Recap The Court

Jacob Smith

The Brock Women’s Basketball team leads the OUA in assists per game, and they have the nations second and seventh leading scorers. Beyond that they’re creating opportunity for others, opportunity that is now being seized.

The Badgers 18.2 assists per game have fuelled an offence where anyone can contribute if they know where to go and when to be there. Almost to a fault sometimes, the Badgers are often looking for an extra pass to make to see if there’s a better look.

When that hurts them is in games like their matchup against TMU when they were often passing up good looks to hopefully find better ones often leading to forced bad shots late in the shot clock.

When it benefits them is what we’ve seen in their most recent games against Carleton and Ottawa, and the easy ability for others on the floor outside of the known consistent scorers to contribute.

Looking at their game at TMU as an example of what had to change, the way TMU defended Brock was very much focused on who TMU knew are the consistent scorers. They put heavy focus on Madalyn Weinert and making sure the shots around the key weren’t there and the lanes to the rim were going to be met with contact.

Outside of Madalyn, Noor Bazzi is one of the biggest three-point shooters on the Badgers roster, and whenever the ball was on her half of the court, you’d often see TMU play tight on her and not help off her to try and chase her off the line. TMU knew who the scorers were on the Badgers roster, and to Brock’s demise, they weren’t able to identify the opportunities others had to contribute and played through Madalyn and Noor with not very much success.

Going beyond the TMU game and into the weekend against Ottawa and Carleton, we saw a shift in mentality. Angeline Campbell started shooting and hitting a high percentage of threes, Oluwatito Akinnusi came back for the game against Carleton and was attacking all game being an inside threat for the Badgers, Olivia Fiorucci was the benefactor of a few extra passes for elbow threes or mid-range jumpers.

Brock’s system was put into full effect and others outside of Oluwatito, Madalyn and Noor started taking more of the opportunities that were presented to them. The first or second look the Badgers got started being taken instead of passing it up for a fourth or fifth look that would be from one of their top three, and as confidence built, the full advantage of the Badgers style was seen, and a look at the offensive potential of this lineup was realized.

Head coach Mike Rao’s system has always gotten more and more complex as the players in it became more experienced, and the execution between the TMU game and the Carleton game shows a step forward and a evolution of a Badgers squad that needed to take a step forward to continue to contend in the division.