WSU’s Murrell expects boost from sophomores

Sherri Murrell expected her fourth team at Washington State to be the one to start climbing the Pac-10 women’s basketball ladder.

Instead, a rash of injuries and heart-breaking losses resulted in a seventh consecutive 20-loss season (8-20) and last-place finish in the conference (2-16) for the sixth time in seven years.

“There was an upside to the downside last year,” Murrell said. “The downside is that we had a lot of injuries. The upside was that it gave a lot of those freshmen some minutes and experience.

“Last year we had 12 games we lost by 10 points or less. We weren’t getting stomped on. Those kids were hanging right in there. Hopefully, a year later that will pay off more dividends.”

Although the Cougars are young, they’re not inexperienced.

The only two seniors are Kate Benz and Adriane Ferguson, but they’re three-year starters. Dani Montgomery is the lone junior.

Benz, a 6-foot-2 senior forward who is battling a balky back, is the first Cougar to lead the conference in rebounding and she’s done it twice, averaging 9.1 boards each of the last two seasons. Ferguson missed 12 games last season after breaking a finger.

It’s the sophomores, however, who are going to be the key to improvement.

Katie Appleton started 25 games at point guard but hit 50 3-pointers and sharp-shooter Amanda Durocher ended up with 18 starts and 50 3-pointers. There is depth on the front line with 6-4 Ebonee Coates, 6-3 Heather Molzen and 6-4 Sabrina Shired.

“Our youth is definitely a concern. Not too many programs win with freshmen and sophomores,” Murrell said. “But at the same time I think those sophomores got a lot of experience last year. Kate and Adriane are good leaders. I’m not as worried as I once was, like last year. They do have game experience, not just practice experience. Many times last year we had four freshmen at the floor.”

The key is at point guard, where Colleen Betteridge, out of Bellevue, and New Yorker Nakejia Kelly step in.

“We’re so much faster, quicker,” Murrell said. “One of our biggest problems has been not having a true point guard and we have that now. When you have a true point guard who can break presses (Kelly’s strength) and get the ball in the hands of the scorers (Betteridge’s strength) you look better.

“We’ve always wanted to have Katie at the (shooting guard). She has point guard abilities, but she’s not what we’re looking at for pushing the ball – the up-tempo style we want.”

Murrell said the improvement of Molzen and moving Appleton off the point give the Cougars the option of going big or small.

“We just have depth and options we didn’t have last year,” she said.

WSU will have to be vastly improved to take many steps up. The Pac-10 had six teams in the Top 25 of the coaches’ poll released earlier this week.

“We’ll find out. Who knows?” Murrell asked. “No one thought our football team was going to be any good and look what they did.

“I would love to move up just three more spots. Three more spots gets you into postseason play. There are some teams we battled with real well last year. I know we have a good league, but we’ve gotten better, too. If you can get the sixth or seventh spot in this league, you’re going to postseason play, you really are.”