Overcoming every stumble and obstacle
At first glance, last season’s record for the USU women’s basketball season might not seem all that impressive, but on closer investigation, the 11-18 record shows something of sacrifice and commitment.
USU women’s basketball Head Coach Raegan Pebley has largely been the commitment and drive behind the progress of the team. A cynic might look at a season record with more losses than wins as anything but progress and a lack of quality coaching, but try this on for size: begin your coaching career at a school that hasn’t had a women’s basketball program in 16 years, recruit a bunch of girls who are if nothing else, willing to play basketball, teach this group how to mold into a team and then switch conferences just when things are getting good. Suddenly that record means something more.
“I think we’ve done really well,” Pebley said of the progress her team has made in four years. “I know we’re getting better every year. I’m a patient person. I know if we want this program to be a flash in the pan, I would have gone about developing this program differently. We want this program to have steady success and I know we’re on our way to doing that.”
The USU women’s basketball program was cut following the 1987 season due to lack of funding, but on May 1, 2002, the program received new life as Pebley was named head coach. Four days later, the women’s basketball program was officially reinstated and the challenge was just beginning.
“I don’t think anyone’s ever fully prepared to become a head coach whether there’s an existing staff and existing team,” Pebley said. “I was prepared as far as the energy – emotional energy, psyhcological energy – it was going to take. I was prepared with a timeline with things I really wanted to accomplish. There were some surprises along the way, but there are those problems in any program.”
Pebley spent a year recruiting and training players to be prepared for the first year of play in the Big West Conference. She said she tried to find players that could compete at some level in the Big West and “in some cases we needed some warm bodies.”
The 2003-2004 season showed a typical performance from a new team in a 5-22 overall record, with all five wins earned in conference play. Pebley said her team experienced some major challenges that first year as they tried to pull together as a team.
“The obvious [challenge] is the experience we had going into the season – the inexperience on the court and all the different game situations, inexperience in travel – and that makes a difference,” Pebley said. “Everyone was all learning at the same time on what to expect and what’s to be expected and how this process is going to go.”
Pebley’s team was the third-youngest team in the country in its first year of reinstatement, but they pulled together enough wins to land a spot in the Big West’s postseason tournament.
The success of the inaugural season didn’t end there. In the 2004-2005 season, Pebley led her team to an impressive 14-14 record, tying her with former USU women’s basketball coaches Fern Gardner (1975) and Cindy Perkins (1979) for the second-highest single-season wins in USU history. Pebley’s team made its second appearance to the Big West Tournament in as many years.
Pebley said the lessons and experience gained in the first year contributed to the success of the program. Learning the philosophies and style of play aided in the Lady Ags’ increased success, she said. One of the most important changes that made the biggest difference, Pebley said, was the implementation of a triangle offense. She said this offensive style was a good fit for the style of play in the Big West Conference.
“I think we helped those players develop a lot,” Pebley said. “I think that 14-14 record, we have to credit the kids for that and their ability to grow up in one year. I think Taylor Richards had a lot to do with that. She was probably one of our first true Division-I talents that we signed. We put her in a position where she had to play 30-plus minutes per game against more seasoned point guards. That’s what our team needed and she was willing to do it”
But just when things were getting good and the women’s basketball program was starting to get established in the Big West Conference, USU moved up to the Western Athletic Conference – a league dominated by talented athletes and more challenging teams. Pebley said the transfer meant her team went from a small conference ranked in the bottom 10 in the country to one of the top seven conferences in the country.
She said the first thing she noticed about the change to the WAC was the higher level of athleticism and the skill and depth of each basketball team.
“I believe at the time that the WAC was the best thing for our program in the long term,” Pebley said. “I knew that year was going to be really, really tough on us as a group. We did some things to try to prepare us for that.”
The 2005-2006 season was indeed challenging for the Aggies as they struggled to learn how to compete against WAC foes. The end result was a 3-24 overall record, with two of those wins coming against WAC opponents New Mexico State and Idaho.
Commenting on the first season in the WAC, Pebley said, “It was so hard and frustrating. It was really hard for me because I saw how much it hurt our kids. I knew that the WAC was the best for this athletic program, but I knew the WAC was going to be really hard on our kids. We were hardly ready for Division-I.
“Our program wasn’t ready for that. It was really difficult because our kids started to build some confidence in the Big West and then they got thrown into this WAC deal and it was tough.”
She said her team was tired and ready for the 2005-2006 season to be over, but she sat them down and talked about the progress the team had made from the first year in the Big West to the second. She said she told her team they could repeat that success.
This season Pebley led her Aggies to an 11-17 overall record and a 7-9 conference mark. Just like her second season in the Big West Conference, Pebley found a way to condition her team to compete and play at a high level.
“I think they learned the pace of the game, and we were more prepared for that,” Pebley said of lessons learned from the first year in the WAC that assisted her team this season. “I think the familiarity of our opponents helped us be more prepared. I think just like we made some adjustments to compete in the second year of the Big West, we did in the WAC. We knew we were graduating those post players. We emphasized our guards a lot more.”
Pebley will graduate the first group of players who have played all four years with her at the end of the semester. These players include Brittany Phillips, Camille Brox and Brittany Hagen. The three seniors will be a big loss to USU, Pebley said, but there will still be plenty of players to work with.
“I think next year will be a lot of fun because we’ll have as much of a balance as we ever had,” Pebley said. “I think we learned what our strengths were and what our weaknesses were.
“We’re going to continue taking steps to be better,” she said. “Do I expect us to win a conference championship? I can’t say that. I expect us to take steps toward that. It is hard to win a championship, and it’s really hard to win a championship in the WAC. You can look at the teams in our conference and everybody has beat everybody. It’s a very competitive conference, and we’ve got to make a really strong effort if we want to win the conference championship. I think that’s something USU can do in its future. Nobody should underestimate the difficulty in doing that. I know our football team is trying to do it. Every team is trying to it.”
-sethhawkins@cc.usu.edu