Deft Darling lifts lady cagers

A rolling basketball is about as tough to corral as a raging bull injected with testosterone.

But chances are Lady Lion forward Angie Potthoff didn't have bulls on her mind while she was chasing down the basketball rolling at her feet early in the second half of Penn State's 82-73 win Friday against Michigan.

After all, Potthoff had Helen Darling sprinting ahead on her right, and only one Wolverine defender, Tiffany Willard, stood between her and the basket. Potthoff scooped up the ball and shuffled it from her shoestrings to the eagerly awaiting hands of Darling.

Willard had positioned herself in front of the freshman point guard, but Darling would not be stopped on this trip to the basket. She took flight and scissor-kicked her legs while twisting her torso to elude Willard and threw up an off-balanced shot that banked off the glass and in.

Darling ignited the crowd with her acrobatic shot and helped lead the Lady Lions to victory with 10 points, 13 assists and nine rebounds.

"I think nine rebounds for a point guard is pretty impressive," Penn State coach Rene Portland said.

Darling was a little more modest.

"I think it was pretty solid," she said.

Darling is so laid back because nine rebounds is nothing for the Columbus, Ohio, native to get excited about. She has been posting numbers uncharacteristic of a freshman point guard all season.

First and foremost, Darling has only turned the ball over 100 times in 23 games, an average of 4.5 per game. In Penn State's first 12 games, the Lady Lions averaged 24 turnovers per game. Since then there has been a complete turnaround. In their last seven games, the Lady Lions are averaging slightly over 16 turnovers a game. That in part has been due to Darling's maturation.

Darling is shooting 73.5 (72-of-98) percent from the free-throw line, above the team's overall 70 percent average. She is averaging more than four rebounds a game and leads the team in assists (96) and steals (40).

The parallels are obvious. As Darling succeeds, so does her team.

When she took home Big Ten Player of the Week honors for the week ending Jan. 26, Darling had scored 19 points against Ohio State and 14 (along with five steals) against Minnesota.

But the week before had been a different story. On Jan. 17 against Illinois in the Bryce Jordan Center, Darling scored four points and turned the ball over seven times. Penn State lost, 85-74. Two days later in West Lafayette, Ind., Darling scored only two points and turned the ball over four times. The Lady Lions fell, 64-49, to Purdue.

Before Penn State's game Sunday against Indiana, Potthoff pulled Darling aside.

"I pulled Helen aside and said, 'I'm gonna play hard every game,' " Potthoff said. " 'All you have to do is do the same thing.' "

To make a late run in the Big Ten, the Lady Lions will need Darling to take that lesson to heart as well as she did this weekend. She needs to consistently score. Penn State will need her to hand out assists and protect the ball night in and night out. The Lady Lions will need her to defend.

And some more gravity-defying, scissor-kick layups could also help.