![]() ![]() She's scored 20 or more five times, including a 31-point showing against Syracuse. Petree again is a scoring dynamo, hitting double figures in all but two games. It was an instant bond last summer between the two incoming transfers, Petree from Detroit coming from a school on the east coast and Harper a native of Hartland, Wisconsin, coming from the west coast, meeting in the Midwest. "I feel honored she found me at a random school in California." "That is really what kind of drew me to coming here. "I could tell right away, right when we started talking that she wanted me here and she was trying to build something special," Harper said of her initial introduction to Gearlds. Harper had just one Division I offer coming out of high school and she's miffed how Gearlds found her at a small school in California.Īt Cal Baptist, Harper had accomplished just about all she could and also had already obtained her undergraduate degree, but still had two years of college basketball eligibility remaining. ![]() "She studied my game and told me about myself in ways where I was like, yeah, I guess that is me. "I appreciate that she saw my game even through how I was playing at Rutgers," Petree said. Still, she had 1,655 points and four years of experience and Gearlds saw that translating well into Purdue's transition offense. Her numbers took a dip in her one season at Rutgers, averaging 8.3 points for the Scarlet Knights. Petree was a dominant scorer in the Missouri Valley Conference for three seasons with the Bradley Braves. Through 16 games, with Purdue sitting at 11-5, Petree (16.9 points per game) and Harper (11.5) are the team's top two scorers. "It helps when you have a group like we do in our locker room trusting us and whoever we bring in it's for the right reason." "We did our homework and made sure we found out all the answers that we needed to know Lasha and Caitlyn and who they were on the court and off the court," Gearlds said. She identified two: Lasha Petree, a fifth-year guard who spent three seasons at Bradley before playing last year at Rutgers, and Caitlyn Harper, a 6-foot-2 forward who was the Western Athletic Conference Player of the Year last season and the 2021 WAC tournament MVP from Cal Baptist. Gearlds scoured the transfer portal, studying the players available to see who she thought was a good fit. WEST LAFAYETTE − Last season, Katie Gearlds inherited the roster she had.Īfter going 17-15 and reaching the second round of the WNIT, Gearlds knew she was off to a good start as head coach of the Purdue women's basketball team.īut the 2022-23 version would need added veterans to move forward. ![]()
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