By John Sleeper
Herald Writer
SEATTLE – It probably comes as no consolation to Cal Golden Bears coach Caren Horstmeyer that her women’s basketball team isn’t losing by much.
The fact is the Bears are 0-6 in Pacific-10 Conference play with a nine-game conference losing streak dating back to last season. They are 5-10 overall.
But this also is fact: Cal held national-power Georgia to 54 points and lost by just six. They lost to Arizona by five. And they cause every opponent problems with the type of defense they play.
This, coming from a team that has four of its top six players in their first or second year in the program. Cal starts two true freshmen (guard Kirstin Iwanaga and forward Leigh Gregory), a sophomore (guard Latasha O’Keith) and has a redshirt freshman first off the bench (forward Kiki Williams).
Yet, Cal allows just 59 points a game and leads the Pac-10 in steals.
“Caren Horstmeyer’s signature has been in-your-face, hard defense – man, fullcourt, halfcourt and zones,” said UW coach June Daugherty, whose team hosts Cal tonight at Hec Edmundson Pavilion. “They’re going to go at you for 40 minutes with 100 percent intensity. They force a lot of turnovers and take people out of their tempo. You rush a lot of shots.”
In rebuilding the Cal program, Horstmeyer has recruited quickness and a thirst for defense. What offense the Bears get comes from 6-foot-2 forward Ami Forney, who averages 14.3 points and 6.3 rebounds a game. O’Keith and Gregory both average a little better than nine points a game, but both, along with junior guard Amber White, make their impact with harassing, suffocating defense.
“If you don’t make the pass, it’s going to be going the other way,” Daugherty said. “They have the quickness to make it go the other way.”
In that way, the Huskies (4-3, 9-7) are in the same tough spot in which they found themselves against Arizona on Saturday. The Wildcats turned steals into points en route to an 83-69 victory, handing the Huskies their second loss in as many games in the desert.
Simply put, Washington needs a win to restore confidence and to get momentum for Saturday’s game against fourth-ranked Stanford.
“We’ll see (tonight) if we can play with the intensity and the consistency that we talked about, that we didn’t get done this past weekend,” Daugherty said. “I think there’s some anger and disappointment.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
