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After finishing last year’s season 16-13 and playing in the post season conference tournament, the women’s basketball team is coming into the new season ready to exceed last year’s goals.
They have already gained confidence after their exhibition match against division one University of Missouri Kansas City, and went in and pulled the upset 77-71.
“It felt great to get that win the first challenge of the year,” said fifth year guard Tristan Gegg. “I felt we came prepared and scouted appropriately, I know it gave some of our younger girls that confidence we need to be successful this season.”
Head coach Amanda Davied also commented on her thoughts from the exhibition match.
“It felt good, there’s always a recruiting battle with schools in the region no matter what division and you want to showcase your program as best you can so I thought our girls played really hard especially for our first outing,” David said. “I feel like we still have ways to improve, our league is tough but it was a good starting point.”
The women’s basketball preseason MIAA coaches and media polls were released on Oct. 11. Pitt was ranked 8th out of 14 teams in both polls.
“Our preseason pick wasn’t what we would hope for it to be when we finish, but the group has been pretty motivated to work hard in practice,” Davied said.
For this season, the team has nine returners, one transfer; graduate student forward Nyah Pettus, and two freshmen.
“I am excited to start my last go around, I am super blessed I get to spend my last season with the teammates I have…” Gegg said. “As a fifth year I am experienced and need to be a leader so I want to spend every practice and every game playing the best I can while being the best teammate I can be.”
The team is ready to improve on last year’s record, and Gegg mentioned some goals of, “making the national tournament, beating the top opponents, and having our team stay healthy throughout the season.”
Davied also commented on some ways they are looking to help improve from last year’s record.
“One thing the girls really talked about was wanting to get better defensively,” Davied said. “I feel like there are games we do play defensively well as holding teams to under 60 points, we had 12 or 13 of those games, but some are so good in scoring and they get 70 points and we need to be able to control the best teams in the league and really defend and rebound.”
They will begin their regular season by playing in the MIAA/GAC Conference Challenge. Their first game will be against Oklahoma Baptist University Friday Nov. 11 at 4 p.m., and then game two will be against Southwestern Oklahoma State University on Saturday Nov. 12 at 1 p.m. Both games will be played at Lee Arena in Topeka Kansas.
“I think we will be ready by the end of the week, it’s always hard to tell what a team is going to do,” Davied said. “We won’t really have any film for Oklahoma Baptist which makes it tough going in blind. I feel good about where we are at but it always makes it more difficult when you don’t know where the other team is at.”
