As the Bruins travel to Arizona to face the No. 18 Arizona State
Sun Devils tonight and the Arizona Wildcats on Saturday, one pesky
number looms large over their heads.
The Bruins (14-8, 7-4 Pac-10) are 2-7 on the road this year,
including a loss to a mediocre UC Santa Barbara team.
Compare that to the Bruins’ 12-1 home- and neutral-court
record and one can see the statistical significance in the Bruins
poor road record.
Coach Kathy Olivier, who has led the Bruins in the last 13
seasons, believes she’s identified at least part of the
problem.
“In the past we’ve gone on the road and come out
very aggressive, and we get in early foul trouble and then we get
tentative,” Olivier said.
“Our aggressiveness goes completely the opposite way. We
have to stay out of foul trouble, but still be aggressive without
fouling.”
However, the team’s rising confidence could prove to be
significant for the Bruins this weekend.
They are coming off of what is probably their best weekend of
the season, defeating two tough Pac-10 foes ““ Stanford and
Cal ““ at home, avenging their earlier losses against those
two teams.
“We’re on a little bit of a roll right now,”
said junior guard Noelle Quinn, last week’s Pac-10 Player of
the Week.
“It’s really tough to play on the road in the
Pac-10. We just have to take it upon ourselves as a team to play
like we’ve been playing these past two games.”
The Bruins will definitely have to be on top of their game when
they enter Wells Fargo Arena to take on the Sun Devils (16-5, 7-4)
tonight.
The Sun Devils are 10-0 this year at home and are coming off two
road victories against the Washington schools.
But if the Bruins play the same quality defense that they played
when they beat Arizona State at home in early January, they will
have a good chance to emerge victorious once again.
In that game, UCLA forced 28 Sun Devil turnovers while
committing just 15 of their own, and the “triple
threat” of Nikki Blue, Lisa Willis and Noelle Quinn combined
for 60 points.
The fact that both teams are in the thick of the conference race
adds much pressure to this game. In fact, UCLA, ASU, Washington and
USC all currently sit at 7-4 in the Pac-10, tied for second
place.
Perhaps even more important from the Bruins’ perspective
is the tournament implications of this game weekend.
The Bruins have compiled quality wins against Stanford, Cal,
Georgia and Arizona State earlier in the year, but with eight
losses already so far, the Bruins cannot afford to drop too many
more games.
“That’s one of our goals ““ not only to get to
the tournament, but to go far in the tournament,” sophomore
forward Lindsey Pluimer said. “This is a big weekend. The
whole rest of the Pac-10 is big for us.”
“Every game is huge,” Olivier added.
“There’s a lot more pressure. To me, it started when we
first started conference (play). I don’t think we’re
thinking about (NCAAs). We’re taking one game at a time.
We’re working really hard to take care of business … and
kind of let things play for itself.”
And taking care of business against Arizona State would be a big
step toward ending their funk on the road.
“We can’t worry about the other factors that come
into play, like their crowd or home calls that we may not
get,” Quinn said.
“We just have to go out there and play like we’ve
been playing.”