Utah State University women's basketball focusing on the big picture

By Ashley Springer

Focusing on the bigger picture.

That is the goal of the Utah State University women’s basketball team this season.

“It’s more about putting all the pieces and parts together to make the whole,” said USU coach Jerry Finkbeiner said. “I’ve always said this team has a chance to be pretty good this year.”

Finkbeiner said getting better weekly, both offensively and defensively, is the focus, especially for such a young team. The team has seven freshmen and three sophomores listed on its 15-woman roster.

“This team is… inexperienced,” Finkbeiner said. “It’s a teaching element… Our classroom’s the basketball floor, our practice is daily homework but the games are the test. So hopefully we perform better this Saturday than the previous Saturday.”
 

“We need to be better on our defense,” said freshman guard Katie Toole. “We just haven’t been as solid as we should’ve in our last couple games so that’s a big focus.”

According to Finkbeiner, a piece of the bigger picture is the team becoming more aggressive.

“It’s the blessing and the curse of having good kids, good character, good chemistry because sometimes that could be a fault,” Finkbeiner said. “We may not be as aggressive or tough as we need to be… So that’s always going to be part of the big picture is taking a group of young ladies that are good people and making them tough and turning that switch on-and-off for that two hours during the week when we play a game.”

Finkbeiner listed three statistics he has emphasized: getting more rebounds, making more free throws and having less turnovers. He believes if the team beat its opponents in these categories, the Aggies will likely get the victory.


This ideal has been reflected in the past two games. In the 74-67 win against Westminster College on Monday, the Aggies had a total of 36 rebounds, 19 made free throws of 23 attempts and had 12 turnovers. Westminster had a team total of 32 rebounds, made 13 of 18 free throws and had 20 turnovers. However, in the 86-95 loss to Sacramento State on Saturday, the Aggies had 52 rebounds, made 11 of 20 free throws and had 27 turnovers. Sacramento State had 54 rebounds — 35 of which were offensive —, made 17 of 25 free throws and had 13 turnovers.