2006-07 women’s basketball: a year in review

This season marked the best year in school history for the Rose-Hulman women’s basketball team. The team had 21 wins this season, shattering the previous record of 13, and broke 18 other school records over the course of the season.

Statistically, the biggest difference this season was defense. Last year, opponents scored 66.6 points per game against Rose-Hulman; this year, opponents scored 55.3 points per game with a .366 field goal percentage.

Statistics don’t tell the whole story. The driving force behind the outstanding season is new head coach John Prevo, who focused on helping individual players to improve. “Coach Prevo really took me and just developed individual skills,” said junior forward Katie Tharp. “Every day we did ball handling, or we split the guards and posts and did individual workouts.”

Prevo worked to simplify the offensive strategy and shift the focus away from learning new plays. “We had a ton of plays [with former head coach Tony Hill]. We had to memorize so many plays,” said senior guard Suzy Carlson.

“This year, Coach Prevo had two main sets and we just ran different variations. So it was a little wrinkle, I guess, in a main offense, and more of the focus was on fundamentals,” said Tharp.

That new focus paid off, especially for the players up front. “I think that our posts have really improved,” said Carlson. “We had Katie Tharp step up, and we had [sophomore center] Liz Ridgway, and I think that was really crucial to our success this year.”

Prevo also drove player improvement by running more efficient practices. “We have practice scheduled down to the minute; we’re going to do this drill for five minutes, this drill for seven minutes,” said Tharp. “We’re moving from drill to drill to drill to drill to drill, and we’re just continuously going, so it makes practice flow a lot better. You could see us improving and we just wanted to keep coming in and working on it. It’s like, when you can see the improvement in yourself and in others, it just makes you want to keep going.”

Prevo was sensitive to players’ motivation. Prevo previously spent 12 years as an assistant coach to the men’s basketball team, but quickly adjusted his coaching style to match the women’s personalities. “The young ladies are a lot more emotional on a daily basis than the males are,” said Prevo. “I had to be a little bit more sympathetic with them.”

“A lot of the girls on our team do not respond to getting screamed at, and [Hill] wasn’t willing to change that,” said Carlson. “[Prevo] is willing to adapt, and be like, ‘Okay, well yelling probably isn’t the best thing for this girl. I probably shouldn’t scream at her if she turns the ball over.’”

Prevo made his players want to work hard, and that made all the difference. “[In past seasons], it was very hard to be motivated to be at practice,” said Tharp, “and if you’re not motivated to be at practice, you really don’t have any motivation to win, period. Coach Prevo made us want to be there, made us want to work hard, and made us want to win.”