A Home Away From Home
Santa Clara women’s basketball is hungry for more wins on the road
Bill Carr, head coach of Santa Clara’s women’s basketball, has a new nickname for his team: Road Warriors.
The Broncos, like their male counterparts, set up shop in Santa Cruz, Calif. because of Santa Clara county’s temporary ban on all contact sports. This means the team practices and plays their “home” games in the facility of the San Francisco Warriors’ minor league team. They also live in a local hotel close to the stadium, and continue their studies remotely. Oh and one last thing–they’ve been doing all this since Dec. 6.
These Broncos are warriors on the road indeed.
Santa Clara’s record is 8-5 overall, with four wins in conference play so far. Their recent back-to-back wins over Saint Mary’s and Pacific mark the first time they have swept on the road since 2015. Junior guard Lindsay VanAllen had a career high 25 points and was 16-of-18 from the free throw line–the second most in a game in program history. She helped secure another victory over Portland last night with 23 points.
“I wanted to be really aggressive, draw fouls and get to the freethrow line,” VanAllen said. “I know I can contribute to wins that way. It feels great to get these early wins, especially in a conference as good as ours.”
West Coast Conference (WCC) preseason rankings called for Santa Clara to finish in ninth place, just ahead of San Francisco. This list was released in October, a few weeks before the season’s tip-off. Rounding out the top three spots were Gonzaga, BYU and Portland.
After two weeks of conference play, the Broncos have already begun to prove otherwise. Santa Clara currently sits in fifth place. They don’t see themselves as a ninth place team, and they don’t play like one either.
The team attributes these early wins to the adversity they have endured in the months leading up to their first game. Because of their county’s restrictions, Santa Clara is the only school in the WCC that plays and trains away from their campus. To win on the road is already tough for every visiting team. But winning as the home team–while “home” looks nothing like the scarlet red colors that coat Leavey Stadium–is an entirely different feat.
“It might not be Leavey that we’re playing in,” Redshirt senior Ashlyn Herlihy said. “But we try to embody and defend the Santa Cruz gym as if it were our own.”
Aside from the challenge of displacement, Santa Clara women’s basketball is a fairly young team. Herlihy (who scored her 1000th career point last Thursday against Gonzaga) is one of only five upperclassmen; freshmen and sophomores make up the rest of the roster. Sometimes this lack of experience at the collegiate level creates a divide, but the whole team has had to adapt to this new lifestyle. It’s brought them even closer together. From Mario Kart tournaments to Christmas dinners, players, coaches and staff members have embraced this unity head on.
Another key to the Broncos budding success is their defense. Last season, the top teams in the WCC had the best defenses. Core groups of starters from those programs stopped offensive opponents and worked together to defend the key. This year, Santa Clara adopted similar defensive tactics of their own.
Carr emphasized this team’s ability to press and disrupt the attack on defense. This has improved the Broncos’ ability to gain possession of the ball and transition into the fast break offense much quicker.
“If you want to compete in this conference–and be a top end team–you have to defend,” Carr said. “Our team has really bought into that this year. [Defense] is now our best asset.”
Even though the team’s breadth runs wide, Carr gives every player equal opportunity to contribute. Other programs in the WCC, such as Gonzaga and San Diego, typically utilize six to seven starters in their rotation. Santa Clara, on the other hand, taps into their deep roster during each game.
“We’re really an unselfish team, Carr said. “We’re built so that when one person scores on Thursday, somebody else can pick us up on Saturday.”
Santa Clara is ready to improve. Their unity, defense and versatility could earn them a WCC Championship. Until then, the Broncos have more work to do on the road.