HUD

Wow! Now we have 6 open scholarships available for this fall.

I kind of thought that was possible after losing her starting position to Veerbeek and somewhat passed in playing time by Bourne. Coach kind of alluded to the possibility of some turnover the other day. We have 4 open scholarships to fill for this fall if we want.

Coach has probably sat down one on one with the players already outlining her vision going forward for the team and how that particular player will fit in to it. They then must decide whether they want to be part of that or not. A lot of factors can enter in.

I think as has been noted for a long time she was not recruited as a pure point guard but had to play there out of necessity and did the best she could. Not having a top notch point guard is on the coach. She tried with a couple of transfers (Bria Stallworth and Kate Hudson) but that didn't work out partially due to injuries and then we recruit a potentially good one in Makenzie Helms and the injury bug bites again.

The only person that I ever saw that could do that on a consistent basis was Bill Russell.

When your starters at two key positions PG and CTR are slow of foot and unable to create shots for themselves and teammates by taking the ball to the hoop it has a real negative effect on your offense and defense as well.

Humphrey St. Francis is pretty well a one player team and Wynot after losing to them by 16 earlier in the year really dedicate 2 to 3 players to help on Weidner. Through all of that especially in the 2nd half she was still able to get the ball to wide open team mates under the basket. The problem was they couldn't hit lay ups or free throws. I think she will prove to be a good addition. One who we haven't mentioned much is our walk-on Whitney Brown from Grand Island NW. I watched her in their triple overtime loss to Crete. She is a real gamer but somewhat vertically challenged at 5' 7''. She can shoot and is the team leader. She's tough as nails and reminds me a lot of Woody.

I was at her game when she scored 39 and watched her game on TV today. I was excited to see a point guard who is very athletic, fast especially taking the ball to the hoop, a great free through shooter and generator and a great passer. The outside shot will come but she has skills I haven't seen on our team at point guard for a long time. She is a good rebounder and plays good defense. Seems to me to be a real gamer. The big question to me is our player development under this staff at NU. I am scratching my head to come up with a player who consistently got better these last 4 years.

And Grace played well for the minutes she played. She was extremely pumped on a couple of her big plays. I always liked her team first attitude. We will miss it.

I was at the game and watched the honoring of the four seniors after the big victory. Very moving and well done. Nice crowd.

I see your point but last year was not a good year to compare to. Take a lookout the turnover average per game for us so far this year and we are in 13th place in league games at a negative 3.1 which is quite a bit worse then 12th Purdue at a negative 2.4. A couple of less turnovers per game may have won us a few more games.

I can stand freshman or even sophomores making some turnovers but not the number that our seniors have been making.

I'm not saying that we should compare our WBB team to our VB team. They have been on different levels for many years. All I was saying is Cook has a great talent to develop leadership. There are some great examples of walk-on's in his program becoming great leaders.

If you want to develop leadership which I agree we need to do, Amy just needs to spend time with the best volleyball coach in the nation who year after year develops great leaders. John Cook is nearby.

For two seasons now we have been in almost every ballgame. We are so close to taking that next step but 4 years of having too many turnovers and giving up way too many offensive rebounds just doesn't seem to get fixed. Coach talks about it but we need a big improvement in those two areas. The rest seems to be taken care of.