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A couple weeks ago, Dominique Oden decided she wasn’t going to sit around waiting for offense to come to her.
She was going to go after it.
And that aggressiveness is paying off; in the last four games, the sophomore guard is averaging 19.8 points. Even more impressive than that, however, she’s doing so while she’s averaging 1.68 points per field goal attempt. Oden is shooting 63.8 percent (30 of 47) from the field during that span, including 10 of 17 from three-point range.
“I’ve been doing these past (several) games especially, not just running the offense but looking to score the ball if I’m open,” Oden said. “I’m going to keep doing that since it’s working.”
It’s a huge change from the beginning of the season, when Oden, a breakout rookie a season ago, scored in single-figures in four of Purdue’s first five games. Even as late as early January, she had back-to-back four-point outings, but since she’s been rolling.
“There for a while, she was kind of stationary and not taking what the defense was giving her,” Coach Sharon Versyp said. “Now they’re taking away the three, so it’s about working on that next part of your game. She has such a beautiful shot and a great way of getting into the gaps.”
But not going all the way to the basket. Oden is the rare player these days who will stop at about 10- to 15-feet, pulling up for a quick jumper, or maybe tear drop, rather than blitzing into the lane for an attempted — and potentially contested — layup.
Never has Oden been better than Sunday vs. Penn State, when she hit 9-of-11 shots, including seven of her nine two-point jumpers. She wants to continue the offensive outburst when Purdue (14-8 overall, 5-3 in the Big Ten) starts the second half of its conference season at No. 13 Michigan (19-4, 8-2) on Thursday night.
“It’s the kind of thing that has clicked with me,” Oden said. “I’m tired of losing and if I can score the ball for my teammates, (if I don’t), I’m letting them down and I’m letting myself down. So if I can do it, I need to do it.”
‘X-factor’
Tamara Farquhar has tried to think less and produce more.
And lately, that approach is paying off.
The freshman has scored at least six points in three of the last five games, plus has averaged nearly six rebounds per outing. And she’s done so in the starting lineup for the last four games, as a fill in for Lamina Cooper (although that could change Thursday at Michigan).
“We’ve told her she’s the X-factor,” Versyp said. “We really want her facing the basket, taking some outside shots (and to) just make one nice smart move down low and she did that the other day. She was a big, big asset to us, on defense, rebounding and scoring. Before, she was thinking too much and trying to do a lot of alternative moves all the time. She was able to do one move and score.
“But she’s got to be big for us as we continue. It’s always the confidence, because the nonconference you can get confidence, but the Big Ten is a different beast. You have to be successful in order to build confidence.”
And that’s been a process for the 6-foot Canadian. The rookie has had to learn the intricacies of the American game — at Dawson College, for instance, it barely played any zone defense at all — plus do so on a much bigger stage. It didn’t come right away.
“I think that the reason why I did better (recently) is that I wasn’t thinking as much,” she said. “I was just taking my time, because a lot of times I was getting travel calls and things like that because I was rushing, thinking that things were open that weren’t.”
Now, Farquhar is giving the Boilermakers quality depth on a team that doesn’t have much, playing with a rotation of seven — occasionally eight — during the Big Ten season. And for the three games Cooper was out with an illness, even fewer.
Farquhar is playing the 4, inside more frequently than she’s used to or than she’s expected to in future seasons. But she’s adjusting by trying to use her quickness against bigger players while also battling to defend and rebound.
“Knowing that they have to rely on me makes me want to step up more and actually realize that I have a big role this year,” he said. “I think that will help me a lot next year, because I will have that experience that a lot of freshman don’t get the opportunity of having that first year.”
Cooper back
In her first game back after missing three due to an illness, Lamina Cooper played 20 minutes.
But it wasn’t conditioning that kept her minutes down; it was foul trouble. The sophomore scored seven points off the bench — she did start the second half — on 3-of-3 shooting, with five rebounds and an assist.
But Cooper had two first-half fouls, then picked up her third at the second of the third quarter.
“Whether it was 20 or 30 minutes, it was nice that she was able to build a lot of confidence, shoot the ball well, affect the game defensively, saw great things on the offensive end and contributed,” Versyp said. “It was a big boost for all of us.”
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