With two games under their belts and two losses tallied, the UW women’s basketball team is looking for answers both on the offensive and defensive sides of the basketball.
“It’s all very important that we get it right. We’re not going to panic, because it is so early,” head coach Jane Albright said in her Monday press conference. “If we’re five games into the season, and we have not had any better individual performances then we’ll tweak some things, but right now we’ll go the distance with what we’re trying to do.”
This season the Badgers have failed to outscore any opponent by more than five points in a half and have yet to score 30 points in any single half. The leading scorers are Leah Hefte and Kristi Seeger who are averaging a meager nine points per game.
The offense has continued to be stifled by tough defense, averaging 33 turnovers per game, and have failed to make more field goals than turnovers.
“Our offenses are not clicking; we start out with something, [and if] it doesn’t start working within 30 seconds we just go away from it,” coach Albright said. “So we haven’t had a lot of discipline in that area.”
The play of the Badger defense has also come into question this season. In the first half alone their two opponents have combined to shoot 10-16 from behind the three-point line and have averaged 42.9 percent on their field goal attempts. The defense has failed to stop any team this season, let alone stop their star players. The Badgers have already seen individuals put up 19 and 20 points against them this season.
“We’ve got to get better, and you’ve got to either play some type of zone or man [defense] unless you know another type,” Albright said. “You’ve got to be good at one of them, so we will be good at one of them, and hopefully we can be good at more than one of them.”
Wisconsin has never gone 0-2 under the guidance of coach Albright before, and the team is off to its worst start in 13 seasons. The Badgers are playing with seven core players, each capable of starting, but none have guaranteed themselves a starting role. In both games this season, Albright has used a different lineup and is not making any promises on who will be in it for the Badgers next game.
“We will keep changing our starting lineup until we get a group that we feel is efficient,” Albright said. “It may not be our best five players, [but] we might have the kind of team that our best five players are not our most efficient unit.”
Losing to two veteran programs this season, the UW coaching staff still believes the problem lies with the cohesiveness of the group and not with its youth. Freshman guard Ashley Josephson is averaging 30 minutes of playing time per game, and freshman guard Jordan Wilson has been making an impact off the Badger bench. Although these freshmen seem eager to learn, they have both seen their fair share of struggles both in games and on the practice court. The mentality of the Badger players and coaches this season is to find a style of play that will beat an opposing team. They feel that they have the talent; now they just need to play as a group.
“Right now I think it’s more of how our team stacks up within ourselves,” Albright said. “We knew that those two teams [were] veteran teams.”
The play of guard Stephanie Rich this season has been the utter definition of the infamous sophomore slump. Kirk Penney went through it his first game as a sophomore going 0-13, and Rich is going through it with 0-12 and 3-13 performances from the field this season.
“All the players want to help us win, and that’s what she thinks she does best,” Albright said. “So I think she’s really pushing her shot.”
The Badger women still have the opportunity to make this season a success if they can win some games and prepare themselves for Big Ten play, but only time will tell what this team is truly made of.
