23-24 Preview (from my limited view) Part One
Well – I’m back after a bit of a health kerfuffle this summer just in time for the second year of the KBW Era. Last year was a bit of a stinker at times, but it’s in the rear-view mirror now and let’s leave it that way.
Let’s Start With Management
Some personnel changes in the staff. Gone are assistant coaches Mike Geary, Jordan Alford and Lulu McKinney. We welcome Marissa Webb and a very familiar name in Cartaesha Macklin to the coaching staff.
Let’s also welcome Larry Larson as new radio voice of Saluki Women’s Basketball. Trey Reamer, we’ll miss you, buddy.
Coach On Her Summer & Early Season Workouts
After working on team building and drills with the summer crew, the full team has assembled and is setting up rotations, and defense, defense, defense. Defense was our real problem last year and listening to Coach and the players so far - defense is going to be the main focus especially on the perimeter and interior passing lanes. Coach wants to establish a “controlled chaos” approach disrupting as much of the opposition’s offensive sets as possible.
Even though we lost Ashley Jones and Promise Taylor as our primary offensive weapons, I think we have enough in returners and players coming in to keep up the scoring output we had last year. (More in the personnel section in Part Two.)
Our defense will be anchored by returning defensive stalwart, Que Love and Jaidynn Mason.
Our Schedule
This year we have the most home games in program history. Seventeen – including the exhibition. The lone exhibition game is against Greenville (IL) University on November 1st at 6pm. It appears that game will be free admittance. When I got my season tickets, that game was not in the package, I called the ticket office and was told there was no ticket required for that game.
We will have six non-conference home games starting with SEMO on November 7th. Some other highlights at home- Ivy League Cornell on 11/11. SIUE for the kids Field Trip Day on 12/6. And The Bilikens as our final home non-con on Saturday 12/9.
We will be playing an MTE at the San Juan shootout in Puerto Rico over Thanksgiving week. We are scheduled to play Charlotte, West Virginia and George Washington.
Our final non-conference game will be a doozy. We are going to Stillwater, OK to play Oklahoma State on Sunday, December 17th.
The women get a 13 day break before we welcome the always fun-to-play (sarcasm) Drake Bulldogs to open Valley play on 12/30. Looks like our streak of winning the Valley opener will end here. Good news is we only see Drake (pre-season second place) and Northern Iowa (pre-season pick to win The Valley) once this season due to the new rotation.
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO….
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
Hope all is well rabidsaluki. Hope the women's team is more fun than the men's
Thank you! It's not anything anywhere near life-threatening, but its going take a while for a not quite full recovery.
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
AND NOW – THE CONCLUSION OF….
23-24 Preview (from my limited view)
Quick Look At The Valley
Valley media and SID predictions:
- UNI
- Drake
- Illinois State
- Belmont
- Missouri State
- UIC
- Murray
- SIU
- Indiana State
- Valpo
- Evansville
- Bradley
I think this is going to be a two team race this year. IMO You can flip flop UNI and Drake. Not sure about ISU-R and Belmont being that high. Especially Belmont, considering they lost two high level players one of them being one of the best guards in the league. (Destinee Wells) I think you can throw a blanket over those 4th through 9th place teams. I think UIC and Murray are on the high side of that group should/could be lower. The Trees are my dark horse disruptor team.
WarrenNolan.com is the predictor website for women’s basketball. They aren’t fully up yet, but I expect season and conference record predictions, game predictions, early RPI and NET rankings by November 5th as the season tips off November 6th.
Dramatis Personae
What we lost not directly tied to graduation….
Obviously the NCAA didn’t grant Promise Taylor another year of eligibility. She said in a late season interview if she was getting another year she would have been back in SIU Maroon and White.
We had two portal defectors in 5-8 G Aja Holmes and 6-2 F Tamara Nard. Don’t know where either one went. Went digging but found nothing on either one.
Head scratcher on junior forward Zoe Belcher. She was here during the summer workouts, on one of the early promotional posters and seen on the team’s Facebook page up until September 15th?
Who we got…
Portal Transfer Se’Quoia Allmond (Memphis, TN) 5-5 Jr G from Loyola Marymount
Freshman Maddy Saracco 5-10 G Bollingbrook, IL
Freshman Tkiyah “TeTe” Nelson 5-10 G St. Louis
And without a doubt our most important newbie…Angela Samuel 6-2 Freshman C from Nigeria
I say that because without her we have no size. Period.
6ft Junior returnee Seairra Hughes saw limited action last year. 6.6 mpg. Those are the only two we have at 6 foot and over. We are going to be leaning heavily on those two for a post presence. When Samuel was signed, she had a good-looking highlight reel, but she is going to be going up against some crafty upper-class person bigs in Grace Boffeli (UNI – Pre-season pick for Valley POY) Grace Berg and Anna Miller (Drake) Katelyn Young (Murray) and De’Anna Wilson (ISU-R) just to name a few.
Forward Laniah Randle plays bigger than her 5-11 size and was our leading rebounder a year ago. She’s a right place at the right time player who knows her job and does it well.
Back from year-long injury is 5-11 F Adiranna Katcher. If what she showed from her freshman season during the COVID year (another right place, right time player) shows through she could be a carbon copy of Randle.
Then there’s our backcourt….
Que Love the anchor, facilitator, disruptor whatever you want to call her. The player that is going to make this engine go. She started off slow scoring last year, but once she got comfortable driving the car her scoring picked up at the end of the season and also earned All-Valley Defensive Team. Kristen Gillespie coach of ISU-R publicly said she loses sleep over Que.
Sophomore Jaidynn Mason. My favorite player on this team. She has two superpowers – Warp speed and pickpocketing. She can swipe a ball from whoever she’s guarding and before anybody, and I mean anybody - even the nearly as quick Que Love can react – the ball is going through the net on the other end via breakaway layup. She was named to the All-Freshman team last year and finished 4th in The Valley in steals behind Love. If she has developed her mid-range and outside shooting – she will be a handful.
Our scoring centerpiece – Shemera Williams. In limited time last year (only played in 18 games because of a weird transfer SNAFU) she shot 40 % and averaged 11ppg in only 21 minutes a game. She's a three-level scorer that plays through contact. I get the feeling Shemera is capable of putting up some big numbers. She scored over 3000 points in high school in Milwaukee and was a two-time ACC Freshman of the Week at her first school – Virginia.
The two Freshmen, Allmond plus returnees Tyranny Brown(5-8), Sydney Prochaska(5-11), and Paige Clubb(5-11) (who missed last year due to injury) round out our backcourt. That’s NINE guards on this team.
Expectations
I’m not expecting world-beaters from this team, but I am expecting a better record. I’d like to see a .500 or better finish. There were several games last year that we could have won and put us over .500. I’d like to see better third quarters. The 3rd quarter doomed us a lot last year. Our size and depth in the post really bothers me. Our on the ball pressure doesn’t concern me at all – that’s going to be our bread-and-butter this year.
The Valley might be a bit weak this year. We could finish anywhere from 4th to no worse than our projected 8th. I’m going to go out on a limb and say fourth or fifth.
GO DAWGS!
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
GAMEDAY 11/1
EXHIBITION
Greenville University vs SIU
Banterra Center 6pm
No media coverage
Since this is an exhibition, I’m not going to get into too much detail.
There will be free admission to this game. If you’re around – Go, it’s not going to hurt you!
The Panthers….
I guess their athletic department doesn’t think too highly of them as this game isn’t even listed on their schedule.
Greenville is a D-III school off of I-70 between St Louis and Effingham. I didn’t even know there was a school there. All I know about the town is that there is a Medium Security Federal Prison there. (You can see it from the interstate.)
They are coached by Greenville U alum Roy Mullholland. He has been their coach since 1999 and was also the Greenville high school coach.
The Panthers finished 18-8 last year and 11-3 good for 2nd place in the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
What’s Up With Us:
Well this is an exhibition, first look for all of us. We have had at least one closed door scrimmage, but coach was tight-lipped (as usual for her) about it.
DID I MENTION THAT THIS GAME HAS FREE ADMISSION!?
GO DAWGS!!!
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
WarrenNolan.com has dropped their overall and conference prediction for Valley schools.
They have us at 20-9 overall and 13-6 in Valley play.
Predicted 5th place. Hmmm sound familiar?
- Drake
- Belmont
- UNI
- Missouri St
- SIU
- Ill St
- Murray
- UIC
- Valpo
- IN ST
- Evansville
- Bradley
Yes, that doesn't add up. They are missing the January 28th game at Belmont on their schedule list.
Still think Belmont is too high and the Trees too low.
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
Halftime.
As expected....
SIU 57
Greenville 17
Randle looks like the Energizer Bunny. Our Nigerian import looks kinda raw. Allmond looks good. No Nelson(injury). Love with a gazillion steals.
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
Well didn't get to 100.
FINAL
SIU 94
Greenville 43
Initial observation...
We are going to get eaten alive down low this season.
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
Clubb was 3 of 7 from three.. we could sure use a three-point shooter and maybe she is it. Prochaska was 1 of 8 from the 3-point land. Ouch.
OPENING NIGHT!!
Game Day Tuesday 11/7
SEMO (0-0) vs SIU (0-0)
Banterra Center 6pm
Media: Streaming Audio - Varsity Sports Network or Radio STEVE FM 95.1 (Larry Larson)
Video Streaming: ESPN+ (Dominic Hoscher/Mike Trude)
SIU Athletics Game Notes:
WarrenNolan.com Prediction:
Line SIU -19
RPI – NET n/a - for both teams
SEMO/SIU Series at a glance:
This will be the 40th game in this series dating back to the 1961-62 season. We hold a 31-8 advantage with the last game, an SIU victory in Cape, in Nov of 2021.
Let’s Look At The Redhawks:
The Redhawks are coached by Rekha Patterson in her 8th season with an overall record of 117-122. This is her first head coaching job. SEMO lost six players to the transfer portal and picked up two. This is SEMO’S first live action game. They did not have an exhibition game listed on their schedule.
SEMO’s Dramatis Personae:
Looks like SEMO lost three starters to the portal or graduation. The only returning starters are 5-8 G Sophie Bussard (8.8ppg 4.2rpg) and last year’s leading scorer 5-10 G Jaliya Green (10.5ppg 3.5apg) With 6 portal losses and two portal transfers and 4 incoming freshmen there’s not a lot to go on here for player analysis.
Tale Of The Tape
First game of the season for each team - no statistics to show.
What’s Up With Us?
Not much of a sample size in the exhibition game. We did have one eye-popping stat. We forced Greenville into 44 turnovers and swiped the ball 28 times from them. We had two in double figure rebounding in Laniah Randle (10) and Angela Samuel (11) in only 15 minutes on the floor. I didn’t realize what Samuel had done on the boards, as I was paying more attention to her offense. Shame on me! Se’Quoia Allmond (the LMU transfer) impressed me with her defense as she had 7 steals and 6 assists. Adrianna Katcher and TeTe Nelson did not play. Paige Clubb was our bright spot beyond the arc hitting 3 of 7. We got a little too three happy in the second half and our third quarter play was sloppy - again. Shemera Williams was mostly missing from the game as she only played 10 minutes. Coach revealed that Williams had a surgically implanted rod somewhere (Not specified) sometime prior to coming to SIU.
I’m going to side with the prediction that we win.
It all starts on Tuesday night!
GO DAWGS!!!
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
Clubb was 3 of 7 from three.. we could sure use a three-point shooter and maybe she is it. Prochaska was 1 of 8 from the 3-point land. Ouch.
In regard to Clubb. I think that is what she was originally recruited for by Stein but wasn't utilized at all her first year. Coach said we were a bit nervy, but our 5-24 three ball shooting needs to be much better. If we're going to be shooting that much from three this season (we may be running a four-guard set a lot) we need to be hitting 7 or 8 threes a game.
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
Opening night starting five
Love
Randle
Mason
Williams
Hughes
LETS GO!!!
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
Forgot to mention this the other night...
For the first time in several years we have our names on the back of our jerseys.
No scoreboard though. Just video.
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
Halftime
ScrEaMO 41
Southern 37
It's not that we're playing bad. SEMO shot lights out. Nearly 80% in the first quarter 56% for the half.
Williams came out with 5 early then picked up her 2nd foul then had to sit for 17 minutes.
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
Gained a bit of traction in a 3rdQ that seemed to last all night thanks to whistles.
SIU 59
SEMO 53
"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." ~Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
