Women's team continues winning streak

By Rhonda Lundin

The ASU women’s basketball team has been on a roll, earning a school-record five straight postseason berths. This season, the Sun Devils have all of the pieces in place to extend that streak to six with an NCAA Tournament berth.

Going into the season, ASU returns all five starters and 11 letter winners from last year’s team, which won 17 games, including a school-record 13 home games and a 73-53 win over then No. 7 Stanford. The Sun Devils won 18 of their last 20 games at home going into 2004-2005.

“ We are anticipating a tremendous Pac-10 season for everyone in the conference,” said ninth-year head coach Charli Turner Thorne. “ASU has lined up a very challenging and exciting preseason schedule with trips to LSU, Georgia, San Antonio and New Mexico that is going to prepare us for anything and everything the Pac-10 will bring. We feel we’ve designed a schedule that will toughen us up and prepare us in every which way to win a Pac-10 championship.”

After several seasons without many veteran players, Coach Turner Thorne will have four seniors this season, including guards Betsy Boardman, Lauren Stagg, Carrie Bucker and Kylan Loney. Loney was a first-team All-Pac-10 selection last season for ASU after leading the team in assists and three-point shooting. The Sun Devils also return a talented group of juniors and sophomores who have made significant contributions in the last two years, including honorable-mention All-Pac-10 selection Kristen Kovesdy and Pac-10 All-Freshman honoree Emily Westerberg.

Men's team tips off season with top picks

By Doug Tammaro

If the Pac-10 basketball coaches were to have a draft of all the players returning this year, the top pick would probably be ASU junior forward Ike Diogu. For that reason, ASU head coach Rob Evans feels good that his 2004-2005 squad has the first piece of the puzzle in making sure this season is a good one.

“ There is not a thing we can do about last year except remember how losing made us all feel,” notes Evans. “But now all our freshman are sophomores, I like the work ethic we showed in the off- season, we recruited players that we expect to contribute from the first day and we have Ike Diogu. We did some things well last year but we didn’t finish a few games when we could have posted good wins. But some guys showed us some things that lead me to believe we can get back to where we need to be.”

ASU hopes sophomore guard Kevin Kruger plays like he did in the final nine games of the year, and that senior wing Stevie Moore plays like he did in the first 15 contests. The team needs Serge Angounou to continue his comeback from a knee injury, and for sophomore guard Tron Smith to return from nagging roadblocks last year like pneumonia, a broken nose and strained hamstring. First-year players last year like Allen Morill, Wilfried Fameni and Keith Wooden need to improve. Senior Jason Braxton needs to show the leadership he can with 88 career games in his Nike shoes. Newcomers like Tyrone Jackson and Bryson Krueger also need to make contributions. And of course, the Sun Devils need Ike Diogu to well, just be Ike.

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