Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Just a few steps from the doors of Allen Fieldhouse, there’s construction taking place.
Much work has been done; many hours spent laboring, shaping and crafting. Yet, the bare steel and piles of materials strewn about hints that more work remains.
Kansas women’s basketball started this season as a project, more a blueprint than a product. Then, coach Bonnie Henrickson molded and built that unfinished blueprint through the good and bad — and for a portion of the season the bad vastly outshined the good.
WNIT semifinal
Kansas vs. Illinois State
7 p.m.
Allen Fieldhouse
TV: None
Admission is free for students with a valid KUID.
Now, Henrickson and the Jayhawks stand in the WNIT semifinals against Illinois State tonight at 7 p.m., a far cry from the team that suffered two four-game losing streaks in the Big 12. But, similar to the buildings next to the Fieldhouse, there’s work yet to be done and improvements still to be made.
“We’re thrilled where we are,” senior guard Ivana Catic said. “But we’re not satisfied yet. We still have two games to go.”
Catic’s story fits this team, this Kansas program, perfectly.
Catic, a native of Serbia, followed Henrickson to Lawrence with the idea of changing a program that hadn’t won much in recent years.
Yet the task didn’t always flow smoothly. Kansas went to the WNIT twice in Catic’s first three years but never made it past the second round. Those teams never won 20 games.
Members of the Jayhawks Women's Basketball team wave to the crowd in Allen Fieldhouse after their March 23 79-64 victory against Creighton in the first game of the WNIT competition.
Then came this year — a pivotal point in Henrickson’s five-year tenure — when many demanded for progress to be made. The Jayhawks’ 21 victories are the most in a decade and this is the furthest Kansas has ever been in the WNIT.
“This staff came here to turn the program around, and all of us who came here to play with Bonnie and her staff had that in mind,” Catic said. “It’s not exactly like going to the tournament, but it’s still a great thing.”
Perhaps that’s the most accurate sentiment of Kansas’ current run in the WNIT. Sure, the Jayhawks would much rather have made the NCAA tournament, but the WNIT semifinals serve as a step forward and a form of progress.
And Catic has seen it too. Her teammates are not only accepting what coaches are saying — they’re accepting responsibility.
“People started holding each other and themselves accountable for things on and off the court,” Catic said. “We all realized at some point it’s not just about what you do on the court.”
After returning from New Mexico, junior guard Sade Morris spent part of yesterday practicing basketball, the other part making sales pitches with her teammates asking everyone to attend tonight’s game.
On Monday night, Kansas witnessed perhaps its most hostile playing environment this season. Fans threw ice on the court after the game and, at times, junior forward Danielle McCray said it was so loud she couldn’t hear herself think.
Kansas wants that same enthusiasm and fan support for its women’s basketball program.
“For the people that didn’t really believe in us then, now they can believe in us,” Morris said. “Yeah, we were on that great stretch before the WNIT and now look how far we’ve gotten. That probably surprised a lot of people.”
Why wouldn’t it have?
At one point this season, Kansas struggled to a 2-9 record in the Big 12, including losses to Colorado and Missouri, neither of whom made the NCAA tournament or WNIT.
That losing wore on the players, who still had to practice just as hard — if not harder — despite seeing few positive results.
“You think you’re giving it your best, but it’s not good enough so you have to give even more when you don’t think you have it in you,” Catic said. “But somewhere we all had to find it in ourselves because it wasn’t good enough.”
The Jayhawks couldn’t score, couldn’t defend and appeared destined for a finish near the bottom of the Big 12. But somewhere along the line, after months of Henrickson’s constant prodding, those fortunes reversed.
“In the beginning, it was hard losing that many games. Just doing the whole thing over and over again, losing that many games over and over,” McCray said. “But Bonnie was never going to give up on us and we were never going to give up on each other.”
Morris added that Henrickson “would be picky about everything, and at first we’d be upset and be like, ‘It’s not that big of a deal,’” Morris said. “But she said the little things are what win games for you. And we finally bought into that and that’s the truth.”
In the midst of the chaos of coaching, Henrickson has found time to watch her team and simply enjoy the beauty of it all.
“We keep trying to tell them what winning is like and how much fun it is,” Henrickson said. “When you buy into it and do the things we’ve asked, it’s fun to sit back and watch them celebrate.”
But Henrickson and her players insist they aren’t satisfied quite yet, and that this road still has a few turns and stops left.
To cast off Kansas’ success as irrelevant because it’s the WNIT, not the Big Dance, is shallow-minded.
Programs, the same as buildings, are built on foundations. And Kansas’ current run appears to be the start of a sturdy and promising base.
“It just finally feels good to be on the right side of things,” Morris said. “It allows us to know how good and how great we’re capable of being.
“Next year, we don’t expect to be back in the WNIT tournament. We expect to be in the NCAA tournament.”
— — Edited by Grant Treaster
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