Coach Chinn capable of turning program around

Giancarlo Navas/ Staff Writer

Piled upon a mountain of bad losses and a hopeless season is some small, small hope for the FIU women’s basketball team. The hope of player improvement lies under the direction of first year head coach Marlin Chinn.

More than X’s and O’s, I think the value in a coaching staff is helping young players improve. In the NBA the San Antonio Spurs are renown for their growth of young players. From David Robinson to Tim Duncan and then to players who didn’t enter the NBA with high expectations like Tony Parker or Manu Ginobili. All the aforementioned players are probably going to be Hall of Fame players by any reasonable measure.

While FIU doesn’t have a Tim Duncan or a Tony Parker, they do have Kristian Hudson and a Tianah Alvarado. While admittedly not the same, it’s all we have.

Those are two big pieces moving forward if you are FIU Women’s basketball, and what is most promising is how much better they can get. Let’s take a look at senior Taylor Shade’s improvement under coach Chinn.

Most notable are Shade’s improvements from an efficiency standpoint. Shade is shooting 38 percent from three, which is terrific, as well 42 percent from the field. Considering she has taken 94 threes this season (almost half her total field goal attempts), her scoring is incredibly efficient.   Because 3-pointers are more difficult that that any other shot and are worth more points they should be looked at as such. So despite Shade only shooting 42 percent from the field, it’s okay because almost half of them are 3 pointers which she is shooting at a 38 percent clips.

Shade is scoring more points on fewer shots than her opponents, despite having a low field goal percentage. Shade has improved each year she has been at FIU, but it’s been most notable in her senior campaign next to Chinn.

In her junior season, Shade scored 339 points and needed 314 field goals to do so. This season, she has 345 points on 272 field goals. She has scored more points with 42 fewer shots, not to mention 71 fewer minutes and five fewer games. Her strides as a shooter and scorer are encouraging to the future of FIU women’s basketball.

Going back to the prospect of Alvarado and Hudson, if Chinn can have them make a similar jump that Shade made in terms of shooting efficiency, then this team coupled with players that Chinn recruits could be on the road to rebuilding a program that could have been left for dead. A 4-21 record will do that to you, and the 3-26 record from the season before is somehow worse.

While FIU women’s basketball hasn’t been a flagship program for the NCAA, it has been a rather good one. Under former head coach Cindy Russo, FIU had a 22 consecutive win season and it is the home of the fifth all time leading scorer in NCAA history, Jerica Coley.

So while the program hasn’t been UConn or Baylor in terms of championship success, they have been a team that has competed and posted results. It’s on Chinn to bring the program back up.