After hitting the prestigious 20-win mark last season, the Pioneer women’s basketball team looks to be much improved from last season.
The Pioneers return 11 players from last season’s roster, including four seniors and nine of their top-10 scorers from a year ago.
“We have a lot of kids that can come in and give us valuable minutes,” Pioneer Head Coach Pam Tanner said. “Our seniors and Sarah Bents, a junior, need to come ready to play every day.”
Unlike last season, when the Pioneers only had one player who averaged over 10 points on the year, DU looks to have a balanced and consistent offense.
“We definitely have a scoring punch, right now,” Tanner said.
“We will have a lot more scoring,” senior captain Brooke Meyer said of her team. “As long as some people are having a good game, we can just keep feeding them the ball, and, when people are off, we have other shooters who can score, too. We will have good point distribution.”
In the Pioneers’ two exhibition games this season against Colorado State University-Pueblo and Adams State University, DU scored a combined 130 points, getting contributions from their starters and bench.
The scoring, however, is not what the Pioneers are concerned with.
“Some of our weaknesses would be executing our defense,” Meyer said. “Defense wins championships. We need to make sure that we can stay on top of that.”
Meyer said that it is her responsibility as a captain to make sure that “everyone is one the same page.”
“When things are getting tight in a game, I need to make sure that everyone knows what we are doing and trying to accomplish. So that we can get as many wins as we can,” Meyer said.
The Pioneers will need to gel together quickly this year, as they play a ruthless early schedule. DU will play host to No. 9 Duke on Sunday, a team that went undefeated in the regular season last year with a 29-0 record, before losing in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.
“I think that it is exciting for all of us, for the program. We have only been Division I for 10 years and now we are being able to bring in a team like Duke to play is great,” Tanner said.
DU has already sold over 4,000 tickets to Sunday’s game and expects to have at least 1,000 walk-ups before the game, according to Tanner. Last season, the Pioneers had 6, 047 fans at all home games combined, a number that could be eclipsed by Sunday’s game, alone.
“We are going to come very close to selling out,” Tanner said. “As an athlete, you really can’t think of a better atmosphere to play college.”
“Duke has really been a big motivator for our team over the summer,” Meyer said. “We don’t want it to be too big of a game that we psych ourselves out, though. I think that we are ready and have a lot that we can bring against them. It keeps us focused and lets us know that we can’t do any messing around.”
The Pioneers will need to build off the game against the highly-talented Blue Devils, as their schedule does not get much easier for the rest of the season.
After Sunday’s match-up, DU will have nonconference contests against Colorado State University in Fort Collins, University of Creighton and No. 22 University of Wyoming.
With the difficult schedule ahead, the Pioneers have given themselves a chance to reach their goals as a team, and appearance in the NCAA tournament.
“I would love to see this group go to the post season, either the NIT or the NCAA Tournament,” Tanner said. “We certainly have the players and the ability to make some noise in the postseason.”
Tip-off for Sunday’s game against Duke is scheduled for 4 p.m. MT , and the game will be aired on Fox Sports Net Rocky Mountian.
