Top To Bottom, Getting Enough Scoring
By Nick Eatman
BARTLESVILLE, Okla. --- One of the good things about Northeastern State's women's basketball team this year, is that head coach Randy Gipson has so many scoring options, he never really knows where his scoring is going to come from on any given night.
Then again, one of the bad things about Gipson's team is that . . . well, he never really knows where is scoring is going to come from on any given night.
This year, the RiverHawks have had 10 different players lead the team in scoring in any particular game. Some coaches might call that inconsistency, but for Gipson, whose team entered this week's LSC Championships as the No. 1 seed in the North, he's learn to accept the fact that someone - either a starter or a reserve - will step up and take command.
It hasn't always been the same person, but the RiverHawks have done it collectively, on a consistent basis. No other stat preaches that more than the team's 25-5 record this year.
"Our team has been successful this year because we've had so many people step up at different times," Gipson said. "It's just the nature of our teams. If you look at our stats, most of the girls on our team have led us in scoring on any given night. Our depth has paid off for us big all year. We've had plenty of games where half, or more than half the points have been scored by people coming off the bench. That's nothing new for us."
One of the best examples of that occurred in Thursday's quarterfinal round against the fourth-seeded in the South, Texas A&M-Kingsville, which battled the RiverHawks to the very end. But leading the way for NSU was sophomore guard Jasmine Wright, who entered the game as the team's ninth-leading scorer at 3.9 points per game, with a game-high of just 15 points this season.
So of course, in the team's first post-season game of the year, it was Wright filling up the stat sheet. She scored 22 points, easily a career-high to become the 10th different player to lead this team in that category.
"I was just really hyped to play," Wright said of her first-round game. "I was ready to go. I felt like our team was playing well. We didn't have anything to lose really. We just went out there and played hard and I just got some chances to make some big shots."
Along with Wright, Krista Dean, who Gipson said played just seven minutes last week in a huge game against Central Oklahoma, came off the bench Thursday to score 15 points, including a huge layup in the final minutes to seal the win.
As good as the RiverHawks have been this year, winning 14 of the last 15 games, they only have one scorer averaging double figures. Jasmine Webb averages 12.1 points per game, while Cristy Nitz scores 8.8 and Alix Perkins 8.0 points a contest.
While the RiverHawks are considered a young team, with just two seniors, two juniors, four sophomores and three freshmen, they were even younger last season. But NSU managed to claim the fourth seed in the North and nearly defeated top-seed and eventual champion West Texas A&M. While Gipson may not be a huge fan of moral victories, he said he thought his team benefited from the close game to end the season.
"I think our kids definitely left that game feeling we weren't very far away," Gipson said. "And it's carried over. What we're doing now is a culmination of a lot of work, starting in August. This team has really been, I know it's a cliché, but you can't get what we have on a stat sheet, if we don't have all of them on the same page. We need all of them buying into the team concept. You see on the stat sheet, we have some kids that played eight or nine minutes last week, and then scored 15 points. There's no pouting, just good practicing and happy we won. It's really a good group of players. We usually find enough of what we need in a night of shooting or defense."
Even though he's never really sure where it's going to come from each night.
