Men’s, women’s basketball off to strong start
STORY BY NICK SCHWADA
STAFF WRITER
Photos by Jonathan Villagomez
The Clackamas Cougars basketball
teams are good — really good. Both
the men’ s and women’ s team tore
through the preseason, with the
men finishing 11-1 and the women
l o - i through that stretch. The
Cougars’ preseason success has
carried over to their conference
games as the men’ s team is now
5-0 and the women’s team is 4-1.
For the men’ s team, you can
certainly look at their offense as
a staple for their early success.
They are leading their conference
in scoring at 98.0 points per game.
When looking at this team, it’ s
impossible to overlook their star
second-year guard, Robert Ford.
Ford has been spectacular to start
the season, leading all players in the
Northwest Athletic Conference in
steals, assists and rebounds per game.,
When asking head coach Clif
Wegner about their early offensive
Community College on Dec. 29.
Clackamas Print
success, Wegner said, “ Well, we
have a great point guard, you know,
[Robert Ford] is sensational. He’s a
special player. He makes everybody
else better because he creates
opportunities for people to get easy
shots without much work, other than
catching and finishing the shot.”
Through their 5-0 start in league
play, Ford has averaged an efficient 26
points, 12.8 rebounds and 10.4 assists,
while also, contributing four steals
per game. His efforts have not gone
unnoticed as Ford was just awarded
his second NWAC Player of the
Week award for his outstanding play
during the team’s undefeated start.
“ He makes us a lot better
offensively, and when we move
the ball and when we_ execute
and play together and realize our
post up opportunities we’re really
tough to guard,” Wegner said.
It seems that the team’s offense
will only continue to progress.
“ Offensive execution with
our program tends" to improve
throughout the season because
we’re noflike a lot of teams that
. run a kind „ of simple motion
offense,” Wegner said. “ We
have a lot of set plays and stuff,
and a lpt of times we’re still
refining, we’re still tweaking,
or still changing the set plays
run by the end of the season
so that’s one things that I feel
like our growth offensively
tends to keep improving as the
season goes on, whereas a lot
of teams just kind of plateau.”
For the women’s team,
however,
offense
has
been more of a struggle.
“We gotta get a little better
offensively,”; said women’ s
head coach Jim Martineau.
“ Offensively,
we
haven’t
quite clicked like we thought
1 we had. . I think when we
| looked at the preseason we
I thought we were going to
I be really good offensively,
j maybe struggle defensively
but it’s been the reverse.”
v,xxxxC the
exxc offense
UUCU5C 1W
BrookeBu Ilock is averaging 2 0 points,
While
has b no
not I
quite been dialed in, the defense 12 rebounds and four assists leading the
verv Cou9s to a 4-1 start to conference play.
of this ball club has been very
impressive. Through their 4-1 start .
to the season, the Cougars have held got great hands and kind of sets the
teams to an average of 67 points tone. We’re not super big, you know,
per game and are forcing teams so our guards get after it pretty well,
to cough up 17 turnovers a night. and we try to make people shoot
The anchor of this tough Cougar tough shots and try to get them only
defense has been freshman star one shot,” Martineau said: “ We’ve
Brooke Bullock. This season, Bullock done a pretty good job buying into
has averaged 20 points, 12 rebounds, the defensive stuff, and I think for
four assists and has chipped in us, if we can get a few steals and
four steals a night. This two-way run it helps us with our offense.”
The Cougars will look to continue
play has landed her two NWAC
Player of the Week awards and has their hot start as they face Clark
been key to the team’s success. College on Wednesday, January 22
“ Having Bullock up top out in at CCC. The women play at 5:30
our press helps a bunch — she’s p.m. and the men play at 7:30 p.m.
th e c la c k a m a s p rin t.c o m
-r, January 22, 2020