The unofficial online home for fans of the Old Dominion University Monarchs. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

This Friday the ODU Lady Monarchs will play the Norfolk State University. It seems like forever when the team last played there exhibition game. Now we finally get to the see the team in action in a game that counts!

Last season the NSU Spartans had 11 games left in the regular season when they made a coaching change. During the season it's unusual for a team to change head coaches, but when your team has ZERO wins a change is probably needed. Long time men's assistant coach Larry Vickers took over and won three games. Three out of eleven games isn't a great wining percentage but it was enough for Vickers to go from intern head coach to full time head coach.

This is Vickers first job as a head coach. The 6'9" coach is a graduate of Ocean Lake High School and he was a walk on to the NSU men's team during the 2004-05 season. He has spent his entire professional career at NSU.

Coming off a 3 win season, NSU has been picked to finish 12th out of 13 teams in the MEAC this season. Jr Kayla Roberts was picked to finish on the second all MEAC team this season. This is a team with a lot of transfers on the roster. Two players are from junior colleges and five are from different NCAA schools.

NSU is playing a typical schedule for them. Three home games and the rest of the non conference schedule is all on the road. NSU Athletics Director Marty Miller been quoted many times in the paper saying that this is the business model that the NSU follows. Sure road games will make you tough, but it's really about the money from the guarantee game that NSU needs. (Some schools will even pay for transportation and hotels)

@ UNCW L 56-64
Vs St Augustine's W 99-59 (Division two team)

Starting Line-Up
#34 Kiara Phillips 5'11" Sr G 10.0 ppb, 5.5 rpg, 1.5 apg, 31.8 FG%, 33.3 3P%, 75.0 FT%, 18.5 mpg
#03 Gabrielle Swinson 5'6" Jr G , 8.5 ppg, 1.5 rpg, 3.5 apg, 4.0 spg, 44.4 FG%, 50.0 FT%, 26.0 mpg
#05 Jordan Strode 5'8" R-Sr G 13.5 ppg, 6.5 rpg, 2.5 apg, 1.5 spg, 25.0 FG%, 33.3 3P%, 68.8 FT%, 30.5 mpg
#21 Kayla Roberts 6'0" R-Jr F 10.5 ppg, 9.5 rpg, 3.0 apg, 44.4 FG%, 25.0 3P%, 80.0 FT%, 28.0 mpg
#20 Khalilah Ali 6'0" Jr G/F 5.5 ppg, 8.5 rpg, 1.5 apg, 62.5 FG%, 20.0 3P%, 19.5 mpg

Off the bench
#13 Alexys Long 9.0 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 1.5 apg, 2 spg, 46.7 FG%, 66.7 3P%, 50.0 FT%, 19.0 mpg
#11 Dominique Harper 7.5 mpg, 3.0 rpg, 1.0 apg, 2.0 spg, 37.5 FG%, 50.0 FT%, 17.0 mpg

Keep in mind that the stats include a game a division two opponent. So it may not be a true measuring stick of overall ability.

Local talent from NSU includes Swinson who is from First Colonial HS, Ali who is from Woodrow Wilson, and they have a red shirt transfer player who has to sit out named Khadedra Croker from King's Fork. On the sidelines, assistant women's coach Danielle Bell was a graduate of Kellam High School (played at Richmond).

Since there was a recent home game for NSU, it wouldn't surprise me if a member of KB's staff was scouting the team in the stands. So we should be nice and prepared for the Friday's game.

Scouting wise you protect the three from Strode and Phillips, while everyone else plays inside. They like to pass the ball around. Overall they don't have the height that ODU has. It's weird to say that ODU has home field advantage when the schools are just miles apart. Hopefully ODU's fans will have a strong turnout.

Schedule wise, the LM are fast and furious out of the gate. They start off with three games over five days. So if ODU gets a lead against NSU I would expect KB to go to her bench. This would be an excellent chance for players to get in minutes before we face the big Duke game on Tuesday. This should be a fun game for the players. A lot of them play in the summer basketball leagues with each other, so they should be familiar with each other's game.

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Final thought. By now I'm sure everyone has read up on our newest signing class for next year.

http://www.odusports.com/ViewArticle.dbm...=211284154

With the Camp sisters at 6'5" and 6'4", plus Dejah Carter at 6'4" along with current freshman Manaya Jones will give four players that are 6'4" (or taller). Honestly I can't remember the last time ODU's roster had that type of height with four players. I know that it will be a young group next season, but the potential of that quartet is really going to be impressive to dominant the inside.

Idk why they're taking so long to play. Some teams in the conference have already played 3 games

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Great write-up as usual. I hope you keep it up!

(11-16-2016 11:58 PM)ODUMONARCHZ1 Wrote:  Idk why they're taking so long to play. Some teams in the conference have already played 3 games

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Great Question and I thought the same thing. I mean every team in conference USA has played at least one game so far except for ODU. 8 teams have played two and three teams have played three games.

Scheduling changes during the off season is a very common practice in basketball. One team decides to host ODU, but then a game becomes open where that team can make a lot of money if they play on the road. So they say good-bye ODU, hello $$$. Thus ODU is scrambling to find a make up game but that isn't always an easy thing to do.

This is one of the reasons why I think coaches NEVER release the basketball schedule til everything is pretty much set in stone. Dates can be very fluid. It's pretty standard in the industry.

Didn't Karen allude to an early tournament that ODU was scheduled to appear in but that plans fell through very late and left ODU with little to no chance of finding replacement games? From what I understood, NSU was probably one of the very few schools left that had a workable opening.

terrible performance so far, thought this year this team would click with all these highly rated players. bad coaching

4th Quarter 2:49 min to play
Lady Monarchs 61 Norfolk St 47

J. Simms 16 points and 9 rebounds
D. Young 20 points 9 rebounds

Old Dominion plays W&M Sunday at 2pm

Final

ODU Lady Monarchs 65 Norfolk St 54

J. Simms 19 points and 14 rebounds
D. Young 20 points 10 rebounds

As Doug Ripley said it was not pretty but a win is a win!

Old Dominion plays W&M Sunday at 2pm

So many turnovers to a bad team. Shooting started out abysmal, but got better. Had a hard time rebounding for over half the game against a much smaller team. Ije is a huge piece to be missing. It could be a very long season.

I pretty much agree with that. Yes we did finish with more assists than turnovers (16 to 15) but without that third quarter where we had 6 assists to one turnover...the box score would have been a lot worse. If you are a glass if half full kind of person, you hope that this was mostly first game jitters and getting used to playing a game in front of a crowd in over two weeks. If you are glass half empty....shows we need to improve. Not just in rebounding (yes we won the battle on the boards overall but the stats are heavy favored ODU because of that third quarter) but we need to work on our defense. Too many open shots against better shooting teams that would have gone in.

There were some good things. We had four players with three assists. (Simms, Bernardeco, Munoz, and Brown) I love the whole sharing the ball concept. It's interesting to note that Munoz started over Oigbokie to start the second half. I think Oigbokie is still trying to get comfortable playing with a knee brace on. It takes players a year to recover from the surgery and then longer just to adjust to the knee base. Yeah Ajemba is a huge piece to be missing.

KB said that she wants to play as many players as possible. And everyone who dressed got playing time. It's a good way to build up players confidence for the season. I know that some people question the impact of shifting pieces have on chemistry on the floor. It's a valid point, but playing the entire bench has always been Karen's style. Karen isn't like Geno who plays five starters for almost the entire game.

Also. Last item. Anybody else notice the lack of everyone's favorite mascot at the game? It feels really odd to play at home without Big Blue.