State of the Program

Well, our starting center, who is second on the team in scoring, has been out several games. That doesn't help. The team scoring average has gone down quite a bit in that time frame.  To address your three point shooting concerns, let's take a look. The two players on the team with the best 3pt shooting percentage are Greta and AJ. Greta at over .400 and AJ at .387. Nothing shabby about those numbers, but you are talking about freshman who are overall inconsistent in their game. I like AJ's aggressiveness but Greta has the better overall skills. Unfortunately, she seems to be less confident and slower to adapt to the Pac12 game. Given time, they'll both probably be consistent at shooting 3's for the Beavs. The unexpected loss of Sasha certainly didn't help in this area, as she could both hit the 3, and take that one long stride and get to the hoop. Two players who I'm sure the coaches expected to hit the 3's this year, Ellie and Emily have both shot lower than their career 3pt percentages this season. This may be attributed to the moving of the 3 point line, but I also think some of it is a timing issue with players not being used to playing with each other and in Emily's case, a new system. Some of it may just be a shooting slump. Taya has actually been shooting the 3 pretty decently this year, but she's only averaging 3 3pt shots per game, which means she only makes one per game. That doesn't cut it when you need more scoring. There's a chance those players break out of their slump, gain confidence, and experience, and we see an improvement as this year goes along. I'm not holding out a lot of hope for drastic improvement this season, but I do expect we will see much stronger seasons from Greta and AJ next year, and I do expect we will see a transfer guard/wing come in next year who can score and hit the three. I'll be very surprised if that does not happen.

(1) Yes. Major yes. Not only failure to recruit true point guards, but even shooting guards over the past few years (until 2021, when he got two ranked in the top-12 at one point, but finished in the 20-40 range). It resulted in one impactful guard in the 2018-2020 classes, and that was Sasha who is no longer with the program. The result has been OSU being heavily reliant on freshman and mid-major transfers. Simmons was expected to be a really high caliber guard, but never seem to hit her stride, then we missed out on both Shelley and Martin in 2019 and a bunch in 2020.

Sydney and Aleah weren't really shooting guards. At the very least both were considered "combo-guards" when they committed to OSU (as deemed by scouts and evaluators), so I don't think it was a big surprise. Pivec is probably a better example of a shooting guard turned point guard, but she was very good at it as a freshman. We were young that season, but that was a great starting five in terms of skill sets and abilities.

(2) I would say Jones was a success story for her first two years. Pac-12 All-Freshman Team, Pac-12 All-Defensive Media Team, and All-Pac-12 Honorable Mention as a freshman and All-Pac-12 honoree followed up by Pac-12 Defensive Honorable Mention as a sophomore. I'm hopeful she can overcome her injuries and have a full offseason to work on her game.

(3) Scott is signing and recruiting some pretty decent three-point shooters. Tea and Emily were both around 38% last year, Mack shot above 40% in her years at Bucknell, Greta shot high percentages in high school (and this year), and Talia shot it really well last year. Shooting it pretty poorly this season, but this team has some shooters who have proven they can knock down shots at the collegiate level before.

(4) I would generally agree with this. He seems to trust Talia more than Tea to freelance -- which isn't surprising. She was doing a lot of one-on-one last night, especially in the fourth quarter. Scott told her he needed her to takeover the game, so I'd assume that's what he wanted.

Jamie missed several weeks when she broke her hand punching a locker after a loss. 

And the beavers have had a string of unfortunate injuries these recent years. 

I’ve tried to find reference to a Blake’s and gibb could you help me?

Syd broke her hand against Tennessee at Gill. Katie stepped in and helped lead us to a home win against Stanford (Deven was draining threes during the game) for the first time in about 9 years. Gabby played with a bad back during most of her career and just gutted it out. Can you imagine anyone else defending Kelsey Plum besides her?

From my forty years or so of watching OSU women's basketball, my choice for the best overall defensive player on a Beaver women's team has been Gabby Hansen.

Other nominees?

Wasn't KF situation related to her spouse getting a job jn Washington?   Granted I am sure she wanted the Montana opening but even though she was a great recruiter and coach, she couldn't expect CR not to have an honest opinion.   She will get her chance and I am sure she will succeed when it happens.