Brick's Excellent Adventure

So I must apologize…I missed my first Lady Petrels game of the ’07-’08 campaign, however, Brick Faucette was sent on the road to cover our Lady Petrels in my absence. Brick’s summary of last weekends SCAC play is written below:

"We’re in it for the Long Haul…

Literally! The Lady Petrels embarked upon their first conference road trip this past weekend that stretched from Danville, KY to Greencastle, IN and back, returning home with a 1-1 record. To say they underachieved would be an understatement. Facing a pesky Centre team first, whom OU defeated twice last year, might look like an easy game to the uneducated fan, let me assure it wasn’t. Centre is a team comprised of quick guards and leads the conference in 3 pointers made per game with 9, that is until they faced OU- who held them to 5 made. In these teams last meeting, a 66-65 loss that knocked Centre out of the SCAC tournament last year that came at the hands of none other than the Stormy Petrels. That was a game that happened on senior night where Centre noticeably outplayed OU and I’m sure they were fairly eager to seek some revenge from last year. The game was close most of the first half as OU was never really able to pull away until halftime where they took a 38-25 advantage into the locker room. Centre made Oglethorpe work on the offensive end by quickly getting back on defense and making the Petrels set up their half-court offense. For those who know these ladies know that they love to run and gun and get easy baskets off of steals in transition, playing in the half-court isn’t their style and it showed. Even with Centre’s defensive pressure and the Petrels not playing their best game they were still able leave with a 16 point lead and some confidence going into the game against DePauw on Sunday. A bright spot for the Petrels was the play of Junior forward Tina Grace. Tina earned her first start of the year as Biz Richman came off the bench nursing an injury. Grace played her typical game, scoring early and often, ending up with 12 points on 5 of 7 shooting in only 13 minutes. It was great to see Tina play so well and the confidence she had carried over to the DePauw match up.

Sunday came and the fans in Greencastle were treated to a great match up of 2 Top 25 teams. Oglethorpe came in with a #25 National and they looked to unseat the #12 ranked and Defending National Champions- DePauw Tigers. Unfortunately someone forgot to tell the refs that this wasn’t just some regular season game, it was actually a game that had tournament implications for both teams… or maybe they did. For those who were able to watch the game and are reading this now I want to go ahead and apologize for the referees because I know they don’t think they did anything wrong, but the stats don’t lie. For those who weren’t in attendance, you were spared 40 minutes of frustrating calls and non calls. For the record DePauw shot a total of 44 free throws… a large amount by normal standards but a number that is even more inflated when you find out Oglethorpe only shot 12, a mere 2 more than one of DePauw’s starting guards. Delving further into the foul discrepancy you find out that Oglethorpe’s starters totaled 19 total fouls in 118 minutes with 2 players fouling out while DePauw’s entire team only committed 18 fouls in 200 minutes… “interesting” officiating is the only reason I can come up with to back up these odd numbers. Even with DePauw playing with 8 players to OU’s 5 the Stormy Petrel’s dominated most of the first half and if I remember correctly led by as many as 12 until DePauw used a run late to eventually take a 2 point lead into the half. Again the Petrels hung close to start behind Junior Tina Grace’s game high 21 points but the wind was gradually taken out of their sails as both Grace and Kulavic sat most of the second half before eventually fouling out. The last straw, in my mind, that shows the game was out of control was when Coach Sattele received his first Technical foul in 6 years as a coach at Oglethorpe. I mean c’mon, how can you T up Santa!!! You must have no soul! What is even more bizarre are the events that transpired leading up to the technical. Coach Satelle, from what I was told, was talking to the ref and after the ref nudged him aside he made a step outside of the coaching box to continue talking to the ref and after an OU made basket he was whistled for the Technical. You wouldn’t think this would be behavior that warranted a technical especially since you see coaches wandering the sideline up and down regularly with no reprimand, and the fact that DePauw’s coach set up residence outside of her designated area, but it followed the theme of the game so I assume you could have expected it. Regardless of the referees and the fact that OU came away with a loss and dropped out of the Top 25 the Petrels came away from the game with CONFIDENCE. Sure DePauw may have won by 12 but Oglethorpe led by as many as 12 in the first and really outplayed the Tigers before things started falling apart. This is not the same DePauw team that was led by All-American Liz Bondi and had Bridget Bailey clogging up the middle or even the same team that had Suzy Doughty leading the team! No, this is a DePauw team that lost a lot of senior leadership from last year’s National Championship Team and it’s a team that Oglethorpe does not fear! DePauw got theirs at home and now they have to come to Dorough to end the season against a bunch of Rabid Petrel fans who would love nothing more than to upset Depauw right before the conference tournament and shift the momentum to the real Gold and Black… or is it Yellow and Warm grey now? Regardless I can’t wait for the rest of the season and hope to see all of the Petrel Nation pack Dorough the rest of the season. From what I’ve seen at the other venues Oglethorpe has a very strong home court advantage and if we can pack the stands with Loud Students night in and night out not only will OU not lose a game but we will also establish ourselves as a place that no other team wants to play because of the environment we create! Go Petrels!

O What?
U Know!!"

Thanks Brick!
Be sure to tune into the Petrels Sports Network this Saturday night as the Lady Petrels take on the Lady Tigers of the University of the South (Sewanee) up on the mountain in Sewanee, TN at 6PM. Better yet, join us on the mountain, it’s only a 2 and half hour drive at the most, and cheer on your Lady Petrels live.

Wilmington Hands OU its first loss of the '07-'08 Campaign

If the undefeated season must come to an end, then I'm glad it ended in the fashion it did on Sunday night. You might say, "We lost by 10, and gave up a double digit lead in the final 15 minutes, how is that a good loss?" I'm not saying it's a good loss, but the lady Petrels have to be walking away with a lot of confidence after that loss. The effort Sunday was awesome; both teams wanted nothing less than a victory, unfortunately Wilmington owned the lead when time expired. The lady Petrels must keep in mind that they lost to a really good Wilmington team. But here is why I'm still confident even after suffering our first loss of the '07-'08 campaign; we could've easily won. I'm not gonna say we should've won because Wilmington is every bit as good as we are, but if we shoot a little better in the second half we win the game. If you look at the box score and see a 1-18 from 3pt land in the second half you may conclude that OU was just jacking 3's from anywhere, but they weren't. We had some great looks at the basket in the second half and the shots just didn't fall, you can't fault the Ladies for that. Sometimes the shots just don't fall, all I can say is it just wasn't our night.

I guess I'm still so confident about our team because I don't think we played our best game and we still controlled the game for about 30 minutes. It's not as if we played above and beyond our norm and still lost to Wilmington; we just sputtered some down the stretch and couldn't hang on to the victory. I know we can play better and we're gonna get stronger as the season rolls forward. You do have to give the Lady Quakers a lot of credit, they played really hard and never gave up even when they got down by 13 or so (I could be off some on the point spread here) early in the second half. We have to put this one behind us; no more talking about the could haves and should haves.

This coming weekend is a big weekend of SCAC basketball as we take on Centre Friday night in Danville and then DePauw Sunday afternoon in Greencastle, and for those who follow SCAC basketball you know how tough conference play on the road can be, especially when playing in Greencastle. It's time to focus on conference play! 10-0 would have been great, but I'm not gonna complain with a 9-1 mark and I don't think that any of the lady Petrels, coaches, or fans will truly be complaining about a 9-1 record right now.