‘A hungry group.’ How Penn State women’s basketball is setting itself apart this season
Penn State and Virginia entered Wednesday night’s game as two undefeated teams, but only one could go home victorious.
The Lady Lions fell 89-68 to the Lady Cavaliers, led by first-year head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton, along with guard Mir McLean and senior Camryn Taylor. McLean had 24 points, 13 rebounds and five assists, along with a plus-minus of 15 and Taylor added 17 points, six boards, an assist and a plus-minus of 16.
As efficient and as smooth the Lady Cavaliers were on Wednesday night, the Lady Lions weren’t. Penn State shot just 13.3% from the field in the first quarter, along with marks of 20% from 3-point range and 50% from the free throw line, resulting in just seven points scored. Following the game, the Lady Lions went to the locker room for approximately 20 minutes before emerging for the postgame press conference.
Senior guard Makenna Marisa, who shot 6-for-12 from the field with 16 points, one assist and two rebounds, demanded more from her team.
“I think it’s a wake-up call for us that we’re not going hard enough,” Marisa said. “We need to go harder in practice, we need to push each other more — we need to know our offense, know our defense — know everything. We’ve just got to be locked in. We need to take more ownership — each and every one of us.”
While Penn State fell to Virginia, a different air could be felt from this year’s squad than its 11-18 2021 predecessor. Last year, it took the Lady Lions until Dec. 18 to win their seventh game of the season. This season, Penn State reached that mark on Nov. 26, nearly a full month ahead of schedule.
The Lady Lions began the year with victories over Norfolk State, Fairfield, Youngstown State, Bryant, Syracuse, Toledo and Fresno State — each with varying degrees of difficulty.
Penn State’s new-look women’s team had to grind out a 67-61 victory over the Spartans to begin the season on Nov. 9, followed by a 77-49 thumping of the Stags, a 77-63 win over the Penguins, a 96-33 all-out blitzing of the Bulldogs, a crushing 82-69 over the ACC’s Lady Orange, a close 60-59 victory over the Rockets and a 68-49 drubbing of the Fresno State Lady Bulldogs on Nov. 26.
There’s clearly something different about Penn State women’s basketball this season.
What’s changed about the Lady Lions in 2022?
Accountability is a big aspect of the team’s early-season turnaround.
Head coach Carolyn Kieger graded last year’s season “not very well” after falling 75-50 against Rutgers in the opening round of the Big Ten Tournament on March 2. The team looked disheveled while attempting to stop larger opponents and didn’t have the rebounding prowess to do so. Kieger went into the offseason looking toward her leaders in Marisa, Leilani Kapinus, returning forwards Johnasia Cash and Anna Camden for guidance.
“This is definitely a hungry group,” Kieger said on Wednesday. “They want it. Tonight didn’t go the way that we wanted, but I have zero doubts that we’re going to go back into that film room tomorrow and get ready to beat Minnesota for our first Big Ten road game.”
Then there’s versatility, depth and experience.
The Lady Lions have thrown out a number of different lineups to start games. Wednesday night’s game featured Cash and Alexa Williamson at the four and five, along with Kapinus at the three, Marisa at the two and first-year guard Shay Ciezki as the point guard.
Senior forward Anna Camden played 13:55 minutes in the game, senior East Carolina transfer Taniyah Thompson played 20:18 minutes, junior forward Ali Brigham played 14:18 minutes, while redshirt sophomore forward Alli Campbell played a bench-high 27:14 minutes off the bench and scored nine points.
Kieger threw out a lineup that featured the 6-foot-3 Cash and 6-foot-4 Brigham to deter layups in the paint and add rebounding. Williamson stands at 6-foot-2, is more of a scoring presence at one of the forward positions with an average of 8.3 points per game. Kapinus is a dominant rebounder as a guard with 6.3 boards per game and equally dangerous as a defender with 3.5 steals per game.
Part of the depth and versatility comes from physical health.
Campbell, a Bellwood-Antis alumna, is coming off a season-ending leg injury last year that ailed her before the campaign even started. She only played one collegiate season as a freshman at Notre Dame, playing in six games with averages of 12.2 minutes per game.
The 2020 Naismith National High School All-American is excited to return to the floor this season, especially for a team that she grew up adoring as a child. This season, she’s shooting 41.9% from the field and 35.7% from the 3-point line, averaging 17 minutes through eight games.
“This past year, I missed the game a lot and actually playing,” Campbell said in October. “I got to learn a lot from the sideline and tried to help this team out, but it’s nothing like being on the court and I’ve been waiting to get back on the court for a year now. I’m just ready to help this team do whatever it takes to win and to contribute, do my role and win a lot of games. It’s just so fun being back out on the court.”
The team is still in the midst of learning to gel together. It’s constant work and progress. While usually a lot of depth would be a great thing for most teams, there is such a thing as too much depth at times — especially when you don’t know who the starters will be game-to-game.
“For us, we’re going to have to learn how to play together,” Kieger said. “There’s a lot of new pieces and it’s early on in the year, but we’ve got to develop some sort of chemistry and we need to figure out who’s going to be our starters right now to get us rolling. It’s been a big issue with us all eight games. So, it’s up to myself and the coaching staff to figure out who we need to put out there to start a game to get us rocking and rolling a bit easier.”
What’s next for the Lady Lions?
Penn State jumps into Big Ten play on Saturday against Minnesota on the road. The Lady Gophers sit at 4-3 on the season and also played Virginia, falling 73-70 on Nov. 26 in Charlottesville.
After a tough loss, the Lady Lions look to cleanse their minds of the game and to focus on the task at hand: beating Minnesota and continuing their push toward making the NCAA Tournament.
“We lock in for practice,” Marisa said. “These next few days of practice are going to be super important and we’re obviously going to watch film, make the fixes, make the corrections that we need to make against them.”
