{"id":10011,"date":"2011-12-06T13:07:18","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T18:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=10011"},"modified":"2011-12-20T12:18:04","modified_gmt":"2011-12-20T17:18:04","slug":"royals-smokin-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2011\/royals-smokin-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals Smokin’ So Far"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Daily News Record, Dec. 6, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

Kevin Griffin said he\u2019s been asked why his two leading scor\u00aders \u2014 Bianca Ygarza and Raiven Patter\u00adson \u2014 don\u2019t start, but the Eastern Men\u00adnonite University women\u2019s basketball coach just shrugs it off.<\/p>\n

The seventh-year coach admits it\u2019s an unusual arrangement, but after opening the season 6-0 overall and 4-0 in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference, he\u2019s not going to mess with something that works, regardless of how unconventional it may be.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just what has worked, and I was\u00adn\u2019t going to change it after the start we had,\u201d said Griffin, who picked up his 100th career win Saturday against Hollins but paid for it when his players soaked him with a guerilla cooler-dunking in the locker room afterward.<\/p>\n

EMU and its uptempo, run-oriented offense leads the ODAC in points per game at 80.7, more than six ahead of secondbest Virginia Wesleyan, which averages 74.2.<\/p>\n

NCAA national rankings were not updated on the organization\u2019s website Monday, but if the Royals had averaged 80.7 points per game last season, they would have ranked third out of 424 D-III teams. And, again, they\u2019re doing this while starting games with their two best scorers on the bench.<\/p>\n

Griffin \u2014 whose substitutions are more like line changes, as he rotates about 10 players \u2014 said it has to do with keeping the right personnel combinations on the floor: mixing youth and age, experience and inexperience, quiet and vocal.<\/p>\n

Apparently, the players don\u2019t mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you start, that\u2019s your chance to get everyone excited,\u201d said Patterson, a 5foot-8 freshman forward. \u201cBut when you come off the bench, that\u2019s your chance to just observe everything, and it\u2019s kind of easier because you can make up for what other people\u2019s mistakes were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patterson, despite being a reserve, is second on the team in points, averaging 11.2. She\u2019s also shooting 52.8 percent (28of-53) from the floor and averaging 5.8 rebounds.<\/p>\n

Ygarza, a 5-8 sophomore guard and Patterson\u2019s fellow sub, leads the Royals in scoring, averaging 14.0 points per game while shooting a white-hot 65.9 percent (27-of-41) from the field. She\u2019s also grabbing 8.2 rebounds and making 88.2 percent (30-of-34) of her free throws.<\/p>\n

As a team, EMU is shooting 44.7 percent (178-of-398) from the floor \u2014 tops in the ODAC.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do have tons of speed, but it\u2019s not like we\u2019re blowing teams out because we\u2019re just fast break after fast break after fast break,\u201d said 5-10 sophomore forward Kala Yoders, the 2011 ODAC Rookie of the Year. \u201cI feel like we have the potential to do that, but I feel like we wear teams out in the second half because we do have such depth and other teams only have their six or seven people, and we just keep going at them.\u201d<\/p>\n

But EMU isn\u2019t just about out-scoring the other team. It has the best defense in the ODAC, limiting opponents to just 52.7 points per game. The Royals also lead the conference in steals, averaging 15.7 per game. Those, they turn into instant offense in their fast-break happy, all-run style.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a mindset,\u201d Ygarza said. \u201cYou\u2019re on defense, and coaches talk about this to us. \u2018You need to get frustrated when a girl scores on you. That should make you [mad].\u2019 The girls, we keep talking about this and stuff. Play with your heads, play your hardest and don\u2019t worry about where the points come from how many points you get.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, it helps when you\u2019re winning.<\/p>\n

The Royals have even knocked off defending ODAC champ Randolph-Macon, winner of six of the last nine titles. In that game, an 85-78 victory on Nov. 22, Patterson had 18 points and Ygarza had 15. And they did it, surprise, coming off the bench. \u201cThey\u2019re comfortable with it,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cWe\u2019ve talked to them about it; we\u2019ve talked to the other kids about it. I\u2019m not one that usually tries to fool with that a whole lot. Let\u2019s leave it as is.\u201d<\/p>\n

People might even stop asking questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Daily News Record, Dec. 6, 2011 Kevin Griffin said he\u2019s been asked why his two leading scor\u00aders \u2014 Bianca Ygarza and Raiven Patter\u00adson \u2014 don\u2019t start, but the Eastern ... read more about Royals Smokin’ So Far<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":10013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4516,5173],"tags":[13934,8366,11672,14022],"feature":[],"class_list":["post-10011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-womens-basketball","tag-bianca-ygarza","tag-kevin-griffin","tag-odac","tag-raiven-patterson"],"yoast_head":"\nRoyals Smokin' So Far - EMU News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2011\/royals-smokin-so-far\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Royals Smokin' So Far - 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