Here’s the schedule for the next five days for coach Theresa Grentz’s No. 5 Illinois basketball team:
Wednesday: At 6-0 Southwest Missouri State before nearly 9,000 fans.
Friday: At 9-0 No. 1 ranked defending NCAA champion Tennessee before 15,000 fans.
Sunday: At home against perennial Final Four team No. 13 Stanford (1-3).
Grentz was asked Tuesday if these three games constituted a litmus test for her team. Grentz prefered the term “gut check.”
“Southwest Missouri State takes no prisoners,” Grentz said. “If we don’t concentrate on that game it will be over quickly. Tennessee is Tennessee. Its freshmen won the world junior championship last year. Stanford is far better than its record.”
But Grentz isn’t selling short Ashley Berggren, Tauja Catchings, Alicia Sheeler, or other members of the defending Big Ten champs. “I think to myself, `if this team can only realize how good it can be,”‘ Grentz said. “It has so many physical attributes.”
The Illini also have balance. Five players score between Krista Reinking’s 10.2 points per game and Sheeler’s 17.4. Four, led by Berggren at .618, are hitting more than 52 percent of their shots. Five rebounders are bunched between Catchings at 7.6 and Katie Coleman at 5.4. Four playmakers, headed by Catchings at 5.4, average more than 3.6 assists per game.
“The balance is nice,” Grentz said. “It means that if any one player does her job, she contributes. It means no one individual has to carry Illinois.”
Grentz is trying to stress the team aspect of Friday’s showdown and downplay hoopla about the clash between the Catchings sisters from Stevenson High, sophomore Tauja of the Illini and freshman Tamika on coach Pat Summitt’s Lady Vols.
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The scorer: Inch-for-inch, one of the best scorer-rebounders in the state is Corinne Vossel, Illinois State’s 5-foot 11-inch senior from Hersey. She was named Missouri Valley Conference player of the week recently for totaling 43 points and 29 rebounds in road games at Michigan and San Francisco.
Vossel hit a three-point basket at the buzzer to beat San Francisco 78-75 in only the fifth home defeat suffered by the Dons in the last five years. Although she usually plays against taller women, Vossel made all conference last year and is averaging 16.8 points and 10 rebounds per game for the 1-4 Redbirds who play Saturday at UIC.
Scouting report: Vossel and another former Hersey star, 6-2 Abbie Willenborg of Marquette, play for schools that, between them, have played five Big Ten opponents. Illinois State lost to Michigan and Wisconsin. Marquette beat Northwestern and Minnesota before losing 99-83 on Sunday at Illinois.
The Illinois State players say Michigan’s 6-3 Pollyanna Johns from Evanston is the best of the several Big Ten big players they have faced. But they like the Badgers’ savvy and the outside shooting of Katie Voigt and Kelley Paulis.
“Wisconsin doesn’t have as much talent as some teams,” ISU guard Krista Valdez said, “but it’s a very, very smart team.”
Marquette’s 6-2 starters, Lisa Oldenburg and Willenborg, were impressed with the inside-outside balance of the Illini after the 6-foot 3 Sheeler scored 33 points in the game in Huff Hall.
“To me, the whole Big Ten is a strong physical league,” said Oldenburg, her team’s leading scorer. “The league has bigger girls. Illinois’ strength is its inside game. It has big girls who can score.”
“But you can’t focus on just one Illinois position,” Willenborg said. “Illinois has so many guns.”