Wichita State women try to learn from bad stretch in opening loss

Minutes after boarding the bus for the ride home after a 79-54 loss at Creighton, the Wichita State women’s basketball team all migrated to the front of the bus by the coaches.

They already were asking to watch video over what went wrong in the third quarter, where WSU’s one-point halftime lead was turned into a 18-point deficit.

For a team that features seven newcomers and three returns with little experience, that eagerness to learn is exactly what coach Jody Adams wants to see early in this season. Wichita State will make its home debut Wednesday evening when it hosts Missouri.

“Our film sessions are extremely important because in this day and age, players are very visual and they can see it and visualize it themselves,” Adams said. “It’s a great teaching time and I’m very thankful that they do like to watch film and they do like to study their game.”

It has been years since Adams has had to simplify her game plans to this degree, but she said this team is so basketball-savvy and talented that they are far ahead of where her first teams at Wichita State were at this stage in the season.

Adams also points out there were several positives to take away from the season-opening loss at Creighton.

Freshman Jyar Francis continued working from the post with aggression and finished with a team-high 15 points and eight rebounds, including five trips to the free-throw line. Transfer Marija Pacar came off the bench to knock down three three-pointers and scored 14 points. And Jaleesa Chapel, the defensive hound on the perimeter, held an All-Big East player in Marissa Janning to 1 of 10 shooting and just three points.

But for a five-minute span in the third quarter, Wichita State veered from its game plan and Creighton scored 11 points off WSU turnovers and five more from free throws. For three quarters, WSU competed with a veteran team, but that lone quarter showed what can happen when it doesn’t follow its game plan.

“It’s actually a great teaching point for our young players,” Adams said. “When we’re playing great teams like that and we get away from what we want to do, then it can happen that quickly because you don’t have timeouts like you used to every four minute. I thought it was a great experience in a lot of different ways and we learned a lot from it.”

Missouri is another veteran team from a major conference that will surely test Wichita State to its limits on Wednesday. The Tigers have the experience and the length that will make life difficult for many players playing in just their second game at WSU.

Winning is important to this team, but Adams says the development in the non-conference, especially this early in the season, is crucial. She would gladly take tough opponents like Creighton and Missouri over scheduling the lower-rungs of Division I and taking easy wins to pad the record.

“The thing that’s more important to me right now is that we play the game the right way,” Adams said. “If we stick to our game plan and to our philosophy, then the wins will take care of themselves. Right now our margin for error is very slim, so we have to stick to our system and be disciplined on both sides of the ball.”

This story was originally published November 17, 2015 at 4:30 PM with the headline "Wichita State women try to learn from bad stretch in opening loss."