Shooting woes lead 'Dogs to cellar

By Joshua D Scroggin

It’s time for the women’s basketball team to mail it in.

Nobody wants to accept it, but it’s true. Fresno State (7-12, 1-8 in the Western Athletic Conference) is all alone in the conference cellar and has dropped the past seven games.

“ Morale is very much down,” Bulldogs coach Stacy Johnson-Klein said, “but we’re just trying as coaches to build the morale and build the confidence in the younger players, and give the older ones some solace, some love.”

Translation: wait ‘til next year.

Loss number eight in a row is already penciled in, and someone threw away the eraser.

Fresno State hosts No. 8 Louisiana Tech, the WAC frontrunner, Thursday night in the Save Mart Center. And the Bulldogs have beaten the Lady Techsters about as many times as Johnson-Klein goes outside without her makeup on.

In fact, only one WAC team has beaten Louisiana Tech since it joined the conference in 1999—Rice.

And Rice beat Fresno State by more than 40 points Jan. 22 in Houston—mainly because the Owls can throw the basketball in the air and have it go through the hoop before it hits the ground or another player (a.k.a. shoot).

“ We are poor shooters,” Johnson-Klein said. “I have always been brutally honest, and we just cannot shoot.”

And conference opponents are exposing that weakness, Johnson-Klein said.

“ The problem is [in] pre-conference, we got away with it because people didn’t know about us,” Johnson-Klein said. “Our conference teams have scouted us. They know to back off because our kids don’t shoot well.”

The Bulldogs have shot less than 35 percent the past four games. Junior guard Aritta Lane contends the Bulldogs can shoot, but that their confidence is dwindling.

“ I think we kind of lost that confidence in us,” Lane said. “After you get torn down, you go down so far. Good teams bounce back.”

It’s the coach’s job to get the team to bounce back, but any coach would have to be frustrated at this point.
“ There’s not a lot more I can do as a coach to change that,” Johnson-Klein said. “I’ve tried everything in the world.”

Johnson-Klein was heralded for turning the 20-loss Bulldogs—perennial losers—into a 20-game, postseason bracket-buster in one season. But what’s going on this year?

“ Our inside game is streaky, and our shooting is consistently bad,” Johnson-Klein said. “That’s not anything negative toward the kids, but that’s not their strength.”

So, basketball is not their strength, but somebody has got to do something or Johnson-Klein is going to have to turn around another 20-game loser—something she seems readily prepared to do.

“ We’re not a very good basketball team,” Johnson-Klein said. “Recruiting is going well. We continue to work hard. We’ll get better. It’s temporary, but it’s painful while it’s temporary.”

At least Johnson-Klein is learning something from the losing—recruiting techniques.

“ I won’t even look at a kid now if she can’t shoot,” Johnson-Klein said. “I don’t care how great an athlete she is. I need kids that come in and knock down a shot.”

Unless the kids already here start knocking them down, expect the postman to be a little late the rest of the year.