WBB: Northwest Conference

Kibitzer · February 21, 2006, 10:08:36 AM

All you have to do is take a close look at George Fox's season to know Liz Clark's value last year. I didn't read the postings last year but anyone who didn't recognize her value wasn't paying attention.

rimshot · February 21, 2006, 12:16:00 PM

Hey new guy/girl (okobo?

)--BAD form. You can't be a first time poster and come on to the NWC and rip our league. If the NWC is so bad why is it ranked #2 in the nation by the Massey index? I am stunned by your lack of knowledge.

Parkland--seriously I must have missed you not picking Liz Clark last season---I hope now you see the error of your ways. She was amazing--she was the rock for that team and I am sure S.R. wished Liz had one more year left as I think the GFU team would have had a run for the title. And I am not just talking NWC title.

As for the POY, COY and All-conference someone deserving will get overlooked----they always do. A few teams have at least 3 players that should get votes and some teams only 1 should get votes but I think the most interesting vote will be for the POY.

parklandpride · February 21, 2006, 12:58:17 PM

See...told you people were still giving me a hard time about last year. Here is the real results from this year... Congrats to all.

2005-06 All-NWC Women's Basketball Team
Coach of the Year: Gil Rigell, Pacific Lutheran
Player of the Year: Nikki Johnson, Pacific Lutheran

First Team All-Northwest Conference:
Nikki Johnson, Pacific Lutheran (G/W, 5-11, Jr., Tenino, Wash.)
Sarah Carnahan, Puget Sound (G, 5-9, Sr., Bad Homburn, Germany)
Lizzy Washburn, Whitman (F, 5-9, Sr., Mundelein, Ill.)
Kelly Turner, Pacific Lutheran (G/W, 5-9, Sr., Sherwood, Ore.)
Kim Leith, George Fox (W, 5-7, Sr., Sherwood, Ore.)
DeeDee Arnall, Pacific (P, 6-0, Sr., Warrenton, Ore.)

Second Team All-Northwest Conference:
Kilty Keaton, Puget Sound (G, 5-9, Sr., Sumner, Wash.)
Crystal Castle, Lewis & Clark (F, 5-7, So., Rocklin, Calif.)
Mallory Mann, Pacific Lutheran (G, 5-6, Sr., Conway, Ark.)
Robin Taylor, George Fox (W, 5-7, Jr., Bend, Ore.)
Emily Hendrickson, Whitworth (F, 5-6, So., Valleyford, Wash.)

Honorable Mention All-Northwest Conference:
Katie Patneaude, Whitman (G, 5-10, Jr., Seattle, Wash.)
Allison Farr, Lewis & Clark (F, 5-10, So., Lakeport, Calif.)
Katy Campbell, George Fox (P, 6-0, So., Springfield, Ore.)
Kezia Long, Pacific Lutheran (P, 6-0, Jr., Federal Way, Wash.)
Holly Ridings, Whitworth (G, 5-6, So., Spokane, Wash.)
Ashley Covey, Linfield (G, 5-9, Jr., Corvallis, Ore.)

okobojicat · February 21, 2006, 08:39:34 PM

Rimshot.
I wouldn't say I was ripping the league. I would say that the conference just isn't deserving of three bids. None of the other teams in conference played their way into a bid, and Fox did their darndest to play out of a bid, especially after their pre-conference surge.
That said, I don't think its a horrible league, I think its probably is a good league. But the rest of the teams don't belong in the tournament. They simply didn't earn it. Its not a bad conference, just not a three bid conference.

Also, UPS is going to have a very difficult team beating PLU on Saturday (yes, I'm assuming they win Thursday night) because the guys play at the same time, and sorry to say, as a UPS student, that the vast majority of the students will be drunk and not go to the woman's game. The crowd was a large factor in the UPS win over PLU, and they will not have that same advantage. I think it will come down to whoever makes a critical basket at about the two minute mark.

rimshot · February 22, 2006, 12:35:55 PM

(okobob?)
i accept your reasoning---i don't really agree but i am always willing to listen to reason. i also agree fans are a big factor---it is too bad the game times could not have been changed to help support both UPS teams playing on that day. umm also could you change your name---too hard for me to remember how to spell it.

i see that Chapman knows who they are going to play on the first round game next wednesday---Cal Lu (back to back SCIAC titles). great work!

MIAC board is running wild with all the chatter---seems there will be great games 1 vs 3 and 2 vs. 3---I think games are tonight---

parklandpride · February 22, 2006, 10:08:04 PM

Quote from: ghr on February 21, 2006, 12:31:25 AM
I am going to agree with Kibitzer here when he says stats don't mean everything. One question why leave Leith out?

GHR - I just realized i never answered your question. My criteria for All-Conference goes in this order: 1. Statistical Benchmarks, 2. Player to Player Comparison/League Style, 3. Team 4. X Factors.

Leith is a solid player, I voted her POY last year and even sacrificed a 1st team vote for Clark doing it. She deserved the award, was the most dangerous offensive player in the league (saying alot with Shogren and Speer still around, Arnall too), made huge hoops and went on scoring bursts that decided games (See at PLU last year) and led her team to a NWC title. She was #2 in scoring (18.2 PPG) on a team that had 4 scorers in the top 25 (and the Top 6 all averaging 15 PPG or more), Top 10 in FG% at 45%, hit 82% FT's and burried 45 3pt shots. With all the ball handling and shooting she still had more assists than TO's. She wasn't going to compete statistically on the boards with so many bigs in the league, so looking for Reb stats wasnt necessary.

Leith was the best Guard (listed as a wing) in the league. She could play both the 2 or 3 in bascially a 4 guard offense and ran the open floor better than anyone. In what i would consider a 4/5 F/C position dominated league (Arnall, Shogren, Speer, Wyffles, May, Straw, Washburn, Clark) Leith was superior to any other guards and was killing thie bigs on the way to the hoop. The NWC was big and they wanted to pound it on you and the most dominant team was Fox, because Leith didnt let teams slow it down or work it around, she forced you to play up tempo, run and gun and anyone that tried to do that with Fox, lost.

That leads into #3...team. Leith drove that team, she set the tempo, she got them up and kept them up. That team won the NWC title and the best player on the best team is always a prime candidate for All-conf.

X-Factors: You almost don't need any X-factors with her resume, but she had a swagger, a cold as ice look that burined teams before the first shot went up. She was going to go for the throat and not let up for 40 minutes and she scared the crap out of teams. Even in their home 12 pt loss to Whitman, she scored 33 of their Bruins 50 total in the game. She was always in the zone, nothing bothered her, even when she didnt lead the team in scoring on a particular night.

See next post........

parklandpride · February 22, 2006, 11:18:04 PM

after saying all those great things about Leith last year...what made me think differently this year? (This is not a bash session, Leith is very much a great player and i have enjoyed watching her play, and besides the coaches all disagreed with me anyway and those were the important opinions)

Leith is first and foremost a scorer. The two most glaring differences between her POY year and my choice to leave her off 1st/2nd team this year (She was an HM pick if I would have listed it) was her 5 PPG decline in scoring and her overall decline in offense.

Check out her stat lines:
'05: 105-235 45% FG / 45-121 37% 3FG / 37-45 82% FT / 34 ast - 31 TO
"06: 71-193 36% FG / 31-93 33% 3FG / 44-57 86% FT / 30 ast - 41 TO

Scorers score and what made her successful in '05 was lighting up the board. This year, Leith shot less and made less and when scorers aren't shooting the rock, they become less effective. You could argue she has less support this year, teams could focus on her more. True, except Fox averaged 2 points better a game on '06 than '05 so the scoring was there, and Taylor was more of a scoring threat this year than Clark or Thomas were last year. They also had more true post presence with Campbell and Powers (throw in Schmidt) Their top 5 scorers were more balanced, which some would argue is her being less selfish and sharing more. Hello...Kim Leith is a scoring machine, and should be taking more shots and scoring more points than the rest of her team. It's players like Kellie Thomas that made a wise move by becoming a 3rd option to score instead of being the primary scorer like she was in '04.

Unfortunately in my scope of thinking, when a scorer stops scoring i look at what else the player is doing to help their team win. Rebounding, Assists, Defense? Problem was, Leith doesnt rebound (3.9RPG) or pass much (1.9 APG). Last year her peers were Forwards and Posts, and I didnt expect her to rack up boards, but this year, the league isnt as biggs dominated and fellow guards/wings like N. Johnson, Carnahan, and Castle are in their grabbin boards. Not only are these players doing it on the scoring side, they are grabbing rebounds and providing their team more than one dimension.

I am not going to comment on the Team/X Factor part, because I didnt spend enough time around the team. GFU certainly finished lower than anyone expected and I am sure everyone has their opinion why. I am not even going to speculate, I just know that they underachieved and because of that, we didnt get to see the Kim Leith that I would have voted as 1st/2nd team. Obviously the coaches in the league did, so much of this is moot, but you asked and they say you should be careful what you ask for.

Bottom line is, she had a solid career and is in the NWC history book, deservingly so. She is a POY winner, a Conference Title holder and a member of the NCAA Elite 8...and she worked hard for all of it and deserves every bit of it.

swiss · February 22, 2006, 11:57:04 PM

Parkland—Regarding Leith: I think the one factor you may be "underestimating" is that teams DID focus on her this year (as they should have). I watched her closely in all but five games over the last two years and she was "hounded" by defenses this year in ways unlike last. She spent more than her share of the time on the floor, sometimes landing very hard! Bumped, grabbed, pushed, shadowed, etc., she was well-scouted and drew the quickest and best defenders much of the time. Very few of those FG's came easily.

That being said, I thought sometimes her competitiveness (which is significant) got the best of her and rather than working smarter, she kept trying to work harder. I personally would have liked to have seen her used as a decoy in more situations; as well as making more use of her quick hitting 10 to 12 foot jump shots—which were almost automatic for her last year. However, she kept her head up all year, and played courageously in spite of the pressure and expectations placed on her. I'm sure she, and all the Bruins would have preferred to have her (and the team) finish with a year like last year, rather than end as they did. Even so, I think she is one of the best D3 players I've seen.

arforbes · February 23, 2006, 02:51:46 AM

OK, so we finally get around to Whitman at UPS. I have to agree that Whitman certainly has an uphill battle in the dungeon. I can't imagine why I thought that was such a great gym when the state A tourney used to be played there before it moved to the Tacoma Dome in the late 80's. It certainly seemed like a much friendlier place back then. Speaking of drunken students, that is one reason my oldest didn't end up there, but rather led the parade of siblings to GFU.

I have to agree with Swiss, Leith beonged on the team despite an understandable drop in stats. Unfortunate, but understandable.

Rimscott, I didn't say that Whitman was drawing any emotion from the coin flip. I said it was a nice vindication that they actually get to play UPS in a meaningful playoff game. Subtle difference, I understand. Maybe it just gives me a little consolation for GFU not being in this playoff the first year we actually have a reasonable shot at more than one team with the enlarged field, and given the start GFU had to the season. And, given my relative outrage at the whole coin flip scenerio, after Whitman had their first decent year during my 9 years of paying any attention. I guess I am just a clauset missionary. Seems I have a soft spot for underdogs.

parklandpride · February 23, 2006, 10:32:04 AM

Swiss - I agree teams focused on her, part of being POY. And honestly, i held her to a higher standard, might not be fair, but I did.

Just the same, teams focus on Arnall and her monster stat lines. Her problem, she doesnt have anyone good around her to take off the pressure.

St. Bens lost last night...now they are a bubble team. Gotta think that is a good thing in this region and should put both UPS and PLU a pick ahead for an at-large.

rimshot · February 24, 2006, 11:27:59 AM

arforbes-
Rimscott here, (actually Rimshot)---I guess the Loggers can count on you to be cheering for them when they play at PLU on Saturday? Afterall you said you like underdogs.

arforbes · February 24, 2006, 01:30:58 PM

Rimshot, OK, I will admit that not all underdogs are created equal. There was a time when I actually rooted for UPS based upon familiarity from the state A tourney. That time is long past and they no longer have any warm, fuzzy feelings in reserve. GO PLU.
I will root for them in the big dance, however, unless they play PLU. OOPS. Did I count that 2 chickens in the dance a little early?
One of my daughters would disagree with me relatively firmly in terms of my favorite of the northern schools.

parklandpride · February 24, 2006, 06:30:05 PM

UPS and PLU. Love it. Going to be a heck of a game. Can't wait. See ya all Sat from Parkland.

rimshot · February 25, 2006, 11:38:52 AM

arforbes---at least someone in your family is thinking clearly

parkland--seriously PLU is well rested, big crowd, playing for the AQ, has the POY, the COY and 3 other all-conference players--- against UPS that was picked 4th in the league, looks to be exhausted has just 2 all-conference selections, playing on the road with very little crowd support.

Swiss and Andrew are you two holding out any hope at all GFU gets an at large?

ghr · February 25, 2006, 12:44:47 PM

Rimshot- Are you implying UPS is not going to be ready for this game? UPS has beaten the Lutes 3 out of the last four times they have played. Two of those games were on the Lutes home court. How can they be worn out they have been playing back to back games all year at least they have had one extra day of rest. By the way Plu was only picked to finish third. these teams are really close in stats. This game should be a barn burner. Hopefully PLU has figured a way to stop the young post player who seems to be playing very well right now. Seriously you have to be kidding with all that poor mouthing! I would love to see GFU get an at large bid but they are so far down in the regional rankings and the other criteria used in determining pool c.