When asked whether she thinks the Nebraska women’s basketball team has a wealth of sharp-shooting guards, Dominique Kelley thought back to her summer project of hitting 10,000 baskets.

“Jump shots, three-pointers, not like layups,” the freshman guard from Lincoln Northeast noted.

OK, so that task wasn’t completed overnight. No big deal, then, if the Huskers have a couple of early season games where they can’t hit the Pacific Ocean from a Hawaiian  beach.

That happened to NU last weekend, when they lost to Marist and Utah in the Oahu Classic before downing Akron to improve to 4-2 entering tonight’s home game against Creighton.

In the first two games in Hawaii, Nebraska was a combined 44-for-115 from the field (38.3 percent), including just 5-for-38 from three-point range. Despite those struggles, the Huskers are shooting a respectable 47.1 percent overall this season.

“I have very high expectations, but it’s definitely a process,” Kelley said in regard to NU becoming a consistently strong perimeter-shooting team. “Our guards are young. I’m starting as a freshman and Vonnie (Turner), she played last year as a freshman but starting is new to her, too.

“Right now, Coach (Connie Yori)  has been constantly telling us our posts are going to get doubled this year, so right now I think it’s just kind of lack of confidence. She’s been telling us every day, ‘We believe that you guys can step up and hit those shots,’ but you have to have the confidence in yourselves.”

Kelley (16-for-32) and Kala Kuhlmann (12-for-24) are the only two guards shooting 50 percent. The other four are shooting 43.2, 37.1, 36.0 and 33.3 percent.

For now, Yori seems unconcerned.

Basing her expectations partly on how many three-pointers she’d like her team to take — currently that’s a little more than once every five shots — Yori has set 45 percent as the accuracy mark the Huskers should be able to hit.

“We have kids who can make shots,” she said.

Indeed, Nebraska, which has four new starters, scored at least 80 points in each of its first three games. And the last time out, it fell  just five points short.

So, while Yori might not have been pleased with what happened in between, some of the missed shots could be attributed to facing better defenses. Marist, which returned the bulk of last year’s team that won two games in the NCAA Tournament, went 3-0 in Hawaii to improve to 6-1 (the loss coming to defending Big Ten champion Ohio State). And besides Marist, Utah’s only other loss was a double-overtime decision to No. 5 Stanford.

“It’s hard (to have an off shooting night), because we’re a team that is very competitive,” Kelley said. “It isn’t like we kind of jack around in practice, so, honestly, it was a little hard playing Utah the next day after we had lost to Marist and we had fought so hard.

“But the season’s long and …”

If she and a lot of her teammates can make 10,000 shots in a summer, then there’s no reason why the Nebraska guards can’t wear out the nets regularly on game night.

“I think for our team to be successful,” Kelley said, “our guards are going to have to be a lot more offensively aggressive-minded.”

Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.