Hey Wildcat fans and family, fellow Davidson people, & all you random folk piddling around online and stumbling across our website! I’m pleased to make your virtual acquaintance. My name is Amanda Ottaway, and I’m a senior forward on the women’s basketball team at Davidson. My teammates and coaches call me Otto. (Check the last name.) I’m an English major with a phobia of ketchup and a love of the Beatles. I possess the uncanny abilities to trip over anything and get sunburned in two minutes through a car window. I’ll be blogging about our experiences in 2012 through the end of the season!
Like most other teams at Davidson, we compete in the Southern Conference. In the men’s game, the SoCon is split up into a North and a South division. But ours is just one big group – eleven teams from the Carolinas to Georgia to Tennessee to Alabama – and we play every team twice, giving us twenty conference games. (Hint: that’s a LOT of basketball. Just the way we like it.)
Friday, January 13
Today we hosted Western Carolina in Belk Arena. We’d beaten them 64-46 at their gym in Cullowhee in December, but they’d improved a lot since the last time we played, and Friday’s game was a catfight, excuse the bad pun. We pulled out the win, 58-45, but it was a (literally) bloody battle – one of those intense, heady games where everybody’s diving on the floor and out of bounds, hard-fouling each other and shoving a little extra. Things got pretty heated. It was a blast! We had more fans than I can remember ever having in our gym because it was Education Day. A thousand students from local elementary and middle schools took the time out of their school days and came to Baker Sports Complex for a morning of basketball-themed lessons. Before the game, they did math with our season statistics and geography with our hometowns. Kat (Chiemeka, junior guard) won the furthest-away-from-home award – she’s from France! Hannah (Early, freshman guard) is the closest (she lives in Huntersville).
Saturday, January 14
Tomorrow we play at Appalachian State, the top team in the conference. It’s a quick turnaround for what will definitely be a tough game, so last night our coaches split us into three groups and had us watch film of each time we played App last year. This morning, we came in for another film session at 11 AM before practice, this time with the whole team and all our coaches. Coach J (Jamie Thomatis) was the scout coach for this game, and she put together clips of their half-court offensive sets and of each of their key players. App is the best defensive team in the conference, so we also watched a lot of their defensive schemes. They run every kind of defense you can think of – most dangerous is their 1-2-1-1 full-court trap. They’re super athletic and they’re all workhorses, and they love to press and run the floor, so that’s mostly what we’ll have to watch out for – we need to limit our turnovers and move the ball quickly.
So right now we’re on the bus to Boone. It’s about a two-hour drive, and it’s a beautiful one – over and around the Appalachian mountains. The movie Just Go With It (Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, so far unoriginal but mildly amusing) is playing on the TVs. A couple people are sleeping, some are listening to music, others are talking on the phone. The coaches, Brian Wheeler (our athletic trainer) and Gavin McFarlin (Assistant Sports Information Director) and the coaches all sit way in front. The rest of us have “unofficially official” assigned seating – and yes, the upperclassmen do get first choice! Taylor, Coach J’s nine-year-old daughter, is sitting back here with Sarah (Davis) and me, cuddling a stuffed husky named Digo who apparently loves graham crackers, a quality for which she has re-christened him “Grammy.” Last time we all had a bus trip together, on the way to Furman, Taylor came back here and we played all the hand games we could remember from our elementary-school days: “Down by the Banks of the Hanky-Panky,” “Miss Mary Mack,” etc., and even stumbled through some new ones when Tay caught us up on what the kids are playing these days.
Well – I’m more intrigued by this movie than I expected to be. So I must go; Adam Sandler and his nose are calling. We’ll spend the night in a hotel down the street from the arena, get a 7:40 AM wake-up call for shoot-around, and then come back and eat pregame meal here in the hotel restaurant. Then it’s GAME TIME!!
Wednesday, January 18
I’m writing post-App-game to proudly report that we won by 3, 55-52! The first half was pretty ugly, from an offensive standpoint. We shot 19% from the floor, and ten minutes into the game, we only had four points! Fortunately, our defense has been improving every game. We knew we had to stop Anna and Courtney Freeman (not sisters!), who are each averaging about 20 points per game against SoCon competition. We got Anna Freeman in foul trouble early, which was a huge plus because she had to sit most of the first half. We managed to contain Courtney as well thanks to some great perimeter D by our guards. The second half was one of the most intense we’ve had this season, as both teams started shooting a little better and the score seesawed back and forth for awhile. Finally, we took a five-point lead with four minutes to go. They eventually cut it to one, but KJ (Kristen Johnsen, senior forward) sealed the win with both ends of a one-and-one with 17 seconds left, and B (Barbara Sitton, junior point guard) played some fantastic deny-the-inbounds-pass defense, so App couldn’t get a decent shot off.
This week we’re working solely on preparations for Saturday’s 2 pm home game against Samford. Then we’ll have Sunday to get ready for Chattanooga – one thing about this conference is that you’ve gotta get used to quick turnarounds! But I have to get to bed now. Little-known fact: sleeping regularly is highly recommended for student-athletes. More updates coming soon! Keep following this blog and your favorite Davidson Wildcat women’s basketball team! Go ‘Cats!!
