UW-Whitewater Women's Basketball Preview

If there are a few things that stand out from the 2014-2015 Warhawks Women's Basketball team, it was that they had a rough schedule last year and the word inconsistency.  Last year, Keri Carollo's squad was 2-14 against teams with 12-14 wins or better. That included teams like DePauw, UW-Oshkosh, UW-Superior, and a George Fox team that made the National Championship game last season. This year their schedule seems a bit easier than last year with not as many tough teams. There aren't really too many non-conference games that you could say could be really tough games for them. The tough games they'll have are Coe College (18-9 last year), Illinois Wesleyan and Elmhurst (Elmhurst and Illinois Wesleyan are in the CCIW, which just like the WIAC is a tough basketball conference), and Luther College, who is ranked No. 23 in the D3Hoops.com preseason poll. Then you add in the two conference games against UW-Oshkosh, it makes for some tough teams on the schedule, but it isn't as jam packed with tough non-conference games like last year was. When you talk about last year's team, there was some inconsistency with last year's team.  You never really knew who your leading scorer was every game, which seemed to change every game at some points during their season last year. That's not a bad thing though, there is a lot this team can build off of coming into this season. Brooke Trewyn, Malia Smith, Andrea Meinert, and Kate McKay were all freshman last year and each of them had their moments last year. Abbie Reeves, Emily Jensen, and Lisa Palmer all gained WIAC honors last year as well. So they have a lot to look forward to for the upcoming season. Looking at this year's team, the point guard spot could be a back and forth.  Reilly Stewart, who had backed up Kaitlyn Thill her freshman year most likely will split time with Malia Smith there in the starting lineup. The Warhawks should have two solid scorers at guard this year in Abbie Reeves, who led the WIAC in threes last year, and sophomore Brooke Trewyn who had some good scoring games for the Warhawks last year. Jensen and Palmer will round out the lineup in 2015-2016, with solid backups behind them in McKay and Meinert.  The biggest question there is can the Warhawks finally get a healthy year out of Lisa Palmer. She has been plagued with a few injuries the last two years after a freshman year where she backed up Cortney Kumerow.  With the Warhawks bench, Jaya Perkins could play a big role coming off the bench. If there's two players on this roster that I would like to see a bounce back year from it's sophomores Andrea Olsen and Reilly Stewart. Olsen was someone I kind of expected a lot out of last year after how well she played last year. You didn't really see that last year. Stewart was sort of on and off last year at point guard and Malia Smith took her place in the starting lineup last year because of that. Put all of that together, this should be a team that can make some noise in the WIAC and battle UW-Oshkosh for the automatic bid and maybe get back to the NCAA Tournament after missing it after back-to-back Final Four appearances the two years prior to that. As for if they can make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament, who knows. Everything has to be solid and consistent. You can have a game where two of your best players go 1-13 like Stewart and Reeves did in one game last year. They can have those type of games, part of that was how many tough teams the Warhawks played last year. With an easier schedule than last year, they should be in the conversation for a conference title this year and appearance in the NCAA Tournament.  I'm not going to put this team in the National Championship talk yet with the DePauw's and Thomas Moore's of the Division 3 Women's Basketball world.  The Warhawks have some work to get to that point again. If they have multiple scorers that put up double digits each night like they did the years they went to back-to-back Final Fours with players like Mary Meg, Kaitlyn Thill, Katie Burton, Amy Mandrell, and Kumerow. If the Warhawks can make that happen with Reeves, Trewyn and the rest of the lineup they have, they could right now I don't think they are a Final Four type team this year, NCAA's are definitely in reach for this year's UW-Whitewater Women's Basketball team.