Women’s basketball works on practice intensity to improve performance
Junior guard Kari Korver said that the UCLA women’s basketball team has been rushing a lot of shots in the beginning of games. (Tehya Faulk/Daily Bruin)
By Winston Bribach
Feb. 18, 2016 2:09 a.m.
Patience and chaos.
Two words that usually aren’t connected with one another. The message coming out of the UCLA women’s basketball camp, however, is centered on making them work together to alleviate the Bruins’ worrying pattern of missing golden opportunities in recent games.
“We’ve been getting good shots,” said sophomore guard Jordin Canada. “We just have to work on getting into the flow of the game sooner. We need to take our time, go through our reads and execute.”
The last few games the Bruins have been slow out of the gate, letting their opponents gain huge leads, like with Arizona State and Washington, having to scrounge out a high volume of points in the third and fourth quarters.
“We need to practice with as much chaos as we can and we need to work at the speed that it’s going to happen in the games,” said coach Cori Close.
Keeping the practices up to game intensity and finding ways to work in the unpredictability that goes along with it seem to be the order of the day heading into the games against unranked Oregon and No. 7 Oregon State. Junior guard Kari Korver emphasized patience in the chaotic opening minutes.
“We’ve been rushing a lot of shots in the beginning of games,” Korver said. “We need to get later into the shot clock and work on getting cleaner looks.”
Their minds were focused on the task at hand – beating two of the hottest teams in the Pac-12 conference, Oregon and Oregon State, on the road.
They will look to build on the momentum garnered from hard-fought victories at home against Washington State and Washington.
“It’s not so much the victories, as it is the character gained from those matches,” Closer said. “We’ve shown that we embrace adversity. Now we have to let the competition bring out the best version of ourselves.”
Wooden Award late-season list
In other news, the Women’s Late Season Top 20 list for the John R. Wooden Award was announced Wednesday. UCLA sophomore guard Jordin Canada, who was not featured on any of the pre-season or early season lists, had her name thrown in with the best players in the country.
She is the only Bruin to make the list, and one of three from the Pac-12. Her conference rivals are Washington junior guard Kelsey Plum and Oregon senior forward Jillian Alleyne.
The winner of college basketball’s most prestigious award will be decided during the national broadcast of the ESPN College Basketball Awards Show presented by Wendy’s, which is slated for the weekend of April 7-9.
