There are still grand visions for the UCLA women’s basketball team when it comes to challenging for its first Pacific-10 Conference title since 1999, just no delusions of grandeur.
Third-year coach Nikki Caldwell reminded the Bruins of that following Tuesday’s 55-53 loss to Louisiana State at Pauley Pavilion.
“We took that game for granted,” Caldwell said. “The way we lost was the most challenging to me because I didn’t feel like we went down swinging. We were vulnerable.”
And that’s why despite producing the program’s best start in 30 years and boasting the most nonconference victories of any Pac-10 team, eighth-ranked UCLA (10-1) knows that although the conference tournament will again be held at USC’s Galen
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Center, the road to the championship still goes through Palo Alto and No. 9 Stanford (9-2).
“There’s a heavy level of competition in front of us,” Caldwell said. “There are so many great coaches in this conference and (Stanford coach Tara Vanderveer) is certainly up there with all that’s she accomplished. They’ve been there, they’ve been to the Pac-10 championship game and the NCAA Tournament and they know what it takes, so we need to take what we learned from the LSU game and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Nine teams boast winning records entering their Pac-10 openers this weekend — eight start today, with Cal (8-3) playing host Sunday to Stanford. Washington State (2-10) is the exception. UCLA plays at Washington
(5-4) at 2 p.m. today before traveling to Pullman for a 1 p.m. tipoff Sunday.
Although UCLA and Stanford are the conference’s only ranked teams, USC (8-3) and Arizona State (8-2) received votes in this week’s AP Top 25, with Cal also garnering recognition in the past month, meaning the journey to another 15 Pac-10 victories and an appearance in the postseason tournament final will be just as challenging as last season for the Bruins.
“You look at ASU and they went out and played some great teams on the road, and USC the same thing in order to prepare themselves for conference play,” Caldwell said. “There are five or six teams who have the ability to win (the conference), so we need to see what this team is made of by bouncing back from the loss.
“We’re not going to be able to just show up to the gym and expect to win. We have to compete on every possession and if we don’t, then we’ll struggle.”
Although Caldwell said the missed layups and free throws that have plagued the Bruins during the first six weeks finally caught up to them against LSU, UCLA still boasts one of the nation’s most balanced rosters, with six players averaging between 8.6 and 12 points per game, led by senior Darxia Morris.
The Bruins, who also rely heavily on returnees Doreena Campbell, Jasmine Dixon, Rebekah Gardner and Markel Walker along with redshirt sophomore Atonye Nyingifa, rank first in the conference in rebounding defense, second in steals and turnover margin, and third in scoring defense, limiting opponents to 55 points per game.
But in order to prevent Stanford from capturing an 11th consecutive Pac-10 title as well as holding off the challenges from Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, Oregon and USC, the Bruins will need to avoid mental lapses like they encountered against LSU or in last year’s tournament final, a 70-46 setback against the Cardinal, UCLA’s eighth consecutive loss to Stanford.
“We’ve had some early success and now everybody is going to come at us with everything they have, and this team has never been in that position before,” Caldwell said. “We’ve got a tough road ahead of us because all the teams know each other very well. This is the third year teams have scouted us, so they’re more familiar with what we do.
“It’s going to come down to who can best execute their game plan.”
Article source: http://www.presstelegram.com/sports/ci_16979357?source=rss
Category: Vulnerabilities/Exploits