Second-year coach has OSU’s youngest squad and plans to keep winning

By Brooks Hatch
Corvallis Gazette-Times

Give Oregon State’s LaVonda Wagner credit for one thing as she approaches what might be the most difficult season of her 19-year career as a college basketball coach: The prospect of competing in the Pacific-10 Conference with the youngest team in school history may try her patience, but it hasn’t dulled her sense of humor.

At a recent booster meeting, the second-year coach noted family and friends have asked after her health and sanity after several weeks of trying to mold a unit with one veteran senior starter, a first-year junior transfer, an untested sophomore, five true freshmen, and a role-playing senior with two surgery-ravaged knees into a competitive unit.

“My mother says, ‘Are you nervous,’ ” Wagner said. “My brother says, ‘Are you crazy?’ Most of my basketball friends say, ‘Do you want to come home?’ ” to the East Coast or the Midwest, where she lived her entire life before leaving an assistantship at powerful Duke in April, 2005, to rebuild a deteriorating OSU program.

“I say, ‘No. No. Heck no!”

So once again it’s headlong into the breach for Wagner, who last season guided the Beavers to surprising 16-15 overall and 7-11 Pac-10 records. The Beavers defeated Washington State at the Pac-10 tournament and then knocked off Santa Clara in the opening round of the WNIT before losing at Wyoming.

OSU opens Year II of Wagner’s ‘Commitment to Excellence’ drive at 2 p.m. Saturday against Southern Utah at Gill Coliseum. It is the first of 10 non-league games — six of which are at home — for OSU, which begins Pac-10 action against Washington State on Dec. 21.

“We’re not walking yet. We’re crawling,” she said. “But it’s a fast crawl.”

With little size and no proven Pac-10 scorers, defense and hustle will be this team’s hallmarks. The Beavers were first in the Pac-10 in 3-point defense (.283) and fourth in field-goal defense (.385) and scoring defense (61.2 ppg) in 2006 and they again hope to make it tough for opponents to score.

“Our defense. Our hustle,” replied senior guard Casey Nash, when asked what will characterize this team. “We’re a little smaller (than 2006), but we’re quicker. We’re a little bit smaller, but we’re quicker.

“We’re ready to get going. We have a lot of things to work on but we’ll be ready.”

OSU lost 71-68 to Team Concept, a squad of ex-collegians, and whipped Western Oregon 96-44 in its two exhibitions. In both games Nash, letterman sophomore Mercedes Fox-Griffin and junior transfer (Oregon) Ashley Allen started at guard, while freshmen Stacey Nichols and Judie Lomax started at forward.

Freshmen guards Jasmine Smith and Julie Futch and freshman forward Whitney Champlin also saw considerable action as reserves, complemented by senior guard Ebony Young.

“Our defense is not where I want it to be but it’s getting better every day,” Wagner said after the WOU win, when OSU held the Wolves to 25 percent from the field and made 10 steals. “We have to win the hustle plays, we know that.

“We don’t make excuses, but we’re a team with special needs. We don’t have a lot of size and we’re very young, so we’re just going to have to scrap.

“I felt good about taking five charges, that’s five possessions we got back. Rebounding, taking charges ... those are the little things where we can get possessions back and that’s what we have to do.”

Wagner couldn’t say if Nash, Allen, Fox-Griffin, Nichols and Lomax would also start against the Thunderbirds on Saturday.

“You never know what will happen in practice, some of these kids are stepping up,” she said. “We just want to make sure we keep everyone healthy, rested and ready to go.

“I think we have to play everyone we have.”

OSU lost guards Mandy Close and Anita Rivera and forward Kim Butler, who started all 31 games, and forward Karen Vickery, who started 20 and played in each. Also, projectedstarting forward Tiffany Ducker, a junior who started every game in 2006, is taking the year off for personal reasons.

“When you’re young, you put together a schedule that will give you confidence and let you compete,” Wagner said. “That was before we lost Tiffany,” who expects to rejoin the team in 2007-08.

“Now the schedule is very competitive. It’s going to be a learning experience for us.”