Hardened USC Equipped to Cope With Poll Snub

OK, so it was Super Bowl week. But that wasn’t why Fred Williams, USC’s women’s basketball coach, checked out John Robinson’s football pads last week.

Every week includes full-contact basketball for Williams’ team. Williams wants his players to put an attitude on people. So on they charge, toughening themselves in football gear for the rocky road that lies ahead.

The Trojans, 13-4 and 7-1 after Friday night’s 85-72 victory over Oregon State, are the surprise team in the Pacific 10 Conference race. They nearly defeated third-ranked Stanford two weekends ago, then shocked a 13-2 Arizona team in Tucson, 87-72.

They then scored a 60-56 victory at UCLA, unveiling their comet, Kristin Clark.

But first, the polls--a sore subject at USC.

The Associated Press writers’ poll says that 23 of the best 25 teams are in the eastern half of the country. Same goes for the USA Today coaches’ poll.

Among western teams, only Stanford, rated second by the coaches and third by the writers, and San Francisco, ranked 25th by the coaches, have made the polls’ top 25 lately.

Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer, after her team survived a one-point game at USC Jan. 12, sounded off afterward about pollsters.

“You can’t tell me there are 25 better teams in the country than USC and Arizona,” she said. “I’m tired of seeing the Pac-10 discredited.”

Ditto Williams and his players. So they take it out on each other in practice. What’s next, helmets and tackling dummies?

There’s nothing new about football blocking pads in women’s basketball practices, but Williams has increased the physical emphasis.

The other day, while wearing a blocking pad under his shirt, he began knocking about the team’s 6-foot-3 All-American, Tina Thompson.

And sure enough, Thompson acquired some attitude. On an abrupt transition play, she knocked her 39-year-old coach flat on his back.

“We use the pads two or three times a week,” said Williams, a onetime Inglewood High and Boise State guard who had cups of coffee in the NBA with Chicago and Utah. He’s in his second season, having taken over from Cheryl Miller 18 months ago when she left for a broadcasting job.

Williams orders his players to whack away at each other while they shoot, drive, rebound and on screens. He says 6-5 senior Michelle Campbell has benefited most from the contact.

“A lot of Michelle’s shots were coming up short because she wasn’t shooting at the glass,” he said. “She was shooting for the front of the rim and if she got bumped, her shot would be short.

“By shooting at the glass, it’s always got a chance. Now, she’s shooting much better [51% and averaging 11 points a game].”

She also leads the conference in blocks and is 17th in the NCAA.

And “Miss Double Double,” Thompson, has her game at a new peak. She not only leads the conference in scoring and rebounding, she’s now also a three-point threat, having taken almost as many three-point shots as she did all last year, and shooting 38.6%, third-best in the league.

But Williams’ most improved players are two sophomores, 5-7 guard Clark--half of the Kristin-Kim Clark identical twins duo--and 6-2 forward Jodi Parriott.

Parriott has become a sharpshooter, making 40% of her three-point attempts.

The gritty, almost combative game of the speedy Kristin Clark has caught everyone’s eye. She may be one of the conference’s quickest guards and one of its most dangerous shooters, as Arizona learned. She was five for six on three-point shots in Tucson, finishing with 25 points.

Then came UCLA, and a 2-minute 26-second spree that catapulted her onto the Pac-10 marquee.

With USC trailing, 39-38, a third of the way into the second half, she made three clean steals and converted all into layups. Then she sank a three-pointer. Then she picked off another UCLA pass and scored another layup.

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UCLA fans will remember Michelle Palmisano, who made a school-record 48 three-point shots in her freshman season before transferring to Vanderbilt.

She has shot as high as 43% from beyond the line this season, had six three-pointers in consecutive games recently, and has led the Southeastern Conference in long-distance scoring every week this season.

Her classroom percentage is even higher. She gets straight A’s, majoring in biomedical and electrical engineering.

Last summer, with time on her hands, she designed a software program that helps brain surgeons by projecting three-dimensional images of brain vessels onto a computer screen during surgery.

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Look for the NBA to turn up the heat in the battle of the women’s pro basketball leagues, the American Basketball League and the Women’s National Basketball Assn.

The WNBA wants to sign high-profile college coaches, and hang the cost. It began Monday, with the signing of Cheryl Miller by Phoenix.

Said Carol Blazejowski, recently named general manager of the WNBA’s New York team--and rumored to be trying to get Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma: “Our goal is to sign the best players and coaches available.”

That was in answer to the question: “Is the WNBA budgeting money to hire big-time college coaches?”

The ABL’s eight teams started with coaches who weren’t exactly household names, but have since added former Purdue coach Lin Dunn at Portland.

Stanford’s VanDerveer has been mentioned as a possible WNBA coach, as have Louisiana Tech’s Leon Barmore and Connecticut’s Auriemma.

VanDerveer sounded interested.

“I’m antsy,” she said. “I’ve been in a fast stream [referring to her year with the gold-medal winning U.S. Olympic team] and I was challenged last year by coaching that kind of talent. . . . If they talk to me, I’ll listen.”

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The ABL is not only maintaining its impressive crowd counts, but attendance appears to be surging as the fledgling league passes the three-quarter point in its schedule.

A week ago at Hartford, Conn., the New England Blizzard and San Jose Lasers drew 11,873--the league insists that was paid admission--topping New England’s ABL record of 10,477. The Blizzard splits its home dates between Springfield, Mass., and Hartford, but probably won’t next season. The team averages 8,043 at Hartford.

In Denver, the Colorado Xplosion recently drew 8,848 to 17,110-seat McNichols Arena. The following night, the NBA’s Denver Nuggets played before 10,220.

At the start of the week, the league average was 3,426, but 4,736 over the previous 12 games. ABL chief Gary Cavalli said the break-even number is 3,000.

New England leads with a 5,003 average; Portland is next at 3,984.

Troublesome Columbus, by far the best team with a 26-6 record, is the crowd-count laggard at 2,420.

Women’s Basketball Notes

The Lakers’ team in the Women’s NBA, which begins play June 21, has two players--Lisa Leslie and Penny Toler--but no coach, no schedule, no uniforms and a phone system that doesn’t work. They have, however, picked a nickname: the Sparks. . . .

Early favorite to coach the 2000 Olympic team is Colorado’s Ceal Barry. . . . Portland rookie Michelle Marciniak, Final Four MVP for national champion Tennessee last season, is struggling. She leads the league in turnovers. . . .

Olympian Teresa Edwards of the ABL’s Atlanta Glory had consecutive 17-point fourth quarters last week, plus a 14-assist game. . . . ABL executives are looking at both UC Irvine’s Bren Center and Long Beach State’s Pyramid as possible expansion team sites for next year, when the league wants to move up from eight to 10 teams. . . .

Big West leader UC Santa Barbara is the NCAA scoring leader at 84.5 points a game and San Diego State is the team defense leader at 51.3 points allowed. . . . Stanford has the NCAA’s longest home-court winning streak, 41.