Superhero guards help Wright State fight off N. Kentucky
Anxiety drops for many, study suggests.
They took a basketball game and turned it into a comic book caper.
“They’re Batman and Robin,” said Wright State coach Katrina Merriweather. “Sometimes one is Batman, sometimes it’s the other. It kind of depends how the game goes. But together, they’re Batman and Robin.”
And Thursday night at the Nutter Center one did wear a mask and the other had “the kitchen sink” thrown at her, and in true Batman fashion — POW! ...BAP!!... ZOK!!! — it didn’t slow her down in the least.
If it sounds like the stuff of superheroes, well, that’s the way Wright State guards Angel Baker and Michal Miller played it in the second half against Northern Kentucky.
Baker had 29 points, 13 in the third quarter alone.
Miller, playing just 25 minutes because of chronic foot problems, had 16 points, seven in the fourth quarter.
Their combined 45 points were the reason the Raiders pushed aside NKU, 79-69.
“I can’t remember the last time we gave up 79 points,” said Norse coach Camryn Whitaker, who previously spent three years as a University of Dayton assistant and recruited some of the Flyers’ best players.
Her NKU team this year had prided itself on defense.
“We’re a pretty good defensive team,” she said. “We came in here second in the league defensively in points allowed.”
The Norse were holding rivals to 57.3 points per game. Only two teams all season — then-No. 2 Louisville and league-leading IUPUI — had scored more than 73 points on them.
“Wright State has weapons at every position and especially those two guards,” Whitaker said. “Miller didn’t play the first time at our place — she was out with an injury — but she’s a great player.
“And Angel Baker now has had 29 on us both games this season. We threw the kitchen sink at her tonight, but there wasn’t a whole lot we could do. When she gets going, it’s hard to stop her.”
Merriweather agreed: “When the two of them are on like they were today, there’s no better backcourt in the league.”
Baker is averaging 17.5 points per game, thirdbest in the Horizon League. Miller — who also wears a plastic mask to protect her twice-broken, surgically-repaired nose — is tied for sixth at 12.2.
“It’s very rare though where both are playing really well at the same time,” Merriweather said. “Michal’s had to fight through her injuries and Angel sometimes plays too fast.”
But when they’ve both donned the superhero capes at the same time — they combined for 45 points in the victory over SMU and 44 in a win at Green Bay — they have been almost unstoppable.
“They’re as good as any guard combination in the league,” Whitaker said. “They’re a handful.”
Court connection
“They’re two very, very different people and there’s that age difference, too,” Merriweather said. “Michal is a fifth-year senior. She’s 22. Angel’s a 19-year-old sophomore. They’re both social, but differently. They like different things.
“But they’re connected when and where it matters. That’s on the court. Their chemistry is really, really good out there. In practice they’re high-fiving each other, lifting each other. They’re each other’s biggest fans.”
One thing that bonds them is that neither has had an easy road to college success.
Baker came out of Pike High School in Indianapolis. Her involvement in an on-court scuffle her sophomore season made some schools back away. But Merriweather saw her for whom she really was, stuck with her and landed a gem.
Last season — as the first person off the bench for a veteran team that won a school-record 27 games and made the NCAA Tournament — Baker was named to the Horizon League’s all-freshman team.
Miller, whose twin brother plays professionally in the Netherlands, is one of 13 kids. She left Michigan City, Indiana for the University of Arizona.
Limited playing time and a coaching change sent her to a Texas community college and then to WSU, where she co-led the team in scoring last season even though she was, as Merriweather put it, “a medical emergency waiting to happen.”
She’s worn a facemask both seasons here and in between she had surgery on her damaged septum.
Her old mask, with smaller eye holes and darker plastic, actually aided her shooting, she said: “I couldn’t see anything but the rim with it on.”
There’s been no upside to her chronic and painful foot problems. She’s often worn a walking boot around campus to protect her left foot and she has acupuncture treatments at least twice a week. And her practice and game time are limited to try to stave off more chances of injury.
Merriweather said Miller’s compensations for her foot problems have led to other issues going right up her legs, from her Achilles to her hamstrings and hips.
“I just have a tremendous amount of respect for her and how she handles what she’s asked to do,” Merriweather said. “She is one of the toughest kids I know.
“No one has any idea of all the maintenance she does just to be able to practice. What gets her is all the up and down the court. That’s why I take her out at the 7:30 mark of every quarter, just to give her some reps off before she goes back in.
“She does all this because she loves the game.”
‘We’re not done yet’
When the third quarter ended, all the WSU players but one huddled around the coaches in front of the bench for final instructions.
But Miller sat on the cement floor just beyond the court, her legs stretched out in front of her. Her plastic mask lay beside her as she bent forward and grabbed the toes of her shoes and pulled toward her.
“The doctor, the trainers and the coaches, we all agree that sometimes it’s better for me to try to stretch so I don’t get stiff,” she said. “If I just sit there, my legs tighten up. I’m just trying to take care of my body as much as I can.”
That plan paid off with six minutes left in the quarter.
Miller got a defensive rebound and — for the second time that night — drove the length of the court through the Norse and finished with a layup.
A year ago she was snubbed when it came to the league’s postseason honors. She emphasized the voters’ error in the Horizon League Tournament when she lifted the Raiders to the title and the NCAA Tournament bid while being named tournament MVP.
When the Raiders met Texas A&M in the NCAA Tournament, Baker was the star even though her team lost. She went toe to toe with the Aggies, finished as WSU’s top scorer and made ESPN’s SportsCenter with a no-look, behind–theback pass from the wing that froze A&M’s stunned defenders and allowed Teneshia Dixon to make a layup.
With two games left in the regular season, the Raiders are 16-11 overall and second in the league at 11-5.
“We had ups and downs this season, but we’ve built from those losses and I feel we’ve got what it takes to make another run,” Baker said. “We’re not done yet.”
Meanwhile, as Whitaker was getting ready to leave the Nutter Center, she spotted Jayla Scaife — the standout of the Dayton Flyers women’s team, who has 1,373 points and 588 rebounds in her career — waiting to talk to her down by the Norse bench.
“She’s the last recruit I have left at UD,” Whitaker said. “I started recruiting her in eighth grade.”
Before joining Scaife, she gave one last assessment of two other hoops stars in the building.
Rather than offering a Batman and Robin distinction, she gave the Dynamic Duo equal billing:
“Angel Baker is a stud. And Miller is a stud.
“They both can shoot from the outside and both can get into the paint and drop it to their bigs. They can hurt you a lot of ways.”
POW!...BAP!!...ZOK!!!
If work has you stressed out, there may be a simple solution to reducing it — by staring at a plant.
Researchers in Japan conducted a study of electric company workers and found there were changes in the stress felt pre- and post-plant-staring.
“At present, not so many people fully understand and utilize the benefit of stress recovery brought by plants in the workplace,” lead author Dr. Masahiro Toyoda of the University of Hyogoin said a press release. “To ameliorate such situations, we decided it essential to verify and provide scientific evidence for the stress restorative effect by nearby plants in a real office setting.”
The study was conducted in two phases. One was a control period sans plants and the other was an intervention period when the participants were able to view and look after a small plant. Researchers measured psychological stress in participants through the State– Trait Anxiety Inventory, which is a commonly used measure of anxiety arising from adverse situations and personality.
There was a definitive ratio of participants who had a significantly lowered pulse rate after three-minute rest while interacting with their plant. The participants chose from six plants, including foliage plants, cactus and bonsai plants, to keep at their desks next to a PC monitor.
Researchers discovered that people who reported high anxiety levels before looking at a plant slightly lowered their scores after doing so, CNN reported. An additional 27% of employees had a significant drop in their resting heart rates.
The study, published by the American Society for Horticultural Science, confirmed the effect of gazing onto plants for a few moments and actively caring for it when an employee felt tired.
“It’s something we inherently knew, but has suddenly been quantified. And so now, we’re seeing the numbers behind the reasoning,” Dr. Charles Hall told CNN. Hall is the Ellison chair of international floriculture at Texas A&M University.
Still, looking at and taking care of plants didn’t reduce anxiety in everyone.
Some saw their pulse rate and anxiety increase while others witnessed no significant change.
“I think the anxiety among those in the study where their anxiety increased, it was because of that particular phenomenon that all of a sudden they’re responsible for taking care of a plant and then all of a sudden the plant’s not doing well and they have some anxieties from that,” Hall said.