Basketball season has arrived, and after making it all the way to the WNIT championship game last spring, the Utes are looking for more.
Utah wants to earn a berth in the NCAA Tournament, and the journey to the Big Dance begins tonight with an exhibition game at the Huntsman Center against the Mary Marauders. The game won’t count toward the Utes’ win-loss record, but it will be an important one for them nonetheless.
“We prepared a little bit for (Mary), but you only know so much this early in the year about someone,” Utah head coach Anthony Levrets says. “More of it is about making sure that we are ready in all phases of the game to at least begin to play. The biggest area for us with so many young people playing is what it feels like to compete in a college basketball game.”
The Utes will be led by Michelle Plouffe, an All-American candidate. The Canadian senior forward has been named to the Pac-12 All-Conference team and was named Associated Press All-American honorable mention in 2012 and 2013. With 1,566 points and 865 rebounds through three seasons, Plouffe is on pace to become just the third player in Utah history to score 2,000 points and grab 1,000 rebounds in a career.
Though Plouffe was set to lead the Utes this season, she’ll be without her main sidekick, as fellow Canadian forward Taryn Wicijowski will miss the season after tearing her ACL during the summer. Wicijowski was second on the team last season in points, rebounds, blocks, and free throws made. Despite the loss of her teammate, Plouffe is confident that her teammates are capable of picking up the slack.
“It’s definitely going to be different playing without [Wicijowski],” Plouffe says. “That puts a little more attention on me, but we do have a couple of really good freshmen coming in at the post position. We have a talented group and a lot more to work with. It’s going to be so much replacing [Wicijowski], we are just going to have to, like [Levrets] says, take what we have to make it fit to our offense.”
Joining Plouffe in the starting lineup Friday night will be sophomore guard Danielle Rodriguez, juniors Cheyenne Wilson and Ciera Dunbar and true freshman Emily Potter. Rodriguez started 35 of Utah’s 37 games a season ago, and although this will be Potter’s first college game, she has seen the big stage as a member of the Canadian Junior National Team.
Mary is coming off a season-opening 79-61 loss to Westminster College. Senior guard Lindsey Sand finished with 11 points and collected a team-high seven rebounds and four assists. Sophomore forward Brittney Dietz was the leading scorer for the Marauders with 12 points on the night. Mary committed 12 turnovers that led to 18 points for the Griffins.
In truth, the Utes are simply looking forward to finally playing a game against an opponent no matter who it is after battling one another in practice over the past few weeks.
“It’s that time of year when you are ready to play somebody with a different jersey,” Levrets says. “They are tired of playing against each other and it’s time to throw that [ball] up with a team in a different color jersey and see where we are and try to get better from there.”
The contest will begin at 5:15 p.m.