It’s tough for any team when its season comes to an end prematurely.
For the ASU women’s basketball team, although being upset in the first round of the NCAA tournament was bitter, there was still some sweetness to be found.
The No. 7 seed Sun Devils crashed out to 10th-seeded Temple, but it was an unfitting end to a season that was better than most bystanders expected.
A return to the tournament is one aspect of the silver lining, and it wasn’t clear at the beginning of the season if the team would be able to make it to the Big Dance after missing it the previous year.
After making it to the Elite Eight in 2009, the next season was hampered by the graduation of several key components, in particular Briann January, and the loss of Dymond Simon to a knee injury that would eventually keep her out for the entire season.
The team would have a rough time in conference play and squeeze into the WNIT, which was tough for an ASU team that expects to make the NCAAs every year.
At the start of the 2010-11 season, the team was still facing questions. Much of the team was battle-tested after all the injuries the previous season, and with players like redshirt senior Dymond Simon making her return, no one was sure how the team would work together.
Simon’s health was another question mark. After spending a year off after knee surgery, no one was sure if she would be the same prolific point guard that made the Sun Devils so dangerous in 2009.
She ended the season as ASU’s leading scorer at 13.2 points per game, and was the only Sun Devil to average double-digit points, although junior forward Kimberly Brandon came close, averaging 9.5 points.
Simon’s numbers were good enough for ninth in the Pac-10 and a spot on the All-Pac-10 team.
Brandon was also a pleasant surprise. Last season the junior started 25 games and was used mainly as a perimeter player. She finished 2010 averaging just four points per game.
This season she had five double-doubles and was a key factor in the rare times when Simon had an off night.
In the end, the Sun Devils managed to finish third in one of the most stacked Pac-10 lineups in years and made it back to the NCAA tournament and the team reached the goals ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne set at the beginning of the season.
Guards
While the Sun Devils reached 20 wins and the NCAAs, the play of the team as a whole was inconsistent, and a lot of this started with guard play.
This was also the first season that coach Thorne implemented the triangle offense, and Simon was one of the first to say it was tough coming into the season with a whole new offense.
This showed several times throughout the year, and there were several games when the guards had trouble penetrating into the lane against teams running a zone offense. During games when ASU had trouble hitting shots from outside, the inability to drive inside really showed.
On the other hand, the speed of all ASU’s guards made the Sun Devils’ man-to-man defense difficult for other teams to manage. The only teams that were really able to shrug off ASU was Stanford, UCLA and Tennessee, and all three had some trouble in the start of their games.
Forwards
The forwards were also inconsistent on offense, but some of this has to do directly with the play of the guards. Rebounding also changed from game to game, but for the most part the centers were pretty consistent.
Senior Becca Tobin had a solid year and was usually the go-to player when things weren’t going well on the outside.
Brandon obviously had a great year. But again, while she had five double-doubles, there were some games when she was almost a non-factor, and the inconsistency on offense meant the Sun Devils were never sure who was going to step up on the inside.
But overall the forwards did a solid job, and the Sun Devils’ post presence will likely only improve next season.
Reach the reporter at egrasser@asu.edu
