One of Kaci Bailey’s first challenges as the new Drury Lady Panthers basketball coach was to make Reese Schaaf believe that she could be the best player in the Great Lakes Valley Conference.
It wasn’t an easy task. Schaaf is a reluctant star, not comfortable with drawing attention to herself.
“I told her at the beginning of the season, before we even started, that she should be able to put her name in the hat for conference Player of the Year,” Bailey said. “I think she kind of looked at me like, ‘Really? Are you crazy?’
“But I believed that and I think that now she probably believes that, too.”
Schaaf, a 5-foot-9 sophomore from El Dorado Springs, still prefers to shy from the spotlight, but she’s clearly become the go-to player Bailey needed as the Lady Panthers have positioned themselves for another deep March run.
Drury (21-5 overall and second in the GLVC with a 16-4 record) closes out its regular season schedule with games at 5:45 p.m. Feb. 29 against Upper Iowa and 1 p.m. March 2 when Truman State visits O’Reilly Family Event Center.
No sophomore slump for the GLVC Freshman of the Year
With its 13-game winning streak broken in its last outing, Feb. 24 at Maryville, Drury is eager to build momentum for next week’s GLVC Tournament at Lindenwood University in St. Charles. There’s a pretty good chance that Schaaf will be playing a major role, just as she has all season.
Schaaf is averaging 17.2 points and 9.2 rebounds, and shooting a league-best 59.9% from the field. She has 15 point-rebound double-doubles, which is the sixth most in NCAA Division II.
“It is what Coach Bailey said, it is a confidence thing,” Schaaf said of her dynamic season. “From the beginning of the season, I was doing some stuff well, but it’s just grown since then. It’s just being more confident in myself and knowing my role.”
Though she was named GLVC Freshman of the Year, Schaaf and the Lady Panthers had to adjust to a new coaching staff as Bailey replaced Amy Eagan, who moved to Division I Lindenwood. Schaaf averaged 7.6 points as a freshman and was comfortable in a supporting role while playing 17.7 minutes per game.
This season, she averages just over 30 minutes and is the first scoring option on one of the country’s top offensive teams.
“It’s something that I had to grow into,” Schaaf said of her expanded importance to the team. “I wasn’t expecting to be the go-to player.”
Coaches believed Schaaf could become a star. She needed to believe it herself
Bailey said she and her staff constantly told Schaaf that she was good enough to be a star, but Schaaf had to start believing that herself before it could become reality. One of the ways to help make that happen was running set plays for Schaaf to score, either on the first or second possession, of every game.
“It was just her taking the ownership of a new role,” Bailey said. “As a freshman, she kind of played backup minutes and her role was different. She wasn’t the go-to player and she’s had to put us on her back some this year, and she has been the go-to player and she is the focal point of other people’s scouting reports.
“As a sophomore, to have to take on that responsibility is big. Trying to navigate that emotionally and physically, having to take care of your body and doing that for 30 games night in and night out, it is a lot. But her confidence, her mindset … you can tell when she goes to a different mindset and a different zone, she is a completely different player.”
Schaaf said it wasn’t easy to hear over and over about her talents, but she had no real choice in the matter. Coaches and teammates reinforced that notion until she began to accept it and realize that she was needed to be a team leader.
But she draws the line when all-conference accolades or even player of the year candidacy is attached to her.
“I really don’t like to think about that stuff,” Schaaf said. “It’s just about the team. I have no interest in it. It’s just about my team and winning. That’s the big mindset.”
Lady Panthers work their way back into national rankings
While Schaaf has led the way, the entire Lady Panthers team also has grown since the start of the season. A three-game losing streak in the middle — something that hadn’t happened to the program in nearly a decade — dropped Drury out of the national rankings.
The adversity seemed to serve the team well, as the 13-game winning streak followed. The Lady Panthers are back in the DII rankings, at No. 24 this week.
“There’s no doubt we’ve had some bumps in the road,” Bailey said. “I’m a big believer that things happen for a reason. If we didn’t have some of those lessons early, I don't think that we would be where we are. I think we needed those hard lessons and figured out what we were made of.”
Graduate transfer Beth Matas Martin is averaging 15.5 points and junior Caitlynn Daniels is averaging 14. Combined with Schaaf, that’s 46.7 of Drury’s 80.9-point average, which ranks No. 7 nationally in DII.
“We found our stride a little bit offensively,” Bailey said, noting one of the biggest improvements from early in the season. “That’s what has kind of won us some ball games, but down the stretch, we have to be able to defend. We’re not always going to shoot the ball well.
“At Maryville we go 2-for-22 from the 3-point line, so we didn’t shoot the ball well. That’s when you have to be able to buckle down on defense and I don’t feel like we did that, therefore we ended up losing.”
Confidence will be key down the stretch
Just as with Schaaf individually, Bailey said this time of the season is when confidence is a key factor for teams that wind up playing deep into March. Drury has cultivated that confidence over the last couple of months after some of those midseason bumps.
“It’s a different mindset, just having confidence in ourselves,” Bailey said. “Truly believing we are capable, we have talent, we are good. We just have to put it all together. I think our big thing early was inconsistency and we figured out how to be a little more consistent.
“We have grown a lot as a team and we are playing with a lot more confidence.”
Drury concludes home season
Drury Lady Panthers (21-5, 16-4): vs. Upper Iowa (13-11, 10-10), 5:45 p.m. Feb. 29; vs. Truman State (7-19, 4-16), 1 p.m. March 2
Drury Panthers (14-12, 7-11): vs. Upper Iowa (18-8, 13-5), 7:45 p.m. Feb. 29; vs. Truman State (14-12, 11-7), 3 p.m. March 2
