UC IRVINE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL PREVIEW : Anteaters Are Getting Back to the Basics

When it was time to take the team picture, the UC Irvine women’s basketball players picked a place that seemed appropriate--an elementary school classroom with the ABCs lining the walls.

The Anteaters have won only six games the past two seasons. Under new Coach Colleen Matsuhara, they are trying to start with fundamentals.

“It really is back to basics,” said Matsuhara, a former head coach at Nebraska who was an assistant at Cal State Long Beach last season. “We really tried to break down as much as we could, offensively and defensively. Still, when we came back and tried to put it all together, I’m not at all pleased with the way we execute our offense.”

Not good enough will have to do for starters, because the season begins tonight with a game against Pepperdine in Malibu.

Irvine has four players back from the starting lineup of last season’s 5-22 team--leading scorer Yvonne Catala, a 6-foot-1 junior forward who averaged 15.6 points and 7.1 rebounds, senior forward Geanine Hobbs, senior guard Kathy Lizarraga and sophomore point guard Chrissy Chang.

Freshman forward Cher Scanlon or senior guard Felicia Dixon probably will claim the other spot, at least until Beth Beers, a promising 6-3 freshman center, gets into playing shape after struggling with back trouble.

“At this point, we’re much more concerned about our offense than our defense,” Matsuhara said. “We’ve been trying different combinations to see who works best together.”

Irvine will run a high-post offense to try to take advantage of the scoring ability of Catala and Hobbs. Hobbs led the team in rebounding last season with 7.9, and probably is the team’s best defender as well. Matsuhara hopes Hobbs can improve on her 5.6-point scoring average.

On the perimeter, Lizarraga is the only consistent three-point threat. She made 38% from beyond the line last season, which was better than her overall field-goal percentage of 36.5%. She averaged 13.4 points.

Her partner in the backcourt, Chang, is more of a floor leader than a scorer. She had a school-record 12 assists in a game against New Mexico State after taking over the starting point guard position as a freshman. However, she averaged only 2.1 points and shot only 28%.

“I would not classify us as a good outside shooting team, or even a good shooting team,” said Matsuhara, who is frustrated with her team’s lack of understanding for offensive spacing and its trouble reading defenses. “We’re going to have to work for every point we score.”

Defensively, one of the team’s biggest concerns is foul trouble. Catala, the mainstay of the offense, fouled out in 10 of 27 games last season, probably costing the team some opportunities for victories.

Because of that, Matsuhara says it will be important to get quality back-up minutes from post players Kim Cox, a 6-4 junior, and Kari Rasmussen, a 6-3 redshirt freshman.

Sophomore guard Karie Yoshioka and freshman guard Michelle Kahler will come off the bench, and Matsuhara sees Yoshioka and Dixon playing “sparkplug-type roles.”

Jinelle Williams, a 5-9 freshman who was All-County at Brea-Olinda High School last season, has returned to her accustomed inside role after experimenting on the perimeter.

“She has very strong post moves,” Matsuhara said. “The only thing she lacks is height.”

With only two seniors on the team, the focus is on the future, and players such as Beers, Kahler, Scanlon and Williams are cause for optimism.

Still, the best player on the court in practice is assistant coach Annette Smith Greene, who was an All-American at Texas. Even when three coaches play a skeleton offense against a five-player Irvine zone, Greene usually scores.

“We’re not really dwelling at all upon the past record,” Matsuhara said. “I did inform them that the other Big West coaches granted us the honor of voting us to the cellar. We’re trying to use that as motivation, to prove that vote wrong.