Lady Lions pushing ‘aggressive’ mentality, hope to snap losing streak against Nebraska

Perhaps the most telling sign of Penn State women’s basketball’s woes during the past few games has been the team’s noticeable struggles on the boards.

While the Lady Lions (6-9, 1-3) did ultimately outrebound Wisconsin by a few, they gave up 25 second-chance points in the loss — a sign of either inability to follow through defensively, fatigue or slow reactions.

And against Michigan State, the team was outrebounded by 15 boards and the Lady Lions’ forwards and center Candace Agee were beat often by the Spartans’ two physical guards.

Head coach Coquese Washington is very aware of these issues, and hopes to rectify them as Big Ten play continues with Nebraska on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Bryce Jordan Center.

“It comes in stretches,” she said. “I thought it was certainly worse against Michigan State than against Wisconsin. ... I think it’s more sometimes the impact of the offensive rebounds and when they get them, and it’s resulting in either second-chance points or fouls, or negative play for us.

“We’ve got to fight through the fatigue with low numbers (the Lady Lions don’t have a deep bench due to injury).”

When asked how much of the miscues and lapses in play is physical versus mental, Washington cited quirky baseball great Yogi Berra, saying that “it’s 90 percent mental, and the other half is physical.”

“You know, I think it’s both,” she said, turning serious. “Obviously when things are going well, you’re way less tired. When things aren’t going well, you’re way more exhausted. ... I think for us, it’s a matter of stringing together possessions.

“When we’re stringing together possessions and attacking ... we look pretty good.”

Giving up those offensive rebounds and second-chance points, especially in chunks, points to a bigger problem, according to Washington.

“It’s our defense. It’s absolutely about our defense,” she said. “We definitely have to have a more aggressive focus on the defensive end. And we want to dictate. I feel like the last two games we’ve kind of played on our heels defensively, so we want to get back to being an aggressive, attacking defense.

“That’s certainly the message that we’re talking about. We’ve got to be more aggressive on defense and have more of an impact in controlling the tempo and the feel of the game.”

Washington is still a bit frustrated with the way her team’s sometimes-offensively-productive, sometimes-defensively-productive performances haven’t quite synced up to occur in the same game.

“I just think it’s one of those things where earlier in the year we were playing pretty well defensively, but our offense wasn’t clicking on all cylinders,” she said. “Now I kind of feel like offensively, we kind of know what we’re doing and our defense isn’t as aggressive.

“So we can get a little bit more aggressive, assertive and attacking on the defensive end.”

Nebraska (10-5, 1-3) will present a challenge via the play of freshman forward Jessica Shepard, who averages 19.1 points per game and entered the program as the highest-ranked player the state of Nebraska had ever produced.

The Huskers are also a threat from the perimeter behind sophomore Natalie Romero’s No. 2 conference-ranked 44 3-pointers and 42.7 percent shooting from behind the arc.

Penn State welcomes Nebraska at the tail end of the latter’s road stretch. Since Jan. 3, the Huskers have traveled to Northwestern and Maryland.

This story was originally published January 12, 2016 at 7:37 PM with the headline "Lady Lions pushing ‘aggressive’ mentality, hope to snap losing streak against Nebraska."