Senior forward Aisha Jefferson attempts a jump shot over Bowling Green guards Chrissy Steffen and Lauren Prochaska on Saturday at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky.
Louisville, Ky. — For much of the season, avoiding turnovers hasn’t been one of the MSU women’s basketball team’s strengths.
Going in to Monday’s NCAA Tournament second-round game with No. 4-seed Kentucky, it’s going to have to be if the No. 5-seed Spartans want to advance to their second Sweet 16 in as many seasons.
The reason: The Wildcats force 23 turnovers a game and are fourth in the country with a plus-7.6 turnover margin.
It’s going to be up to the Spartans to play controlled and not let Kentucky’s up-tempo style of play be the game’s deciding factor.
“The thing that makes Kentucky pretty special is they make it really, really hard for you to slow it down,” MSU head coach Suzy Merchant said. “We faced teams in the past that try to turn you in the backcourt and create some havoc back there. The thing I think they do really, really well is keep it going in the quarter-court, unlike other teams.”
Merchant said most teams stop pressing after the first wave is broken. Kentucky keeps it going and is able to switch on screens at all positions.
On the positive side for the Spartans, they committed only 10 turnovers Saturday against Bowling Green, the team’s lowest total since committing 11 on Dec. 13, 2009 against Florida Gulf Coast.
Still, it’s been a bumpy ride for MSU in the turnover department this season. The team has averaged 17.3 per game and has turned the ball over 20 or more times on nine occasions this season, including a season-high 27 against North Carolina.
And guess which team the Spartans compared Kentucky to?
“We’ve kind of compared them to UNC,” senior center Allyssa DeHaan said.
“They like to create a lot of havoc and they like to play really fast, which in turn makes you play really fast. We’ve been there, done that.”
The Wildcats have forced 25 or more turnovers 15 times this season, including 40 against Mississippi Valley State and 38 against Louisville.
Wildcats head coach Matthew Mitchell said his team wants to average 25 turnovers per game and get 25 points off those.
Composure was a key word inside MSU’s locker room Sunday, and Merchant said Kentucky is the fastest team the Spartans have seen this season.
“We know that once we see one of our players playing fast, we have to let each other know,” junior guard Cetera Washington said. “When they’re pressing us or full-court pressing us, doubling ball screens, we just really have to keep our composure and make the simple pass and simple reads.”
Rebound needed
Junior forward Kalisha Keane has struggled mightily the past four games, shooting 21.6 percent from the field since a 27-point outburst Feb. 25 against Purdue.
Keane, who hit big 3-pointer after big 3-pointer for MSU during the team’s late-season run, is 3-for-23 from beyond the arc during this stretch and is averaging 5.75 points per game.
“She has to do a better job of getting into the flow,” Merchant said. “She just comes in and wants to make an in-your-face 3-point shot to get herself going. She’s too gifted and too talented to allow herself to jack up shots from the perimeter and be one-and-done.”
Keane, the Big Ten Sixth Player of the Year, said the coaching staff has been helping her try to affect the game in other ways.
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
“I just have to get in, shoot shots, get extra jumpers up to get my shot going again,” Keane said.
Getting Keane going will be one of the big keys for the Spartans against Kentucky.
“She can drive, she can dump, she can create, and we’re going to need that from her more than 3-point shooting,” Merchant said.
“We’re going to need her to put that thing on the deck a little bit and create some opportunities.”
Atmospheric pressure
For the second straight game, the crowd at Freedom Hall likely will be heavily against the Spartans.
Bowling Green brought a large number of loud fans for the first round and with Kentucky’s campus being only about 90 minutes away from Louisville, Wildcats fans should create a hostile atmosphere for MSU.
The Spartans, who have played in front of two crowds in excess of 11,000 and 18 above 5,000 this season, aren’t sweating it.
“The game against Ohio State on their home floor really helped us for this game,” Washington said. “They had a huge crowd. … This is basically a home game for them and (we’ll have to) keep our composure and block the crowd out.”
