Thousand Oaks Girls Roll After Coach’s Harangue

If Thousand Oaks girls’ basketball Coach Chuck Brown could bottle the first-quarter lecture he gave his team, he could retire from his teaching job and become a successful motivational speaker.

With the score tied, 8-8, five minutes into the Marmonte League game with host Westlake Tuesday night, Brown called time out to blast his team. Thousand Oaks (19-0, 7-0 in league play) took Brown’s criticism to heart, outscoring the Warriors 34-11 the rest of the half and finishing with a 68-37 victory.

“Coach Brown gave us a dose of medicine,” said Lancer forward Marion Jones, who finished with game-highs of 26 points and 12 rebounds in only three quarters of play. “He definitely gets on us if we don’t play well.”

Brown said his Lancers simply needed an intensity check.

“Up until that point, we were suffering from a lack of concentration,” Brown explained. “The kids from Westlake were doing a lot of good things early in the game. They were forcing us to make some bad passes.”

One adjustment, changing the Thousand Oaks defense from a man-to-man press to a zone press, was all that was needed to throw Westlake out of sync.

“The key for us to play well is to play good defense,” Lancer guard and defensive leader Samantha Clarke said. “When we play good defense, the offense comes naturally.”

While the Lancer defense was harassing the Warriors into turnovers, Melissa Wood was breaking loose on the offensive end, scoring 10 of her 13 points in the second quarter to spark the Thousand Oaks’ run.

The second half was more of the same and when the carnage had ended, the Warriors (10-9, 4-3) were bloodied with 31 turnovers and a 31-point loss.

“We will do things real well for a short period of time,” Westlake Coach Len Locher said, “but our kids don’t have the discipline to stay focused on the things we need to do. They started free-lancing and you see what happened.”

Thousand Oaks’ formula for 19 straight victories has been simple.

“This group of players understands the ideas of concentrating and intensity,” Brown explained.

“You hear them yelling to each other on the floor, ‘Come on now, let’s get it together.’ They did a good job of turning it around tonight.”