up open shots," Jones said. "Sometimes they fall, sometimes they don't. But when you are a shooter you just have to keep shooting."

The Salukis will keep shooting for their first victory of the season Wednesday when they hit the road yet again to face Tennessee Tech, a team the Dawgs narrowly defeated last season at the SIU Arena.

The game is no doubt an important one for SIU, but winning is on the backburner for the Dawgs. The Salukis just want to make progress, and if a win comes as a result, so be it.

"We've made improvements and changes as we've gone," Jones said. "We're really excited about Wednesday and the opportunity to get better at Tennessee Tech."