PENNEY FINALLY HEATS UP; HE STRUGGLED THIS SEASON FOR UW
UNTIL HIS 21-POINT SHOWING SATURDAY.
Wisconsin State Journal
Dec 17, 2001
There comes a time when a coach stashes the Xs and dashes the Os in favor of
a time-honored strategy: humor.
It started as no laughing matter, though, for the University of Wisconsin
men's basketball team. If the Badgers (4-6) are ever going to get hot - real
hot and not just lukewarm - someone or something was going to have to light a
fire under their best outside scorer, junior Kirk Penney.
Every one of the Badgers' foes knows Penney. Furman knew that Saturday
afternoon, yet they saw Penney show signs of emerging from a season-long slump
with a season-best 21 points in UW's 68-60 victory.
"He's a guy you have to force inside the 3-point line," Furman
coach Larry Davis said. The Paladins didn't do that as Penney was 6- for-15
from outside the arc.
Opposing defenses start with Penney and work their way down UW's list.
That's no surprise. Some drooled over the notion of Penney scorching the nets
in UW's revamped offense under new coach Bo Ryan. Even Penney found himself
openly wondering about the possibilities.
All that attention meant one thing through nine games. "Kirk's not
being left wide open," Ryan said last week. "You allow an individual
to find himself. He's always been a streaky shooter. Sometimes expectations are
a killer."
There are solutions for a shooter whose point production this season has
resembled a graph of economic indicators in a recession. Take all those
post-practice shots. Check and recheck the shooting form. Practice harder on
succeeding in the low post, one of the new positions Penney finds himself in
Ryan's offensive scheme.
Then there is humor. A looser shooter is a better shooter, or so the theory
goes.
Ryan injected that into Penney's thinking Friday afternoon when he had the
team's video staff add to the team's scouting tape of Furman. On the tape,
Penney was doing the Haka, the native New Zealand dance that he performs with
his Kiwi mates prior to a game in international competition.
"The guys got a big kick out of it," Ryan recalled Saturday.
"Maybe we'll have to show the Haka before every game. ... Maybe it
loosened Kirk up."
Said Penney, "I'm sure from (my teammates') perspective it's pretty
funny."
As proud as he is of his native dance, he was not about to say it had
anything to do with his performance Saturday. "It was good to get out
there and knock some shots down. I was a lot more relaxed," said Penney,
who was 9-of-28 from the field in the prior three games, including an uncharacteristic
3-of-15 from beyond the arc.
Penney is shooting 40 percent overall (42-105) and 34.6 percent from 3-point
range (18-52). Decent, but last season he was at 44.1 percent overall and 43.2
on 3-pointers.
But if he demonstrated anything last year, it was the ability to get
incredibly hot from outside. During an eight-game stretch in Big Ten play, he
hit 28 3-pointers in 50 attempts, a remarkable 56 percent.
"He could go five or six games and shoot 60 percent, and everything
looks fine on a piece of paper," Ryan said.
On tape, too.
