University of North Carolina Athletics
Brownlow: The Future
November 13, 2009 | Women's Basketball
Nov. 13, 2009
By Lauren Brownlow
Carolina was without Italee Lucas tonight, a player who emerged through her nifty crossovers and barrage of three-pointers last season. It showed early on as College of Charleston hung around until the end of the half. But freshman Tierra Ruffin-Pratt showed why she was one of the most highly-touted freshmen in the country.
Her stat line was hardly gaudy - 13 points on 6-of-17 shooting, seven rebounds, two assists, two steals and two blocks. But Ruffin-Pratt was hampered by a shoulder brace that was altering her shots; even lay-ups were bouncing out of the basket. "(Ruffin-Pratt) doesn't usually miss shots like she was missing tonight," Coach Hatchell said. "She does a lot of good things out there and normally, those shots go in. I'm sure that won't happen again. A lot of them she missed were right around the basket, too."
After missing her first six shots, she had enough. She grabbed her own miss and stuffed it back in for two points. Twenty seconds later, she swatted a jump shot out of bounds and punctuated it with a scream.
When asked to pinpoint a moment in the game where she finally felt comfortable, though, she didn't pick that one. "Probably when I started playing harder on defense," she said. "My shots weren't going in so I started picking it up on defense." A very proud Hatchell beamed at her. "I've always been a defensive player. Scoring is just secondary. So picking it up on defense, I knew my shots weren't going in and I knew if I got steals and stops on defense, it would help my teammates get open looks and open shots."
As she struggled to get in a rhythm offensively, she did what most freshmen - heck, most college players - don't have the ability or maturity to do. She decided to step it up in other areas of her game. She began deflecting balls, getting in passing lanes and blocking shots, cutting off drives and getting the team fired up on that end of the floor.
As she was patient with her offense, it came - and quickly. But she never forced it. At the end of the first half, Ruffin-Pratt had just four points on 2-of-9 shooting but still had four rebounds, one assist, one block and one steal. In the first 3:16 of the second half, she had five points on 2-of-4 shooting and 1-of-1 from beyond the arc.
"She is a competitor and she knows, `Hey, I can make these. This is a piece of cake for me.' But that shoulder brace was probably bothering her a little bit," Hatchell said. "She's a big-time player, so I knew that either something was bothering her or that she would get it together. She still makes a lot of good things happen out there."
Four minutes later, she added a basket, a rebound and an assist, a block and a steal. At the 7:51 mark, before she was taken out for good, she had already added another basket and another rebound.
Despite her struggles, you never saw her angry - at least, not in a bad way. Her biggest reaction of the night came when she made a great pass off of a shot fake and found Laura Broomfield for the basket and the foul. "And one!" she bellowed, with a huge grin on her face. She converted an and-one of her own 30 seconds later.
This team still has a long ways to go, and so does Ruffin-Pratt. But as the team was missing its source of energy and spirit in Italee Lucas, it was able to find a different kind of spark in the freshman.
"Italee wasn't out there and she gives us some energy and a spark and probably would have had 15 points," Hatchell said. "(Ruffin-Pratt) didn't have a good game scoring but you look across the board and she played really solid. That's why she's such a great player. She's a complete player."
