The Mount Union women are running right into the NCAA Division III Tournament with a 26-1 record.
Ryan BakerMount Union women's basketball coach Suzy Venet was the point guard on the Mount teams that went to the Division III NCAA Tournament three times in the 1990s.
ALLIANCE, Ohio — Her face was scarlet, her teeth clenched down hard on the whistle as she stomped on the floor.
Twice.
Hard. Real hard.
Suzy Venet jerked the whistle out of her mouth and shouted: "738 turnovers!"
The Mount Union women's basketball coach was talking about LaRoche College, her team's first-round opponent in the Division III NCAA Tournament on the Purple Raiders' home court today at 7 p.m.
LaRoche forced 738 turnovers this season.
"We only had 500," she said in a voice of doom.
Venet didn't care that her team is on a 20-game winning streak, or that it's ranked No. 6 in the D3 women's poll with a 26-1 record.
"If we play like this, we'll get embarrassed on our own floor," she warned.
Venet demanded that her team play smarter, and be more careful with the ball. Turn up the energy.
Not easy.
That's because the Mount Union women play like a bunch of third-graders just let out of school for the first day of summer vacation. They would need a triple dose of Valium to simply dial their pace down to frantic.
Ryan BakerPoint guard Rosa LaMattina. As senior Amanda Rose asks prospective Purple Raider recruits, "Do you like to run?"
They all say they do.
"I mean, do you really like to run?" asks Rose. "Because all we do is run."
Don't think so?
When Venet blows a whistle for a break in practice, the players sprint to the cart that holds their water bottles.
"You gotta come see them play," said Larry Kehres, the Mount Union football coach and athletic director. "They never stop. They play a lot like Suzy did."
Then Kehres and Mount Union sports information director Lenny Reich began telling the story of Venet being in the hospital last year when the NCAA pairings were coming out. She was preparing to give birth to her son, Martin, who was seven weeks premature.
"Right before the doctors took her into the operating room, she texted me about the pairings," said Reich. "A week later, she was back coaching."
"That's Suzy," laughed Kehres. "She's very tough."
The Legend of Suzy
Venet is a Mount Union women's basketball legend. She was the point guard on the Mount teams that went to the Division III NCAA Tournament three times in the 1990s. She is the school's all-time assist leader, fourth all-time scorer and probably the school's unofficial all-time leader in floor burns.
"She never talks about her career," said Rose. "There's a picture downstairs of her because she made All-American. Otherwise, we'd never know she was that good."
"Each team belongs to the players," said Venet. "It doesn't matter what I did when I played here -- they can make their own history."
Today
What: Mount Union vs. LaRoche College, first round, Division III NCAA women's basketball tournament.
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Alliance, Ohio.
Venet is much like her own coach, Dee Knoblauch, who won three Ohio Athletic Conference titles with Venet in the late 1990s. Her teams lost in the 1996 Division III title game and made the Final Four in 1998.
When Mount Union's women's program lost its way with a 9-42 record from 2003 to '05, Kehres went shopping for a new coach. He thought of Venet, who had been an assistant at Bowling Green and Minnesota State before taking over as head coach at Manchester in Indiana.
She almost ran 250 miles from that Division III school to revive her alma mater. When she arrived, there were only 13 players and a sense of failure hanging over the program.
Venet's husband, Bruce, is a physical education professor at the school. They have two children -- Martin and 2-year-old Bailee. The family lives about a mile from campus.
Venet had a vision of attacking the other team in waves of players in purple scrambling all over the court. It took a few years, but this is her third year in a row in the NCAA Tournament -- a combined 78-10 record in that span.
You certainly need a program at a Mount Union game, because 11 players usually appear on the court -- in the first half.
At Wednesday's practice, Mount had 20 players in uniform. There was little standing around, as one group of five after another pours on to the court for drills. They dress 20 for home games; some of them will play in junior varsity games.
"We didn't have a J.V. team when I got here," said Venet. "We need that to get more kids involved."
Kehres loved the idea, because his nationally ranked football team usually has at least 100 players, some playing on the junior varsity.
"This is a great environment because so many kids get to play," said point guard Rosa LaMattina. "We are very close off the court. Coach is intense, but we know she wants what's best for us. She makes us better players."
The next Suzy
A Westlake product, LaMattina "is just like Suzy," said Kehres. "Rosa is fiery. She makes big shots. She's a leader like Suzy was."
Venet agreed, adding, "She has a temper, too, just like me. She is a competitor that is beyond belief."
At Wednesday's practice when Venet stopped action to complain about the offense faltering, LaMattina took the ball and froze one defender with a quick crossover dribble, stalled another with a head fake and then swished a jumper from the foul line.
It was as if LaMattina was thinking, "You want a basket . . . well, there's a basket."
The 5-7 junior is the team's leading scorer (15.2) while shooting 51 percent from the field, 41 percent from the 3-point line. She has started every game in her three years at Mount.
"I love how we play," she said. "We press all 40 minutes. We want to run the teams into a frazzle when they play us. Sometimes, we complain about how we are pushed in practice, but it pays off in games."
They scored 74.8 points a game, ranked 10th in the nation. They rank fourth in 3-point shooting and 10th in field-goal percentage in all of D3.
The big three
Venet has built a winner primarily with players from Northeast Ohio.
Kori Wiedt (North Olmsted) and LaMattina are the Co-OAC Players of the Year. Team captain and leading rebounder (5.2) Rose is from Green.
The other starters are Erin Schmidt (Walsh) and Tierney Allen (Alliance). Brittany Kilgore (Nordonia) and Megan Saunders (Lakewood) were both playing significant roles before they suffered knee injuries.
Wiedt is a 5-8 senior with a 3.5 grade-point average. Her major is biology with a minor in chemistry.
She held down an internship as a lab assistant at Sherwin Williams Co. and has loved her four years at the Alliance school.
"It has felt like home," she said. "I had a chance to go to a couple of Division II schools. But I wanted to be part of this kind of program where there are high expectations. Coach is tough on us. She's telling us how we're 'gonna get smoked' if we don't play better. But she gives us a lot of accolades and praise, too."
Wiedt, LaMattina and Rose are called "The Big Three" by Venet -- not only for what they have accomplished as players, but Venet appreciates also what they have accomplished as students.
LaMattina has a 3.45 GPA in graphic design, and Rose is an All-OAC academic team selection with a business major. She is set to do an internship at Timken.
"Those girls have taken our program to another level and put us on the [D-3] map," said Venet.
And so has their coach.
To reach Terry Pluto: terrypluto2003@yahoo.com; 216-999-4674