Women’s basketball to fight for rebounds against Sun Devils

Women’s basketball coach Cori Close hates giving teams second chances.

She made that abundantly clear at practice this week, yelling at her players for each rebound they gave up on defense.

“We are last in the conference in defensive rebounds. Did you guys know that?” Close said after the Bruins let their scout team get several attempts at the basket on one possession. “That is why we are pushing this.”

It’s true. The team is last in rebounding defense, giving up an average of almost 43 defensive rebounds a game, and Close sees this as a holistic team problem – everyone is to blame for this poor stat line.

“Are you sick of us telling you that we need to work on our rebounding?” Close asked her team. “And guards, I am surprised you haven’t been holding each other more accountable, fighting for a rebound.”

Most of the rebounding this season has come from the forwards – sophomore Monique Billings and senior Kacy Swain. Close doesn’t want that to continue. She wants everyone fighting for a rebound, on offense and defense, especially the guards.

“Every girl is a rebounding girl,” said assistant coach Jenny Huth.

Heading into Friday’s matchup against Arizona State, defensive rebounds will be key to control the tempo. The Sun Devils like to control the pace of the game and hold on to the ball as long as possible. The Bruins will have to fight for the ball, on top of being efficient on every possession.

“They are a really good defending team, they move the ball around,” said sophomore guard Kelli Hayes. “They wait till the last 10 seconds of the shoot clock to shoot so that means for us on defense we need to work really and just force hard shots for them.”

Injury update

Sophomore guard Jordin Canada was active in practice on Wednesday, although in limited capacity.

While she participated in a controlled scrimmage against the scout team, she was restricted to working with a medicine ball during team sprints as a precaution.

“I think we are just trying to not be stupid about it,” Close said. “Her recovery is going well. She is still day-to-day.”

Canada left last weekend’s game against Colorado early – grabbing her ankle as she was assisted off the court. The team did not disclose the type of injury she had, but Close said at practice that she was thankful that the injury had nothing to do with Canada’s knee.

Close added that the team is being cautious with her, but expects she’ll play against Arizona State on Friday.

“It’s not a serious injury,” Close said. “It is painful and she is probably not going to be 100 percent come game time on Friday, but what players are this time of year?”

NCAA committee rankings

For the first time, the NCAA selection committee released a top-10 ranking for women’s basketball, with UCLA coming in at No. 10.

Two other Pac-12 teams were also featured in the rankings, No. 7 Arizona State and No. 8 Oregon State, giving the Pac-12 the most teams in the top 10.

Close said that she was pleasantly surprised about the Bruins making the cut, however, she wanted to make it clear she won’t let this get to her team’s head.

“It is my job as their leader to go, ‘Okay, okay, refocus, refocus.’ Cause it is not just them talking to each other,” Close said. “It’s all the outside world. It’s their friends, their family, their hometown who are like, ‘Where are you this week?’ and I understand.”

The rankings are good news for her team though. The top 16 teams host the first two rounds of the March tournament, putting the Bruins in a good position with just a little over a month left in conference play.