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An in-depth look at Division III Posted Jan. 20, 2000 |
Notebooks Great Lakes Midwest Northeast Check out D3football.com |
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By Mark Simon Simpson women's basketball coach Brian Niemuth ran into a problem about three years ago that every coach would like to have. Too much depth. Rather then shuffle the abundance of talent to the point of making players unhappy, Niemuth designed a new system that literally, pardon the pun, took the program by Storm.
To deal with 12 players of equal or nearly equal ability, Niemuth also devised a new set of substitution patterns. "It's a partner system," said Niemuth, whose team had won 38 consecutive regular-season games heading into a Friday matchup with Luther. "The first partner plays until she is tired, then makes a fist. Then her partner comes in until she is tired, and then she makes a fist and comes out. If we have to pull a player out, she doesn't come back into the game until we let her in. We stress that the whole is greater then the sum of its parts." Anyone who was a doubter this season became a believer when the Storm toppled Top 10 foes UW-Oshkosh and Baldwin-Wallace on back-to-back nights. The Storm, the nation's third-highest scoring team, get the bulk of their offense from 5-10 sophomore forward Michelle Stover, who is averaging upwards of 17 ppg. on 63% shooting. The most intriguing options Niemuth can utilize are identical twin sisters Emily and Sarah Tonn. Emily (who just passed the 1,000 point mark) is left-handed and Sarah (second on the team in assists) is right handed, but other then that, they are almost exactly alike. "Two years ago a coach told me after a game that he had never seen a player shoot that well with both hands," Niemuth said with a laugh. "Our freshmen know not to call them by their first names because they are so hard to tell apart."
Getting all of this talent acclimated with this setup was difficult but eventually manageable. "It's not an easy sell," Niemuth said, "when you tell them they are only going to play 18 to 22 minutes a night. After they play it, they realize the energy needed. They understand that playing 20 minutes is like playing 30 in a normal system." As baffling as it was to the players at first, it's that much more difficult for teams who have never experienced it. Pacific Lutheran, which stunned the Storm in the opening round of the NCAA tournament last season, was the last team to take Simpson away from its game plan. "They are a team that was very strong defensively and they really watch their possessions on offense," said Niemuth. "We weren't able to get them to speed up." Simpson is very eager to get back to the postseason and prove itself as being as strong as any team in the nation. Last year's heartbreak was as tough to deal with as what happened two seasons ago, when the Storm finished 21-4, but lost out on an Iowa Conference title and NCAA bid on a tiebreaker. "Absolutely (that is motivation)," Niemuth said. "To work all season and lose like that is tough. Talent-wise we were better last year, but I think we have better team chemistry this season. We want to get back to where we felt we deserved to be." |
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Michelle Stover leads the IIAC in scoring and is second in free-throw shooting.
Despite the system, Emily Tonn is still averaging 15.1 points per game, nearly twice as many as last season.