Thursday, November 20, 2008

Women's hoops at UTEP

With last season's success came a contract extension for the head coach and higher expectations surrounding the women's team. There is certainly frustration surrounding the team's loss last Sunday but a win at UTEP, even though the Miners are still trying to figure things out, is what the Aggies need. A loss could hurt this group that is still searching for leadership and identity.

Coming into the season, I thought the team's strengths was its guards, and from reading Teddy Feinberg's story today, it sounds like Darin Spence is going to head in that direction. I thought that Fresno State was kind of ahead of the curve last year with their up and down style of play, playing small and creating mismatches and the Aggies were one of the few teams that could adjust to that type of style so we will see how it pans out, but in order to do so, they need to develop a Sherell Neal type of player who rebounds and can defend the post. Freshman Tabytha Wampler could be that person and it would be interesting to see how Erica Sanchez responds.

Both teams are well coached so I'm sure both games will be competitive.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The bad thing about losing to UTEP is that they didnt have their best player out there and we didnt have absences. Granted it was a close game but it was still a loss and right now the team needs to find some answers since they are 1-2 now.

Anonymous said...

Slow down.

Lets look at the Big Picture in all this, people. This team is trying to find their way, true. Our experienced players right now are two role player seniors who have to accept their role of leading, being tough, scoring when open, defending and rebounding. The "players" are sophs and freshman, much like our guys sqaud. The first step for this team is to "compete" and play hard all the time to learn how to win on the D1 level. Sunday (Cal Poly) they only did for a half and at UTEP they did for almost 40 minutes. They and we can't get caught up in the W's & L's right now as they are learning. We have a sophomore all conference player who is bouncing back from Mono and trying to play her way back in shape and looks as though she is on her way. The Corbett kid is explosive and just needs to keep growing in tough battles. We don't have many who are battle tested yet, but they will get there. If anyone thought we would turn around this year and win 23 games like a year ago, you are crazy. In time this group will be ok and will grow with; no question about that.

So all of a sudden, we want to start on the negative band wagon about this team? Are you kidding me? More people need to get out to the arena and get behind this team before that ever happens.

When we host the Thanksgiving classic we need to have fans in the arena behind this team.

Anonymous said...

hey, everyone just needs to calm down. the aggies will be fine. i think one of the keys problems is that they need to play their best player more.

consider this, madison spence, our point gaurd, only played 30 out of 40 minutes and was only allowed to take 14 shots and, despite this, still managed one assist. just because her dad is the coach doesn't mean he should limit her playing time.

if she had played those other ten minutes i bet she would have had at least another assist or two. at a minimum. coach spence should stop limiting her potential.

and another thing, every where i go, around the coffee shops and grocery stores, the malls and on the street, i keep hearing people say they are woried about only winning ten games this year.

people, CALM DOWN. have you seen the schedule? the aggies play utah state, hawaii, san jose state and idaho TWO TIMES EACH!!!! those teams are TERRIBLE!!! that is 8 wins for sure! so we already have one win. all we have to do is steal two or three wins elsewhere and we are easily over ten wins. no sweat!

in short, don't worry aggie fans! the sky is NOT falling. stay positve, hope spence will play his daughter more and crush those other weak WAC teams!!! the aggies will be fine!!!!

Jason Groves said...

I think the reason Madison Spence has been limited is due to battling through illness. After spraining an ankle last year, she had to recover from mono and has yet to play at full strength. UTEP was her strongest game this season but as she gets back into basketball shape, her minutes will increase to where they need to be.

Anonymous said...

Seton Hall (men) beats USC in Puerto Rico despite Taj Gibson pulling down 18 rebs and scoring his normal 22 pts? Now would Herb Pope rather watch Seton Hall beat USC or play with NMSU and put a scare into the Trojans? ...my guess is he'd rather be playing on Menzies squad than watching, but no one can be inside his head. I wish him success in the future with the Pirates when he becomes eligible.

Anonymous said...

Herb who?

Anonymous said...

to the person that is "anonymous" on nov 21 at 11:02am is apparently not watching the same games that i have been watching... maddie is not playing her best. nor is she the best on that team!!! she is the slowest player on that team. everyone is running and there she is barely trotting down the court. 9 out of 10 times she gets beat on defense. personally i think she needs to earn her spot and she has not earned it. i'm glad to see number 13 playing more. she is very aggressive, excellent ball handling, can drive the lane, creates a great tempo of game play. she makes plays happen... now there is different between forcing plays and making plays. maddie forces plays. #13 makes plays. in a recent paper coach spence was said that maddie is at best 50% right now cause of health problems, if that is true he should be sitting her. why is he playing someone at 50% when he has a whole bench!! play someone at 150%!!! in the calpoly vs. nmsu game, calpoly played 13 girls the whole game. sub-ing in and out. nmsu played 10 the first half and then played 8 the second half... one of them being maddie who was slooooooooooow!! yes, sometimes you wanna slow the ball down. but most of the time you wanna push that ball. i have not seen maddie push the ball since she was a sophomore in high school. i have been watching maddie play for going on 6 years now. her best years playing so far have been her 9th and 10th grade year in high school. she could move, make plays and be fast on defence. now she's slow, forces plays and gets beat on D! when she's back to 100% i wanna see her back to how she was at the beginning of her high school career. if she can get there, nmsu will be very tough and hard to handle.