The UW women’s basketball team will need sweet-shooting sophomore Stephanie Rich to end her streaky shooting performances if they hope to make a run at postseason play.
After starting the season in an infamous “sophomore slump,” Rich has seemingly regained her shooting touch and is emerging as one of the Big Ten’s premier perimeter scoring threats.
“Somebody has to shoot and really I’m very glad that she shoots,” UW head coach Jane Alrbright said. “She’s had the most improvement of anybody on my team, I believe, in the last two weeks. If you watch film on the last four games, you learn she’s really a force to be reckoned with. As a very young guard in the Big Ten, I’m real encouraged by Stephanie’s play.”
In UW’s 48-49 loss to Indiana on Sunday, however, the Crawfordsville, Iowa, native went just one of nine from the floor and only hit one of her five attempts from beyond the arc.
As the Badgers’ leading scorer (11.4 ppg) and three-point specialist, Rich will look to brush off her poor offensive performance against the Hoosiers and once again find her rhythm.
“I’ve always worked really hard on my shot. It seems like I’m on that floor more than I’m in the library,” Rich said. “Finding better shots for myself was the problem earlier in the season. I was taking a lot of off-balance shots, and I seemed to always get the ball when the shot clock was running down, so I had to take shots that weren’t really good shots. As of late, I’ve been able to get wide-open looks and knock em’ down.”
Due to the Badgers’ inability to dodge the injury bug this year, Rich has had to not only play a significant amount of minutes as UW’s shooting guard, but has also been inserted as the team’s point guard and small forward at times as well.
She has made a smooth transition between the three roles throughout the year and feels comfortable playing wherever the coaching staff thinks they need her services the most.
“It hasn’t been real difficult,” Rich said. “When you play the one (guard), you get to set up the offense and get things started early in the game. I felt comfortable playing the one (guard) and then having Shawna [Nichols] or Ashley [Josephson] come in and play … As far as coming in and playing the three (spot), you have to worry about rebounding and playing against maybe a bigger girl on the defensive end. Each role just changes a little bit.”
While playing for Washington, Iowa, as a prep phenom, the versatile Rich led the Demons to three state championships and became the state’s third all-time leading scorer.
Despite living just a few short miles from Carver-Hawkeye Arena, the thought of playing for Iowa never really crossed her mind, and in the end she felt that UW was the best fit for her.
“I lived really close to Iowa City and I’ve always been a Hawkeye fan, but I never thought about going to Iowa to play… I just kind of wanted to get away from the scene of being home so much,” Rich said. “This is just like a home away from home for me. I love Wisconsin. I love this campus. The town itself wasn’t a huge city, but it just felt like a nice community.”
When she’s not electrifying the Kohl Center crowd with her pinpoint passing and perimeter shooting, Rich enjoys partaking in pretty much the same activities that any other student on campus does.
“I just like relaxing and getting away from the Kohl Center and basketball … just going to the movies and hanging out with roommates and friends and just catching up on things that I’ve missed throughout the season,” Rich said. “I also like going to Starbucks quite a bit. I am a sucker for the white chocolate mocha.”
The Badgers have three games left before playing in the all-important Big Ten tournament in March. The tournament not only represents UW’s only chance of gaining an NCAA tournament bid, but it will also serve as a building block for Wisconsin’s young returning nucleus to carry into next season.
Despite Wisconsin being a clear underdog, Rich feels optimistic about UW’s chances and would like to see Kristi Seeger and the other seniors finish their careers on a good note.
“It’s a wide open field. You look at what teams have done in the past … even if they finish first in the Big Ten in the regular season, it doesn’t mean that it’s a given going into the Big Ten tournament,” Rich said. “We have to win to get into the national tournament and to continue our season. I think for the seniors it hasn’t been the year that they wanted it to be, so for the rest of the team, we really want to give them something that they can look back on and say ‘alright,’ even though it wasn’t so great in the regular season.”
