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Lady Basketball Buckeyes Tidbits 2005-2006 Season

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Canton

3/7/06

Ohio State wraps up title

Tuesday, March 7, 2006


[FONT=Verdana, Times New Roman, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]THE ASSOCIATED PRESS[/FONT]


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AP Darron Cummings HOISTING HARDWARE (From left) Ohio State’s Marscilla Packer, Jessica Davenport and Star Allen hold up the Big Ten Conference Tournament championship trophy after defeating Purdue, 63-60, Monday night at Indianapolis.
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INDIANAPOLIS - Ohio State Coach Jim Foster knew who he wanted shooting for a Big Ten title Monday night — Marscilla Packer.

She delivered with her usual flair.

With 38.4 seconds left and No. 2 Ohio State trying to fend off a frenzied second-half rally from No. 12 Purdue, Packer calmly caught the ball on the left wing, squared up and sank a 3-pointer to give Ohio State a 63-60 victory and its first conference tournament title.

“She is one of those shooters, you love them because they have no memory,” Foster said.

“Packer could miss eight in a row and be convinced she’s going to make No. 9.”

Fortunately for the Buckeyes (28-2), Packer didn’t miss much against the Boilermakers.

She made 6-of-11 shots, including two critical 3s in the final three minutes, and scored 10 of her 15 points in the second half. Packer’s presence helped Ohio State balance an offensive attack that had relied primarily on the duo of Brandie Hoskins and two-time conference Player of the Year Jessica Davenport to build a 17-point lead.

Davenport finished with 17 points and 14 rebounds, while Hoskins added 16 points and four assists. Hoskins was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.

Of greater importance to Ohio State was this: By winning its 19th straight game, it clinched the Big Ten’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament and may have solidified a No. 1 seed. “I feel like we worked hard all season, whatever the committee decides they decide,” Davenport said. “We stayed focused, we think the Big Ten title helped.”
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Dispatch

3/7/06

ELATION IN INDY
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
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MICHAEL CONROY | ASSOCIATED PRESS

Ohio State’s Candace Dark jumps into the arms of teammate Jessica Davenport as the Buckeyes celebrate winning their first Big Ten tournament title, 63-60 over Purdue in Indianapolis. Last night’s victory was made possible when Marscilla Packer, right, hit a three-pointer with 38.4 seconds left, allowing Ohio State to withstand a furious second-half comeback by the Boilermakers. OSU had been up by 17 points early in the second half. Davenport led the Buckeyes with 17 points and 14 rebounds. Coach Jim Foster’s team now awaits its high placement in the NCAA Tournament; those brackets will be released Monday. See story, Page E1
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OHIO STATE 63 | PURDUE 60

OSU: Twice as nice

Buckeyes halt Purdue rally, back up Big Ten title at tourney

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Jim Massie
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

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MIKE MUNDEN | DISPATCH PHOTOS Ashley Allen, left, and teammate Debbie Merrill celebrate the Buckeyes’ 63-60 victory over Purdue in the championship game of the Big Ten tournament.
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Jessica Davenport of Ohio State gets a close look at the Big Ten tournament trophy. She had 17 points and 14 rebounds in the championship game.
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MIKE MUNDEN | DISPATCH OSU’s Marscilla Packer strips the ball from Purdue’s Katie Gearlds last night in Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.


INDIANAPOLIS — Brandie Hoskins delivered the pass the moment Marscilla Packer found a sliver of daylight behind the three-point arc, the same way she had done 1,001 times during Ohio State practices this season.

Neither the noise created last night by 8,669 standing, screaming fans in Conseco Fieldhouse nor the pressure of a Big Ten tournament championship game tied at 60 with 39 seconds remaining could stop the play’s execution.

Packer pulled the trigger and the ball whispered through the net.

Practice made perfect when it mattered most, as the top-seeded and second-ranked Buckeyes outlasted second-seeded Purdue 63-60 to complete the rare conference sweep media and coaches predicted more than five months ago. The Buckeyes won the conference regular-season title, along with the tournament and its NCAA berth.

Hoskins never doubted destiny or Packer’s accuracy.

"I knew it was going in, and it was a great shot," said Hoskins, the tournament’s most valuable player. "We do that play in practice a lot. They took away one of the other options, so I knew that she was going to be open. She wasn’t exactly open, but I knew she had enough space to shoot it. And she did."

To run the OSU winning streak to 19 games, the Buckeyes (28-2) withstood a torrid second-half comeback by the Boilermakers (24-6). Purdue clawed back from a 17-point deficit to take a 53-51 lead with 6:43 left on a three-pointer by Erin Lawless.

Packer helped OSU avoid an ugly crash by playing a consummate final 5 minutes, 20 seconds. She assisted Jessica Davenport on a basket that tied the score at 55, then scored eight of the final 10 points for the Buckeyes. She shot one trey with Purdue standout Katie Gearlds inches away and closing.

"My first thought was to get the ball inside to Jess," Packer said. "They’re pretty long. They were in my face. After a couple of pump fakes, they didn’t go for them. I said, ‘Heck with it, I’m going to shoot it.’ It went in.

"The next one, I was trying to get open. (Hoskins) found me for the open look and I just shot the ball."

After Packer’s second three, the OSU defense clamped down on a Purdue team that had hit 7 of 12 three-point shots during its comeback. Shereka Webb missed twice, at 30 seconds and again with one tick left on the clock. The buzzer sounded, and the Buckeyes flooded the floor to celebrate the program’s first Big Ten tournament win.

"That little blip defensively allowed them and some of their other players to get wide-open looks," OSU coach Jim Foster said. "Once we adjusted defensively, we started to get some stops and that led to better opportunities at the offensive end."

The Buckeyes looked primed to blow out the Boilermakers in the first 20 minutes. Hoskins hit two three-point baskets and knifed inside for 14 of her 16 points before the break. Davenport, who joined her on the alltournament team, was well on the way to a 17-point, 14-rebound performance.

The Boilermakers caught fire late in the half after coach Kristy Curry was hit with a technical foul. In the second half, they showed why they were the last team to beat the Buckeyes, with Lawless, Gearlds and Webb leading an outside attack.

"We’re not just going to lie down because a team makes a run," Hoskins said. "It’s going to take more than a run to beat us. We’ve got a lot of weapons. A lot of teams would have folded if you’re up 17 and then you’re down one. We’ve got confidence in each other. Once you’ve got confidence in your teammates, the sky is the limit."

[email protected]
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Tuesday, March 07, 2006
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COMMENTARY

Foster brings things back into focus

Tuesday, March 07, 2006


ROB OLLER

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INDIANAPOLIS — The brains of the Ohio State women’s basketball team floated high above the floor of Conseco Fieldhouse while their bodies remained on the court.
An "out-ofbody experience" Buckeyes coach Jim Foster called it.

For 10 agonizing minutes, Foster watched his team play like preschoolers on a chocolate binge. They ran into one another. They ran over one other. An ugly mess.

What were they thinking?

They weren’t.

"You look out there and you don’t recognize the people you’ve been in the gym with every day for the last five months," Foster said.

The last five months? How about the last five minutes? The Buckeyes were cruising along, looking every bit the No. 2 team in the nation, when for some inexplicable reason they became runaway balloons drifting to the ceiling.

In the span of 11 minutes, a 17-point lead became a twopoint deficit.
Fortunately for OSU, Foster knew what to do. When you’ve spent as many years as he has coaching unpredictability, you come to expect that there will be times when focus becomes a four-letter word.

"You just want to get them sane," he said. "They’re having out-of-body experiences and you’ve got to get them back in."

You watch a game like this, one in which one team (Ohio State) dominates so thoroughly for 23 minutes, and you scratch your head when it falls apart this suddenly. You know all about how momentum can change a game in a hurry, but it’s more difficult to explain the other side of things; how a team can give it away so easily.

In the end, after Ohio State held off Purdue 63-60 to win its first Big Ten Conference tournament title, you realize that controlling the emotions of a college kid is not for the faint of heart.

"Please understand they’re 18-to-22-year-olds, and please remember back to when you were that age. I’m sure you had out-of-body experiences yourself," Foster said.

Most of them lasted more than 10 minutes. The Buckeyes’ lasted only 600 seconds, which Foster described as nothing more than a "blip" in which there was "a little insanity out there."

He wasn’t speaking of sophomore Marscilla Packer, but he could have been.

As the Buckeyes braced for what appeared to be a potentially crushing defeat, one player began playing out of her mind. Packer scored eight points in the final 4:17, including a three-pointer with 39 seconds left that made it 63-60, to avert the disaster.

"Marscilla has a great attribute for a shooter," Foster said. "No memory."

As teammates looked confused around her — "we just weren’t communicating, " Brandie Hoskins said — Packer played with the focus of someone who resembles a state of consciousness resembling sleep.

"I wanted the ball," she said. "Just give me the ball. I missed a couple of shots, but even then I was feeling it."

The thought of losing wasn’t in her head.

Rob Oller is a sports reporter for The Dispatch .



[email protected]
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casey_buckeye said:
Latest Tournament Projection

The latest Ladies Bracketology has the OSU Women in a favorable bracket. To me, this bracket looks like an easy road for the Buckeyes to the Elite 8.
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While I don't mind the bracket except the Quarterfinals will be in front of 10 fans in Albawhogivesashit, I don't see any way in hell Tennessee gets a one seed over tOSU, or Maryland for that matter
 
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#2

I dont know if this has been posted but the Lady Buckeyes have moved in #2 in the AP Poll

http://sports.si.cnn.com/default.asp?c=cnnsi&page=cbask-w/misc/ap-women-poll.htm

*** Associated Press Top-25 Women's College Basketball Poll ***
(Complete through Monday, March 6th)

Prev
Team (First-place Votes) Record Points Rank
------------------------ ------ ------ ----
1. North Carolina Tar Heels (45) 29-1 1,125 1
2. Ohio State Buckeyes 27-2 1,000 5
3. Maryland Terps 28-4 996 4
4. Duke Blue Devils 26-3 977 2
5. L-S-U Lady Tigers 27-3 938 3
6. Rutgers Scarlet Knights 25-3 934 6
7. Tennessee Lady Vols 28-4 901 8
8. Oklahoma Sooners 26-4 819 9
9. Connecticut Huskies 27-4 804 7
10. Baylor Lady Bears 22-5 713 10
11. Stanford Cardinal 23-6 630 13
12. Purdue Boilermakers 24-5 593 14
13. DePaul Blue Demons 25-5 574 15
14. Georgia Lady Bulldogs 21-8 559 12
15. Arizona State Sun Devils 24-6 494 11
16. Michigan State Spartans 22-9 460 16
17. Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters 23-4 339 19
18. Temple Owls 23-7 243 22
19. Utah Utes 21-6 242 17
20. B-Y-U Cougars 23-4 227 18
21. New Mexico Lobos 21-8 211 21
22. Texas A&M Aggies 22-7 194 25
23. Minnesota Golden Gophers 19-9 105 20
24. Bowling Green Falcons 25-2 101 NR
25. Vanderbilt Commodores 20-10 82 23

Others receiving votes: Florida 60, George Washington 54, U-C-L-A 52,
Kentucky 30, Tulsa 27, Boston College 20, North Carolina State 19, St. John's
19, Chattanooga 16, Florida State 15, Western Kentucky 15, Indiana State 12,
Wyoming 10, Missouri 6, Virginia Tech 6, Virginia 2, Hartford 1.
 
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Dispatch

3/8/06

OSU WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

No. 2 in polls, but not necessarily a No. 1 seed

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Jim Massie
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH




Before the last of the streamers cascaded to the floor Monday night in Conseco Fieldhouse, questions already were rising surrounding what seed Ohio State should receive in the NCAA Tournament after sweeping the Big Ten regular-season and tournament championships.

The Buckeyes (28-2), now ranked second in both major polls after a 63-60 win over Purdue, would love to see themselves with a No. 1 seed and a potential regional stop in Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland when the brackets are announced Monday night.

That appears to be a long shot. Joni Comstock, chairwoman of the NCAA Division I women’s basketball committee, twice pointed out in a teleconference yesterday that the latest Rating Percentage Index showed the Big Ten (ranked seventh) "may be down slightly in strength from previous years."

The Buckeyes are eighth in the latest RPI rankings, behind North Carolina, Tennessee, Duke, Connecticut, Louisiana State, Oklahoma and Rutgers.

While the RPI isn’t the only indicator, it is telling in a season in which there’s much competition for the four No. 1 slots.

"There are more than four (candidates), and the committee is going to have to take a great deal of time," Comstock said. "This is a great thing for women’s basketball."

Comstock didn’t preclude the possibility of three Atlantic Coast Conference teams — North Carolina, Duke and Maryland — being awarded top seeds, or of LSU and Tennessee of the Southeastern Conference being in the mix with two ACC counterparts.

OSU coach Jim Foster obviously thinks that the Buckeyes have made the case to receive a top seed.

"We’re 28-2," he said. "They say how you’ve played in your last 10 games is a criteria. OK, we’ve beaten, I think, (five) ranked teams in our last 10 games.

"How do you do on the road? We’ve won road games. Do you play people outside (the conference)? Oklahoma won the Big 12."

The Buckeyes beat the Sooners on a late basket by Wooden Award finalist Jessica Davenport but lost at home to LSU.

"We played LSU without Ashley Allen, and Debbie Merrill sat down (because of fouls)," he said. "We’re a good basketball team. We should be in any discussion that takes place in that room about a No. 1 seed. Our resume is on the table, and we don’t apologize for it."

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Jessica Davenport is once again a finalist for the Wade Trophy (national POY)

From theozone.net


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Women's Basketball: OSU's junior center Jessica Davenport has once again been named to the finalist list for the Wade Trophy, the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association national player of the year award. She was also named to the finalist list in 2005.
Davenport, last week named the Big Ten Player of the Year for the second consecutive time, lead the conference in scoring (20.4ppg), rebounding (8.2rpg), shooting percentage (66.2%), and blocks (3.4bpg).
The winner will be announced on the morning of April 1.

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Dispatch

3/12/06

OSU WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Foster unfazed by turnovers, sees positioning as key

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Dave O’Neil
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

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</IMG> NEAL C . LAURON | DISPATCH Ohio State’s Ashley Allen, middle, had five second-half turnovers against Purdue.


As if those pacing the sidelines need more reasons to harp about defense, Ohio State coach Jim Foster added another.
Never mind creating turnovers by the other team, he said. If a team fails to play good defense, that team will fail to take care of the ball once in possession.
With that, Foster showed little concern over No. 2 Ohio State’s uncharacteristic sloppy play during the second half of its 63-60 win over Purdue on Monday in the Big Ten tournament title game in Indianapolis.
He remains confident in his guards’ play, despite six turnovers from them during a 13-minute span that saw Purdue turn a 17-point deficit into a 53-51 lead.
"I think when you’re breaking down in one area it’s because people are out of position," Foster said.
"Well, if people are out of position when a basket is scored, they’re not in the position within the next two seconds either. There’s a correlation, once we were in position defensively we didn’t have any issues offensively."
Fifth-year senior Ashley Allen committed five of those second-half turnovers. No other Buckeye had more than five turnovers in a game this season. After turning over the ball just once in a 64-46 win over Penn State in a quarterfinal game, Allen totaled 13 turnovers in wins over Michigan State (seven) and Purdue (six).
Foster attributes the point guard’s struggles to the pressures of playing in Indianapolis, her hometown. He applauded her response in the championship game’s final 6:28 when she didn’t commit a turnover in orchestrating Ohio State’s closing 12-7 run. He called the guard play during that time OSU’s best of the season.
"I just think she had a blip . . . just another (tough) experience you’re going through," Foster said. "She handled it extremely well, because at the end, she did exactly what she needed to do. She learned on the fly, whereas a freshman, a sophomore, a young player, they’re not going to recover."
Guard Marscilla Packer also came up big in securing OSU’s 19 th straight win. The Pickerington native scored eight of the Buckeyes final 10 points, including the winning three-pointer with 39 seconds remaining.
She said the team never lost focus despite Purdue’s run.
"We had some slip-ups for a little while there, careless turnovers," Packer said. "But we stayed together and we just ran our offense and took care of the ball and that was really important."
Allen didn’t share Foster’s optimism about her effort, saying her play will have to improve for Ohio State’s continued success. She took the blame for the turnovers. Even with Wooden Award finalist Jessica Davenport in the middle, Allen repeated a common axiom when talking about the NCAA Tournament: Guard play wins championships.
The NCAA Tournament selection show will be shown on ESPN at 7 p.m. Monday.
"If you can’t get the ball up the court, especially in the NCAA Tournament, you can’t score and there’s no chance of winning," Allen said. "(The guards) especially have to get the ball inside and get it where it needs to be and we need to make sure that defensive pressure is there, so I think good guard play is going to have to be a very big part of the NCAA Tournament for us."
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