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If the shoe fits ...

Posted January 17, 2007

They’re not exactly glass slippers, but they fit just as fine.

Freshman forward Aija Putnina has been wearing men’s basketball shoes since the team returned from its holiday break on Dec. 26.

Putnina changed shoes after suffering from a stress reaction on her left foot in December. The injury took her out of the Dec. 7 Cal State-Fullerton game and forced her to miss two more games.

Actually, it’s not technically correct to say she changed to men’s shoes.

“I’ve never had women’s shoes,” Putnina said on Monday, her birthday. “My feet aren’t used to them.”

But she was wearing women’s shoes to start the season.

Too uncomfortable for her, she asked the coaching staff if she could switch back to men’s shoes. CU coach Kathy McConnell-Miller asked men’s coach Ricardo Patton for a pair of men’s shoes, and he obliged.

“It just feels better,” Putnina said. “Women’s shoes are a little bit heavier, for me.”

Putnina is coming off her best game of the Big 12 season.

She hadn’t played well until Saturday’s 68-49 loss at Texas, in which she was the primary defender on standout forward Tiffany Jackson. The Texas senior missed her first 14 shots before finishing with 16 points. Putnina added nine rebounds.

“For the first two games I was kind of scared because it’s the Big 12 and I was like, ‘Wow,’” Putnina said. “But with Texas, I was more comfortable and more confident. I told myself that I had to step it up.”

Putnina played some of her best basketball this season when she started five games in place of then-injured center Kara Richards.

But Putnina hadn’t been the same since the injury, until Saturday.

“It’s an adjustment coming off the bench and she has to make it because the combination of Kara and Jackie (McFarland) is really effective for us right now,” McConnell-Miller said. “She has to handle coming off the bench.”