More size is on the way for team that does nothing better than exceed expectations

By Brooks Hatch
Corvallis Gazette-Times

CORVALLIS — As promised, LaVonda Wagner remained patient and positive through a trying second season as Oregon State’s women’s basketball coach.

Yes, she hates losing, now perhaps more than ever after a 9-19 campaign that saw the Beavers lose nine of their final 10 and 13 of the last 16 after a surprising start. But she knew — especially after projected starter Tiffany Ducker withdrew from school for personal reasons just before practice started — that a nine-player team with only one Pacific-10 Conference veteran would be hard-pressed to beat the 10th-place finish predicted in the coaches’ preseason poll.

The Beavers did just that.

“I’m not happy about the record at all,” she said in an interview prior to the Pac-10 tournament. “But I don’t think the record was indicative of their growth and maturity, and what (this team) did. It earned the respect of this community and the Pac-10.

“I’m not big on making excuses, you go with what you have. We knew we had to rely on these young kids, and to their credit, they responded. To have the Pac-10’s leading scorer (Casey Nash), assister (Mercedes Fox-Griffin) and field-goal percentage leader (Judie Lomax), that’s phenomenal.”

“It’s not only being noticed in Corvallis and in the Pac-10, but across the country.”

The Beavers tied Arizona for eighth place, won three Pac-10 road games and were competitive every night. Their largest defeat was by 18 points; 11 were by 10 or fewer points, and four came in overtime or on last-second shots in regulation.

“This team exceeded a lot of people’s expectations,” Wagner said, shortly after OSU was eliminated 69-54 by Arizona in the opening round of the Pac-10 tournament in San Jose. “I’m happy with some of the things we’ve done (but) I’m not satisfied.

“I think we’ve turned a corner, but we’ve got a lot of work left to do.”

Preparing for the 2007-08 season begins with individual workouts during spring term. The returning players and incoming freshmen will report for summer school and summer conditioning in July, and start practice again in October.

The 2007-08 Beavers will look vastly different than their immediate predecessors.

How so?

• Bigger. The 6-foot-3 Ducker and freshmen Alex Mitchell (6-4) and Brittany Eskridge (6-3) will give them an inside presence missing this season, when they were a minus-4.2 in rebounding margin and often victimized by second-chance opportunities.

• Battle-tested. Four starters and two reserves who played in each game will return. Freshmen Lomax, Stacey Nichols, Julie Futch and Jasmine Smith appeared in every game and combined for 97 of a possible 200 minutes.

“They are going to be so much more experienced than the other (current freshmen) in the Pac-10,” Nash said. “They will have a brand-new squad but they’ll be experienced.”

They’ll be augmented by Ducker and junior guard Brittney Davis, a transfer who played parts of two seasons at Minnesota who Wagner is extremely high on, and a four-member recruiting class that could grow by one or two players in the April signing period.

Davis averaged 1.0 points, 1.0 assists and 0.5 rebounds while playing 7.2 minutes per game in 24 appearances for the Gophers in 2006. She was one of the state’s top players as a senior at Portland’s Jefferson High in 2004, and excelled in practice this past season while redshirting under NCAA transfer rules.

“She’s an extremely athletic, passing point guard,” Wagner said. “She was at a top-25 program. She is a playmaker.”

• Deeper. Wagner used a seven-player rotation in 2007; Nash, Lomax and Fox-Griffin played more than 37 minutes per game and OSU clearly was worn out by the grind in February and March. Wagner will have 11 or 12 players in the mix next season, depending on how fast the freshmen progress.

Wagner wouldn’t call 2007 successful, despite advances in “changing the culture” in a program that hasn’t advanced to the NCAA Tournament since 1996. In her two years, OSU has defeated every Pac-10 opponent except Stanford, Arizona State and Washington, each of whom have/will play in the postseason both seasons.

“A good year is when you have a winning record, that’s how I feel about it and I’ll never change,” Wagner said. “But this program is ahead of schedule. Two years in a row, people said we wouldn’t win a Pac-10 game.

“We won’t ever exceed expectations, because anytime we come close I’ll raise the bar even higher. But we already are better.”