Beavers closed strong to finish tied for fourth in Pac-10

By Brooks Hatch

Corvallis Gazette-Times

CORVALLIS - The Oregon State women's basketball team exceeded everyone's expectations but their own in 2008-09 while compiling the first 20-win season since 1995.

Picked eighth by the coaches and the media in the Pacific-10 Conference's preseason polls, the Beavers instead went 20-12, 9-9 in the conference. They went 6-3 in the second half of the Pac-10 round robin and tied USC and UCLA for fourth place, even though no Beaver was selected a first- or second-team all-star.

OSU then defeated Portland State in the second round of the WNIT - its second win of the season over the Big Sky Conference runner-up - before falling at New Mexico in the round of 16.

"I'm extremely proud of this team," coach LaVonda Wagner said earlier this week, several days after returning from the Final Four. "We were very successful in the conference, we won 10 of 11 in nonconference and we could have gone 11-0 had we grabbed another rebound" late in an 82-78 loss to then-No. 2 North Carolina.

"This group turned a corner for the program in a way that, when we walked into a gym to compete, people understood that we came to win, that we had an opportunity to win, and we did."

The foundation was built in the offseason, when the coaches distributed a letter entitled "woulda, coulda, shoulda," detailing how easily a 12-18 2008 season - when OSU lost 10 games by an average of 6.2 points - could have been a 22-8 year had several more plays been made in each game.

"We were very committed to not being in the 'woulda, coulda, shoulda' bracket," Wagner said. "The letter was posted in everyone's locker, everyone saw it every day and when the games got tight, we decided we were going to fight through."

As a result, the Beavers were 4-2 in Pac-10 games decided by 10 or fewer points after going 3-8 in those situations in 2008.

"This team took to heart that we had experience with three seniors and great leadership with (captains) Brittney Davis, Mercedes Fox-Griffin and Stacey Nichols. They were very connected, very tight and they held each other accountable.

"They demanded more of their teammates; they were harder on their teammates than I was on anybody. When you get to that point, you're going to have success. The leaders of this team really took that job to heart. When our starting lineup changed, it wasn't my idea, it was the captains' decision."

Highlights included:

• A berth in the WNIT, the second in Wagner's four seasons as coach.

• The first Civil War sweep since 1993. The Beavers prevailed 61-42 at Oregon and 70-41 at OSU, the biggest margin of victory in series history.

• The first sweep of Washington since 2000, their second sweep of Arizona in the past four seasons and their first home sweep of the Los Angeles schools since the 2004 season.

• Nine Pac-10 wins, the most since 2002.

• An 11-2 nonconference record. Their only losses were to then no. 2-ranked North Carolina at the Junkanoo Jam in the Bahamas, and at New Mexico in the WNIT.

• A 13-3 home record, which tied the school mark for most home wins in a season. The Beavers won their final six home games and their final five Pac-10 home games.

• Davis scored in double figures in her final 17 games and was a third-team all-star. Fox-Griffin led the team in assists for the third year in a row, finished third all-time with 491 and made the Pac-10 all-defensive team.

• The Beavers shot a school-record .744 from the free-throw line.

"This is my proudest season to date," said Wagner, a college head coach for four years and and assistant for at East Tennessee, Illinois and Duke from 1988-2005. "Anytime you can take a group that doesn't have high school all-Americans or what has been deemed to be an all-Pac-10 player and finish tied for fourth, beat USC and UCLA, complete against some of the top teams in the country and get 80 minutes away from the NCAA tournament, you've done a good job of making players better.

"I can tell by the way they're walking around campus that they're proud of what they did. They won 20 games and there were a lot of firsts, things that hadn't been done here for a long time.

"Obviously we're disappointed we weren't in the NCAA tournament; being so close, it's hard. But we're pleased with winning 20 games, sweeping Arizona, Oregon and Washington … we did a lot of good things this year."

2009 OSU WOMEN'S BASKETBALL

RECORD: 20-12 overall, 9-9 Pacific-10 Conference, tied with UCLA and USC for fourth place.

STARTERS LOST: Pac-10 third-team all-star G Brittney Davis (14.5 ppg, 2.9 rpg); G Mercedes Fox-Griffin (8.0 ppg, 4.1 apg); F Tiffany Ducker (6.5 ppg, 7.0 rpg).

HONORS: Brittney Davis, third-team all-Pac-10, honorable mention all-defensive; Mercedes Fox-Griffin, honorable mention all-Pac-10, first-team all-defensive team, honorable mention all-academic; Talisa Rhea, honorable mention all-Pac-10, Pac-10 all-academic.

STARTERS BACK: 5-11 jr. G Talisa Rhea (13.5 ppg, 3.8 rpg); 6-4 jr. F/C Alex Mitchell (10.8 ppg, 5.8 rpg).

OTHERS BACK: 5-8 senior G Julie Futch (1.0 ppg, 1.0 rpg); 6-3 junior F Brittany Eskridge (0.7 ppg, 1.1 rpg); 5-7 so. G Brittney Kennedy (3.4 ppg, 2.2 ppg); 5-9 so. G Kassandra McAlister (1.8 ppg, 1.6 rpg); 6-1 sr. F Stacey Nichols (0.5 ppg, 0.6 rpg); 6-1 soph. F Kirsten Tilleman (3.8 ppg, 4.1 rpg); 6-4 sr. F/C Anita Burdick (1.1 ppg, 1.2 rpg).

REDSHIRTS: 5-11 jr. G Eboni Sadler (Miami, Fla.)

INCOMING FRESHMEN: 6-1 F Tayler Champion (Inglewood High, Inglewood, Calif.); 5-10 G Kate Lanz (Central Catholic, Portland); 6-3 F Angela Misa (Serra Catholic, San Juan Capistrano, Calif.); 5-10 G Haiden Palmer (Vista del Lago, Moreno Valley, Calif.).

QUOTE: "We have to start over because we're starting over in our backcourt. I had (Mercedes Fox-Griffin), who ran point for three years and who averaged 37 minutes a game. That's a lot of experience, a lot of information, a lot of know-how running the system. Now we have to reteach and get somebody else to run the system and to put people in their positions and that takes time. You need an interior game, no question that's important, but who has the ball most of the time? It's important to have (guards) who can compete and understand what you're trying to do. We had one of the best backcourts in the country and one of the best in school history." - OSU coach LaVonda Wagner.