SEATTLE – Depending on how you look at it, the University of Washington women’s basketball team’s success over the past three weeks is either surprising, or it makes perfect sense.
With seven players who didn’t play for the Huskies last season, it could be that the team is finally figuring out how to play together. On the other hand, with five freshmen, three who play regularly (including starting guards Emily Florence and Dominique Banks), it’s surprising that they are playing their best basketball at a time that they are used to finishing up the season.
“You always worry about freshmen hitting the wall,” Washington coach June Daugherty said. “They’ve basically quadrupled the amount of basketball they’re used to playing. Then you add in the academics and the rigors of traveling. As a conference we travel more than any other teams in the country. So it’s interesting to see how their bodies and how their minds adapt to that.”
They seem to be adapting well. Washington (9-9 Pacific-10 Conference, 13-15 overall) finished the regular season winning four of five and seven of 11. On Saturday, the Huskies rallied from 15 points down in the last 9:10 to win at Arizona in the regular-season finale. They scored at least 76 points in five of the last eight games after reaching that mark just twice in the first 20 games.
Now Washington heads to the Pac-10 Tournament riding a wave of confidence and the hopes that a strong showing might lead to a WNIT berth.
The Huskies, seeded seventh, open play against No. 10 Oregon State (1-17, 6-22) at 6 p.m. Friday at HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif. Washington swept the Beavers during the regular season.
The Huskies have 15 players on the roster, and 12 are freshmen or sophomores. That’s a lot of players who don’t have a ton of experience playing this many games. Last year, Washington reached the semifinals of the Pac-10 Tournament and the second round of the WNIT.
Florence said preparing for the long season began in the summer.
“We did a lot of conditioning and a lot of lifting before the season,” Florence said. “That was a huge change from high school. I never did any of that in high school. We really tried to prepare our bodies and our minds to be ready to play a lot of games.”
“When the incoming freshmen get the strength coaches’ workout program in the mail, it can look pretty daunting,” Daugherty said. “It’s hard to tell then that what they’re being asked to do is going to pay off nine months later. The older players understand that but for freshmen, that can be hard to grasp.”
On top of the strength program, practices at the beginning of the season regularly last three or four hours. For players used to practicing for an hour-and-a-half, it only adds to the wake-up call they received during the summer.
“It was a huge shock,” Florence said. “We would do more work in one day than I was used to doing in a week. The first couple weeks you think that this is pretty hard on your body. But after that you start getting used to it and you learn to take care of yourself.”
Daugherty said that while the coaching staff understands the importance of preparing in the preseason, they also realize it’s a long season and they can’t ask a team to push themselves as hard consistently as they did in August.
The team shortens practice beginning the second half of the Pac-10 season in order to preserve energy.
“What’s important now is that we just keep things sharp and have our legs rested as much as possible,” Daugherty said. “At this point we don’t need to spend as much time on things, so we get to the most important things and then get out. It’s real important at this point to keep things short and sweet.”
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