Don’t look now, but basketball season is right around the corner.
Two weeks around the corner to be exact.
With the calendar days quickly fading away, the Utah women’s basketball team has just started gearing up for the beginning of its season. The Utes are lined up to have a great year. Coming off a regular-season Mountain West Conference championship and projected in preseason polls to win once again this year, the team is preparing for what will be a season of high expectations and many challenges.
There have been many cases throughout sports history where teams have collapsed under the pressure of high expectations. However, with veteran head coach Elaine Elliot on the sidelines, this shouldn’t be much of a worry to anyone8212;especially the Utes.
“We set the table every year to try and reach the potential each team has in terms of execution,” Elliot said. “So it is the same deal every year, no matter where we are picked to finish in conference.”
Execution should look good with the players the Utes have coming back. Preseason MWC Player of the Year Morgan Warburton and first-team selection Kalee Whipple will give the Utes one of the best one-two scoring punches in the Mountain West. And while Utah will have two of the best players in the conference, it will also feel the loss of point guard Leilani Mitchell.
“(Mitchell) was the best point guard to play here,” Elliot said. “(This year) we have to try to view it as a different skill set at the point guard position. We’ll let these young kids grow and play to their ability.”
The three players in line for the starting job are junior Hennasea Tokumura and freshmen Janita Badon and Hannah Stephens. They will all be looking to log minutes at the point guard spot this season.
The Utes should get a good feel as to where they stack up against the rest of the nation early in the season. Impressive teams such as Louisville, Mississippi State and USC will all pay a visit to the Huntsman Center. The Utes will also go on the road to face the University of Oregon in Eugene, Ore., and will take on Virginia, Gonzaga and Marquette at the WBCA classic.
“This is a difficult schedule,” Elliot said. “We will be a better team at the end than the start. We may hit a few bumps on the road, but this schedule will get guys talking about us.”
Where the loaded non-conference schedule will also help Utah is at the end of the season, when the tournament selection committee takes the strength of schedule into strong consideration. Many felt Utah was punished too severely when it was handed a No. 8 seed before getting bounced out in the first round of the NCAA tournament. That shouldn’t be the case this year, as Utah will have many opportunities to prove itself to the selection committee.
On the injury front, the Utes will begin the season a little banged up. Sasha McKinnon is still recovering from an ACL injury and hopes to return to the team by the middle of the conference season. Josi McDermott should be cleared soon as she recovers from her second back surgery, and Deanne Stevenson is listed as day-to-day with a herniated disk.
Utah’s road to a second straight MWC title will not be an easy one. But with Elliot on the sidelines, and Warburton and Whipple leading the way on the court, the Utes have the ability to pass most of the tests they will face.