Nov. 5, 2015
By Mick McGrane, @GoAztecs Senior Writer
(@MickOnTheMesa)
SAN DIEGO - San Diego State women's basketball coach Stacie Terry devised the plan three years ago, a formula designed to sustain success and maintain continuity.
To wit: Construct a guard-laden lineup that could extend defenses, pressure the ball 94 feet, create easy baskets in transition and test the mettle of every team in the Mountain West largely by running them ragged.
Then Terry scanned the floor. Even Monet couldn't paint without a palate.
"I wanted to do it when I first got here, but we didn't have the players," said Terry, a product of Lakeside's El Capitan High who took over the team in 2013. "Now we have the pieces that we've needed to play that kind of style."
And if they also have their share of challenges, so be it. Terry, whose team opens the 2015-16 season with an exhibition game against Point Loma at home on Friday, is far more realist than a person of pretense, clearly realizing that a team with two seniors may not yet be positioned to lap the league.
Simultaneously, a coach who also has had a hand in tailoring NCAA Tournament teams at LSU and UCLA is not oblivious to building from the bottom up. The Aztecs may be short on seniority, but those awaiting opportunity's knock have shown the potential of unhinging the door.
"Right now, I think I'm their biggest cheerleader, just because I believe we can do some special things this year," Terry said. "These are kids that I have to kick out of the gym. We are so much further along at this point in the season than we were the past two years. It's allowed us to move quicker through practice. Some of that is that we're now in year three (as a coaching staff), some of it is the returning players, but some of it is that we're just better players now. And that's a testament to how much work they put in during the off-season, recommitting to the program and our vision here. They believe in what we want to do, and that's cut down nets. They're putting in the work to back up the talk."
Work that will include finding a way to offset the losses of Erimma Amarikwa and Khristina Hunter and Chairese Culberson, who combined for 43 percent of the team's rebounds last season. Work that will include improving on a shooting percentage of 25.1 percent beyond the arc and 39.9 percent overall. Work that will include correcting myriad miscues that saw the Aztecs finish with nearly 100 more turnovers than the opposition a year ago.
Work that Terry maintains has become a fixture of a team that has identified its liabilities and maximized its strengths.
"You're going to see a very confident team, and I think that's the biggest difference," she said. "I think it came from us having a tremendous summer and an even better fall. I think our players are very understanding of their roles and accepting of their roles. They're genuinely excited for each other. It doesn't matter how we get it done as long as we get it done, and that's really the mindset they've adopted."
A mindset that could go a long way in changing the minds of the league's 11 head coaches and select women's basketball media from around the league who have forecast SDSU to finish sixth in the Mountain West. The Aztecs concluded last season with a seventh-place mark of 8-10 in league play and 12-19 overall. Three times in the season's first three months they endured losing streaks of two or more games, but rebounded to play .500 basketball through the final six weeks.
"I think (the league race) is wide open," Terry said. "We were voted to finish sixth and I think that's where we should be. We lost a lot of rebounding from last season. But I think there are going to be quite a few of us bunched up at the top, and I include us because I think we can get in there. I think the regular season and the Mountain West tournament are going to be really competitive."
And perhaps rewarding, particularly if the Aztecs can take advantage of the perimeter play of sophomore guard McKynzie Fort, sophomore wing Lexy Thorderson and junior guard Kymberly Ellison, a transfer from Georgia Tech. Fort earned Mountain West all-freshman honors last season after finishing third among the league's rookies in scoring with an average of 10.9 points in league play to go along with 3.2 rebounds and 1.7 assists.
But much also will rest atop the shoulders of the team's lone seniors --- guard Ahjalee Harvey and forward Deidra Smith --- to provide direction for a roster that includes 10 underclassmen.
"Obviously, the dynamics of our team are quite a bit different from what we've had in past years," said Harvey, the lone holdover from the team's previous coaching staff. "We used to have a lot of bigs and we looked to them to score. It's kind of evened out now where it's been our guards who have picked up our play."
A group of guards that in addition to Harvey includes junior two-time letterwinner Ariell Bostick; Geena Gomez, a sophomore transfer from St. Joseph's; and sophomore Cheyenne Greenhouse, who joined Fort last season as the only Aztec freshmen to appear in all 31 games.
With the addition of forwards Aleiah Brandon, a junior who played in a career-high 30 games last season; fellow classmate Kylie Herd a transfer from Mesa Community College in Arizona who earned NJCAA second-team All-America honors a year ago; and Arantxa Gomez Ferrer, a freshman from Valencia, Spain, who spent six years on the Spanish club circuit, Terry is ever closer to seeing a plan she formulized three years ago come to fruition.
"I can honestly say that every single one of them has raised their level of play, and I'm not just saying that because it's the politically-correct thing to do," she said. "The fact that McKynzie Fort wasn't recognized on any of the (Mountain West) preseason teams --- not that it means anything --- I think has raised her game to another level. She can score whenever she wants to, but what I'm most proud of is that she's getting her teammates involved much more than she did last year. I really think she's going to have a phenomenal season this year.
"Ahjalee has done a terrific job and exceeded my expectations already by the way she's leading this team. She and Deidra are an extension of me on the floor and they've continued to grow our relationship so that they know exactly what I need and what I want when they're out there.
"Our sophomore guards are going to be special. I appreciate everything Ariell and Ahjalee have done to pave the way, but when this group of sophomores becomes seniors this is going to be a very special team. But we can't fast-forward the process; there's a lot of work to be done."