Tigers fueled by low ranking

An 11-18 season can be quite a teaching tool. There was the 81-74 loss that the MU women’s basketball team suffered to Nebraska on Jan. 8. Not only did the Tigers blow a nine-point halftime lead, but they went scoreless in the last 9 minutes, 46 seconds of the game, missing their final 15 shots.

Ten days later, there was a 56-51 loss to Colorado, where the Tigers saw an eight-point lead evaporate in the second half, in part because of a season-high 29 turnovers. After hanging tough with then-No. 23 Iowa State on Feb. 23, the Tigers saw their defense break down in the final minutes, allowing Cyclones’ guard Anne O’Neal to hit two 3-pointers in the final 86 seconds.

Now as the Tigers prepare to open their season, these games are merely lessons. They are lessons for which the team has answers. It has answers to avoid late-minute letdowns. It has answers to eliminate careless mistakes. Those answers — improving discipline, developing maturity and maintaining an intensity on the defensive end — have been the Tigers’ focus in practice this fall.

“We are ready to put the past behind us,” said senior point guard LaToya Bond, who led the team in assists per game (4.0) and steals per game (2.2) last season. “We learned a lot from last year, and we are a much more sure team.”

Carlynn Savant said that the Tigers’ improved discipline is a direct result of their experience playing together. With all five starters from last year’s team returning, the Tigers know how to read one another better and have mastered communication among each other.

“A lot of our problems last year were that we didn’t know what was going on a lot of the time,” the junior forward said. “We were a very young team, but we’ve learned where we need to be as far as competitiveness.”

Staying patient and composed on the court are areas of discipline in which the team knows it needs to improve.

“When things get bad, we’ve got to get out of it,” forward EeTisha Riddle said. “We can’t let one bad thing get to us and affect our play.”

Many of the players believe that the team this year is a more mature one, and that this maturity is a direct by-product of playing experience.

“Last year a lot of us had to play positions we weren’t used to,” Riddle, a junior, said. “But we learned a lot, and we won’t let that happen again this year.”

With the women finding their niches and understanding their roles on the court, coach Cindy Stein said the team’s primary focus needs to be defensive intensity. Defense, she said, is the key to a winning season.

“We know if we can be one of the top defensive teams in the conference that we can definitely make an impact,” Stein said.

While last year’s team showed signs of a strong defense, it struggled to maintain the intensity needed to defend strongly for 40 minutes.

“Last year we lost a lot of close games that came to the wire,” guard Blair Hardiek said. “We have been trying to fine tune the little things so that we can stay composed.”

Those little things — mental toughness, ball handling, consistency — were the differences between winning and losing for the Tigers last season, said Hardiek.

The fact that the team was predicted by coaches in the Big 12 to finish tenth in the conference doesn’t seem to faze the Tigers. They view it as a reason to play hard and an incentive to win.

“We didn’t prove ourselves to anybody last year,” said Bond, whose team finished in a tie for ninth place in the conference last year after being predicted to finish eighth. “We are going to use that to our advantage. We are going to use that to motivate us.”

For Riddle, the poll is only useful as a tool for motivation.

“So they picked us tenth?” she said, shrugging her shoulders, a wry smile appearing on her face. “OK, that’s fine. We are just going to have to shock a lot of people because we’re not a tenth-place team.”

The Tigers will put what they have learned on display Saturday as they take on the Missouri Southern Lions at 1 p.m. at Mizzou Arena in an exhibition game to open the season. The Tigers have spent the past eight months as students, learning the lessons for success. Now, they are ready to finally be tested.