Women end long losing streak

By Yan Digilov     2/19/09 6:00pm

Good things come to those who wait. Unfortunately for the women's basketball team, good things are also said to come in small packages, and despite winning their first conference game of the year last week, their efforts may be too little, too late.With four games left before the Conference USA Championship, scheduled for March 5-8, the Owls (6-19, 1-11 C-USA) still have much to do before they can be taken as a legitimate contender at the end of the season. But their solid effort against the University of Texas-El Paso Feb. 12 and subsequent victory over the University of Tulane two days later came with more than just a sigh of relief.

The Owls looked impressive during both games this past weekend. From the start of the contest they did not resemble a team with a spirit broken from a streak of 11 losses. They did not look like the same squad that took four minutes to score a single point against the University of Houston two weeks ago.

"We have been getting some good looks early in games and missing them to get off to a slow start," head coach Greg Williams said. "We addressed that in the locker room."

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Whether it was a locker room conversation or pure luck that changed things, both games opened in eerily similar manners, with Rice firing on all cylinders and seeming to correct most past mistakes. Freshman point guard D'Frantz Smart opened both contests by draining a three-pointer.

Though Smart has not matched her team-leading average of 11 points per game since returning from a foot injury, the intangibles she brings to the game were on full display once again last week. Against Tulane (10-14, 4-7 C-USA), Smart grabbed seven steals to contribute to the team's 22 points on turnovers.

Successful early shooting spread to the rest of the team, and showed itself most prominently in the play of junior guard Tara Watts. Although she started the season as the team's most reliable shooter, a long shooting slump has brought her average down to just over seven points per game. But after scoring 12 points in the loss against UTEP (15-9, 6-4 C-USA) on Thursday, she made an early three-point bucket to give the Owls an 8-0 lead over Tulane and legitimized the claim that the slump was nearing its end.

Despite missing several consecutive shots from the arc after that, Watts confirmed the notion that shooters will always impact the game if they just keep shooting.

"It is always nice to start the game with a shot that goes in, because it sets the tone," Watts said. "Even though I kept missing, the team kept scoring. It was not as bad as some of the other games where I am missing, and everyone is missing."

Watts also received praise for contributing to an all-around solid defensive effort against the Green Wave.

"Our defense was really, really good," Williams said. "We did a really nice job on their three-point shooter [Indira] Kaljo . Watts did an outstanding defensive job on that kid who was shooting 8-10 [three-pointers] a game."

Kaljo was limited to only four three-pointers in the entire game, two of which came on broken plays where Watts had no chance of getting to her. Those six points came at a crucial point in the game, but the Owls handled the momentum shift in a way that they had not the entire year.

After establishing an early 12-0 lead over the Green Wave, Rice had steady control of the game until Tulane's press, running spontaneously throughout the contest, suddenly began working without fail. Despite trailing 58-41 with 2:30 left in the game, Tulane moved to within five points with 50 seconds left after two consecutive steals that each resulted in Kaljo three-pointers.

A huge late-game run by the opposing team is a part of the game to which the Owls have become accustomed. The second half has often spelled meltdown for Rice, as in the game against UTEP, when 35 minutes of stellar play still resulted in double-digit defeat.

This time, however, it was different.

Senior Maudess Fulton took it upon herself, as she has for most of the season, to take care of the nitty-gritty. After a rocky inbounds pass, she got the ball and broke the press for the first time in a minute. She then sank two free throws to create the necessary distance for a 62-54 victory.

"Today didn't actually feel any different than our other games," Watts said after defeating Tulane. "We just found the energy right at the beginning and came out harder. We had a really good week of practice. It just seemed like everyone was ready to play today."

The exact formula that the team requires to energize from the get-go continues to evade the coaching staff. The team's losing streak began with two losses against the Miners on Jan. 9 and a game against Tulane, just two days later. The two games against UTEP were quite similar, both featuring a tight match-up before Rice fell apart in the second half. But on Jan. 11 the Green Wave routed the Owls by 28 points, and after over a month, it is difficult for anyone to say what, if anything, has changed.

"We sustained our intensity level much longer than we had been doing," Williams said. "We were able to do it for some reason today, better than we have in the past."

Though Williams missed practice all week last week because of a lagging cold, he gave his assistant coach Carlos Quintero much credit for the team's high spirits. Confidence alone will not be enough, though, to make a dent in the conference tournament, the only hope Rice has of getting to the NCAA Tournament.

The Owls will try to replicate their success as they take on the University of Tulsa (6-18, 2-10 C-USA) tonight and Southern Methodist University (16-9, 9-3 C-USA) on Sunday to close out their final games of the year at Tudor Fieldhouse.

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