COLLEGE DIVISION NOTEBOOK / MARTIN BECK : Chapman Women Still Lack Intensity, Victories

Before the season, Chapman women’s basketball Coach Lindsay Strothers said he was going to take the pressure off his young team by not stressing winning as much as he did last season.

Unfortunately for the Panthers, they seem to have taken that advice and run with it--the wrong way.

Chapman has played nine games and lost them all, mostly by big margins. The Panthers are averaging 24 fewer points than their opponents (61 to 85). Strothers says the other part of his preseason advice--that his team play its best--hasn’t come to pass.

“We just need a wake-up call, I think,” Strothers said. “It’s not that our skills are as bad as our scores, it’s just that we lack intensity.”

The Panthers are at a disadvantage because the schedule was made before the university announced in March its decision to drop from NCAA Division II to Division III. Without the scholarship athletes that he would have recruited for this season, Chapman is overmatched, Strothers said.

But the problems run deeper, he said. The Panthers aren’t blocking out on rebounds and only one player--Natalie Ramirez, a junior transfer from Cerritos--is playing defense consistently. The Panthers are also shooting poorly, averaging 34%.

“We’re lacking intensity, basically,” Strothers said. “Once we get down, we think we’re going to lose and by-golly-gee, look what happens.”

Strothers has resorted to a couple of defense-only practices to try to rouse his team in time for Friday’s game at Cal Baptist.

“We’re going to play defense for two days and then go and hopefully surprise Cal Baptist, because I know they think they’re going to walk us, too,” he said.

The Chapman men’s basketball team will play its first road games of the season on Friday and Saturday, traveling north for games against Sonoma State and UC Davis.

The Panthers lost their last two games after opening with a 132-79 rout of Pacific Christian.

Because Sonoma plays mostly zone defense and Davis plays it about half the time, Chapman’s outside shooters figure to be challenged again.

In losses to Occidental and Biola, Chapman made only six of 42 three-point shots.

Chapman Coach Mike Bokosky hasn’t lost confidence and says he wants his players to shoot more.

“We were passing up shots and I don’t want our players to be passing up shots from the three-point line or two-point land if they can make it.

“We just haven’t shot the ball as well as we are capable of doing. I’m sure not going to tell our guys to stop shooting.”

Chapman expansion: As promised in March when Chapman announced the move to Division III, Athletic Director Dave Currey says his department will add four women’s sports to the Panther program for the next school year--cross-country, swimming, track and field and tennis.

The move will help fulfill the university’s stated goal of increasing athletic opportunities for its students and should bolster the school’s application to the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

Currey said the possibility of fielding a football team in the 1994 season is still being studied and a decision likely will come this spring. Currey said the department plans to add golf, a men’s program that would also accept women, in the 1994-95 school year.

Notes

Chapman’s Jenny Gunderson, a sophomore middle blocker, was named to the Division II All-American second team by the American Volleyball Coaches Assn. last week. Gunderson, who led Division II in total blocks with 291, is the second Chapman volleyball player to be named All-American. Debi Waller was honored in 1990. . . . J.T. Snow of the Angels and Brent Mayne of the Kansas City Royals will be featured at a Christmas Baseball Camp sponsored by the Chapman baseball team and the City of Orange, Dec. 28-31 at Hart Park. Snow, who played at Los Alamitos High, and Mayne, who played at Costa Mesa High and Orange Coast College, will assist Chapman Coach Gary Henderson and his staff in the camp for children ages 7-15. The camp runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily and the fee is $90. For information, call Henderson at (714) 997-6663. . . . Christ College Irvine is also offering a baseball camp for children 7-14 during the holiday break, Dec. 28-31. The camp, run by CCI Coach Jackie Schniepp, runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and the fee is $100. For information call, (714) 854-8002, ext. 423.