Coyotes hope to repeat success
Article by Grant Bosiacki and Josh Jorgensen
56-53.
That’s the score that’s stuck on the minds of coaches’ and players’ from the University of South Dakota women’s basketball team.
Last season, a memorable Summit League tournament run got the Coyotes all the way to the Summit League championship game, where head coach Amy Williams saw her girls fall three points short to South Dakota State.
Junior forward Lisa Loeffler said the tough loss is something driving everyone on the team leading up to the 2013-14 season.
“It gives us motivation,” Loeffler said. “We lost to SDSU by three points, you can count on us being motivated.”
Last year, the Coyotes went 19-16 (10-6) and ended the season winning seven of their final nine games. The challenge this year will be replacing the production they lost in last years’ seniors. Tempestt Wilson was second on the team in scoring, averaging 12.9 points per game. She is now playing overseas for GDESSA, a professional team in Portugal. They also lost their starting point guard and assist leader, Alexis Yackley.
Williams said the lack of experience is a bit concerning but believes the upperclassmen are making the transition easier for younger players.
“As a coach, I don’t see a whole lot of experience on this roster. Lisa (Loeffler) is our only player with more than one year of playing time at this level,” Williams said. “The younger players will have to step up, because right now, we’re leaning heavily on the upperclassmen.”
With a limited roster, younger players will play a big role this season, something the team is working on heavily in practice, Williams said.
“We’re in a position where we have one senior and three juniors, and the rest are underclassmen,” Williams said. “That means we have a lot of youth, so our big point of emphasis was getting the younger players comfortable.”
What the team does have going for it is the return of junior Nicole Seekamp. A native Australian, Seekamp led the team in scoring with 14.9 points per game in her first season playing in the Summit League.
She said this season the team has more depth, where as last year a smaller rotation was used, so players were getting tired at the end of games. Because of that, she said the team wants to be mentally focused and in the best shape they can be in before the season starts.
“We’ve worked a lot on our conditioning, that’s been the big thing,” Seekamp said. “We want teams chasing us instead of us chasing them.”
The team ended last year by losing to McNeese State 71-63 in the Women’s Baskball Invitational (WBI) Championship.
Loeffler said they learned a lot by playing in the WBI, but it left the team wanting more.
“Being in the WBI was a great opportunity and gave us postseason play,” Loeffler said. “But we’re looking to get to that next tier, we want to make the NCAA Tournament.”
Williams agreed with Loeffler, saying the goal is always to make the NCAA Tournament.
“Our goal is to win the conference championship. That’s always going to be one of our goals,” Williams said. “We want to raise the bar, and the only way to do that is to go out and win the conference.”
But as for now, Williams said the team needs to continue getting better every time they touch the floor. Williams said that will be the key to playing good basketball.
The team has been practicing for just over a week now and won’t see its first game until Nov. 8, when it travels to California to take on Cal State Fullerton. Other notable games on the schedule include road games against three tournament teams from last year: Nebraska, Creighton and Iowa State. Their rematch versus SDSU won’t come until Feb. 2, 2014 when they will travel to Brookings.
Seekamp said the rematch against SDSU is already on many players’ minds.
“It’s on the minds of a lot of players on the team,” Seekamp said. “But we have to focus on ourselves and not to worry about them. For now we’ll take it one game at a time.”
