Mosiman fills role as key reserve for Huskies

  • Mike Allende<br>For the Enterprise
  • Monday, March 3, 2008 11:24am

SEATTLE

It wasn’t exactly how Sara Mosiman envisioned her career starting at the University of Washington.

After all, as a freshman Mosiman was already a bit overwhelmed by the speed and complexity of the NCAA Division I game, and then pain in her left foot sprang up. The pain grew increasingly worse until Mosiman had it checked out and was diagnosed with a stress fracture, sidelining the 5-foot-9 guard from King’s High School for several weeks.

“It was frustrating because of the timing,” said Mosiman, who led King’s to two state basketball titles and was the state 2A player of the year in both basketball and volleyball. “Everyone was practicing and I was just getting behind. It was tough.”

While the pain is still there, Mosiman is back on the court and starting to get comfortable as she’s slowly becoming a key reserve for the Huskies.

Mosiman is coming off of a career-high, 15-minute game in Washington’s victory over Nevada on Dec. 10. To that point, Mosiman had not played more than nine minutes and rarely played any minutes with the game still in doubt. But finally getting practice time has allowed Mosiman to reach a point where she’s comfortable enough to play added minutes.

“I just need experience,” Mosiman said. “Right now the girls I’m going up against have a lot more experience than me and you can see that. But I’m getting caught up, getting more time on the floor and just getting more comfortable.”

Floor time has been the key to Mosiman’s progress, UW coach June Daugherty said, because “you can’t learn a system that is so much more complex than you’re used to without being out there.”

“Her being able to practice has been the big thing,” Daugherty said. “It’s allowing her to not think so much and just go play basketball. And she has so much basketball savvy that she picks the other things up pretty quickly just by relaxing and playing.”

The transition from Class 2A to Division I basketball is difficult enough, but the lost practice time made it even tougher on Mosiman. As one of the top all-around female prep athletes in the state, Mosiman could usually get by with simply being the most talented player on the floor. That’s not the case anymore, and it takes getting used to.

“The tempo is faster, everyone’s a lot stronger, everyone’s a lot better,” she said. “But I like it because the competition is so much better. I was really interested to see how I could do against all of these great teams and great players.”

Daugherty said she wasn’t concerned about how Mosiman’s game would translate from small-school prep basketball to big-time college ball.

“We had the opportunity to see Sara compete nationally in AAU ball against other great players and she always stood out against kids who played at bigger schools,” Daugherty said. “There was never a doubt that she could compete at this level.”

The real question was if Mosiman wanted to compete at this level. Until her senior year, she said she was torn whether she wanted to play basketball or volleyball in college. She was recruited for both sports.

But winning a state basketball title her junior year convinced her that was the sport she wanted to focus on, Mosiman said. But that doesn’t mean she’s left volleyball completely behind.

“Volleyball is just so fun that I wasn’t sure what I wanted,” Mosiman said. “I miss it a lot. I come to all the games here and still love it. I still play beach volleyball at Green Lake. It’s still a part of my life. But it’s nice to be able to focus on just one sport for the first time.”

Not only is Mosiman playing just one sport for the first time (she also won a state javelin title), she’s also adjusting to not being the best player on the floor all the time. In fact, this is the first time she can ever remember not starting a game for her team. Instead, she’s the backup point guard to three-year starter Emily Florence. That, however, hasn’t been a tough adjustment, she said.

“I have so many people I can look up to and I don’t have the pressure I had in high school,” Mosiman said. “Now I can just worry about learning and getting better. That’s allowing me to improve my game.”

“As she gets healthier, she’s going to have a bigger and bigger role for us as the backup point guard,” Daugherty said. “We need her to be a floor leader, make good decisions and keep us playing at a high level, and she’s been doing that in limited time. Now that she’s healthier, our confidence in her is growing and her confidence is growing and we’re going to see her getting better and better.”

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