Injuries Slowly Taking Their Toll

Scan down just about any bench at a women’s basketball game and you see them: players in street clothes on crutches, some with casts, others with a leg in a brace.

Injuries are a fact of life in sports, but they seem to have struck with more vengeance than usual in the women’s game this season.

Tennessee’s Tamika Catchings, sidelined by a torn anterior cruciate ligament, was the most prominent player struck down.

“It could be that we always have this many, but this year it seems to be happening to Top 20 teams, so we’re more aware of it,” Georgia coach Andy Landers said. “As far as the Top 20 goes, it certainly seems like there are more injuries.”

They started before the season even got going.

No. 7 Louisiana Tech lost promising post player Catrina Frierson to a torn ACL. The same type of injury knocked out No. 22 Oregon’s Shaquala Williams, the Pac-10 player of the year last season. No. 16 Penn State lost senior Chrissy Falcone and freshman Jennifer Brenden because of torn ACLs. Amy Waugh, the starting point guard for No. 15 Xavier, ruptured her Achilles’ tendon and played for the first time this season Thursday night. Maryland’s Vicki Brick and Old Dominion’s Lucienne Berthieu both went down with torn ACLs in the preseason.

The list goes on. Stanford lost its starting guard court, Susan King (ACL) and Jamie Carey (recurring concussions). Candice Storey, the only senior at No. 19 Vanderbilt, tore an ACL in the first week of the season.

No. 5 Georgia has lost two players for the season, Ebony Felder (shoulder) and Camille Murphy (ACL), and forward Deanna Nolan is out with a broken hand. North Carolina State has been without Kaayla Chones (torn tendon) and Terah James (ACL) all season.

Youngstown State’s Brianne Kenneally, who was third nationally in scoring and had 43 points in a game, torn an ACL in late December. Center Jen Cunningham of No. 10 Oklahoma torn an ACL but will try to finish the season after sitting out a couple of weeks. Duke has played its last four games without leading scorer Alana Beard, who has a dislocated thumb.

Drake had misfortune without an on-the-court injury. Sophomore Martha Chaput is being treated for Hodgkin’s disease and freshman Mandy Kappel was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

No one, though, has been hit like Ohio State. The Buckeyes have lost five players for the season because of injuries -- two broken legs, a broken foot, an ACL and a broken finger. That hurts.

“I don’t know if it’s more kids. I think it’s the more prominent kids,” Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said. “A lot of teams lost their best players. And a lot of it was in the preseason. That’s never happened before.”

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COACH ON CRUTCHES: Penn State’s injuries extended to the coaching staff.

Assistant coach Michael Peck ruptured the Achilles’ tendon in his right ankle while playing in a 3-on-3 tournament and was on crutches for several weeks.

Peck, in his third season at Penn State, was a post player at Marshall. His sister, Carolyn, guided Purdue to the 1999 NCAA championship and is now the coach and general manager for the WNBA’s Orlando Miracle.

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ARKANSAS FIND: Early in the season, Shameka Christon of Arkansas looked liked your typical freshman struggling to adjust to major-college basketball.

The team’s most acclaimed recruit, Christon averaged 6.9 points and shot just 43 percent. Coach Gary Blair and his staff were wondering what was going to happen when she was subjected to the pressures of Southeastern Conference play.

What happened was that as the competition picked up, so did Christon.

In conference games only, Christon began the week ranked among the league’s top 10 in scoring, field goal percentage, 3-point field goal percentage, 3-pointers per game and steals.

She scored 21 points against Mississippi State and 16 against Auburn and Kentucky. In an upset of No. 19 Vanderbilt, Christon made four 3-pointers while scoring 15 points. The 6-foot-2 forward had three steals against both Kentucky and LSU.

The Lady Razorbacks improved right along with Christon. Before a loss at Alabama on Thursday night, Arkansas had won four straight league games to climb above .500 in conference play for the first time since 1998.

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FALLING SHORT: Unless there’s a huge surge in the final month of the season, the Big 12 probably won’t reach its goal of drawing 1 million fans.

The league, which led the nation in attendance last season, had launched a campaign to become the first conference to draw a million fans for women’s basketball. With four weeks to go, Big 12 teams have drawn 513,840 fans and officials are now hoping to catch up to last year’s numbers.

The Big 12 is averaging 4,392 fans per game. It averaged 4,720 last season, when it became No. 1 in attendance after the Big Ten led for five straight years.

Penn State is trying to help the Big Ten regain the lead. The school is promoting giveaways by local merchants, group rates and other activities to try to draw 10,000 fans for each of the Lady Lions’ four home games in February.

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CALLING IT QUITS: Sophomore Alisha Sare, the No. 2 scorer at Texas last season, has given up basketball but will stay in school to finish her degree.

After averaging 10.4 points a game a year ago and leading the team in 3-pointers, Sare has been bothered by an Achilles’ tendon strain this season. She had played in only 11 games, scoring 27 points and making just 6-of-34 3-point shots.

“She expressed to me that it wasn’t in her heart to continue,” said Texas coach Jody Conradt, whose team is ranked 21st. “I asked her to take some time and think about it and she them came back with this decision.”