Ard takes on difficult task with USU women’s hoops
Utah State has historically been more of a basketball school when it comes to athletics. If not, the reign of Stew Morrill and a quarter-century of football ineptitude made it so. Despite the fact the men’s team has surged back into its Morrill-era prowess, the women’s team has never managed any of the consistency produced by its male counterparts.
That being said, the current women’s program isn’t near the dire state of the 1980s, where they won just 18 games between 1982-1987, followed by the program being disbanded for 15 years, the Aggies do not possess any recent run of success.
Since joining the Mountain West at the onset of the 2013-14 season, Utah State women’s hoops has two winning seasons overall (out of seven tries) and just one year where the Aggies managed a winning record in conference play (10-8 record in 2018-19).
This past season was filled with bumps and bruises for the program, with an 8-23 overall win-loss record, paired with a 2-16 conference record. This marks the worst league performance since the 2003 reinstatement by a notable margin and only undercut by the back-to-back 0-12 conference runs of 1985-87
Not helping the matter is that the team’s four top scorers from that poor season are gone. Hailey Bassett, Lindsey Jensen-Baker and Malene Aniambossou were all seniors and the third-leading scorer, Steph Gorman, has entered the transfer portal and will not be returning.
Hailey Bassett plays for USU Women’s Basketball in the Mountain West Tournament in their game against SDSU. USU Women’s Basketball beat SDSU 81-79 in overtime at the team’s first game in the Mountain West Conference Tournament. The game was held in the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas on March 1, 2020.
That leaves the team with a roster that is uniquely depleted with just five upperclassmen, few of which can claim much experience.
Consider that, up until Southern Utah grad transfer Jessica Chatman committed this week, Utah State was poised to enter the upcoming season with zero players on its roster who have ever averaged four points per game in a Division I season. Chatman defies that trend by having averaged 6.9 points in 2018-19 and 6.4 in the 2019-20 season.
It’s on that note that Kayla Ard takes over the reins as head coach of the USU women’s basketball team.
In her introductory press conference, filmed in the middle of an empty Dee Glen Smith Spectrum thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ard displayed a brave level of optimism considering the young state of her roster (for some context, at the time it wasn’t publicly known that Gorman was transferring).
“My goal in our first year is to finish in the top half of the conference,” said Ard. “I want to make a big jump. That can be done here.”
Painting Ard as a hopeless optimist, doomed to fail at the hands of insurmountable odds, isn’t a fair way to look at this. It’s clear Ard has fairly realistic expectations and, more importantly, a plan, particularly from an X’s and O’s standpoint.
In her 10 years spent as a coaching assistant at Denver, Dayton, Clemson, Troy and Pensacola State, Ard developed a fast-paced offensive system. At Denver, her most recent stop prior to Logan, she was able to fully implement that system, being in charge of the offense both as an assistant and later as the interim head coach.
“It’s fast. It’s structured, so it’s not streetball, but it’s run and gun if you will, structured system of makes and misses,” Ard said. “We’re going to get out and push the ball. It’s exciting. The fans love it, the players love it. Everything is predicated on where the ball goes, where the players are on the floor.”
Steph Gorman and Kennedi Villa await a free throw at USU and SDSU’s women’s game at the Mountain West Tournament. USU Women’s Basketball beat SDSU 81-79 in overtime at the team’s first game in the Mountain West Conference Tournament. The game was held in the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas on March 1, 2020.
“It is not a ‘pull the ball out and run set one, two, three.’ It’s not that at all,” Ard said. “There’s situations for that. But, about 90 percent of the offense is very fast-paced. I want to score in under 12 seconds, which gives us more possessions [and] obviously helps the scoring go up. It’s very different.”
This kind of offense hasn’t really been seen in Logan, Ard said as much herself. But she is confident it will work and make for exciting basketball that Cache Valley residents can get behind.
“I’ve had the privilege to coach against several teams in the conference already, and it’s worked. I know it will work here,” Ard said. “It gives the players something to be excited about. They want to do that. In today’s day and age in basketball, the kids want to run.”
Given the state of Utah State women’s hoops, a fresh, new system that is fun just as Ard said, is exactly what the program needs. She is an injection of energy into the program. In the introductory interview, Ard alluded to Utah State Athletics Director, John Hartwell, calling her “the female version of Craig Smith.” The intimation being Ard is a high-energy person who brings that contagious energy to work every day.
“I think that comes from sheer passion,” Ard said. “I’m so passionate about the game. I’m so thankful to the game. This game changed my life. Basketball changed my life. Where I’m from, a lot of people stay there. A lot of people don’t get out. Basketball gave me an avenue to do something very different with my life and very special.”
Year one, and probably year two, could end up being tough years, but if Ard, the players, fans and administration stick with it, this hire could be just as momentous as Craig Smith was for the men.
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