Concordia -- Tonight @ 7

Tonight we get an opportunity to see the team in action for the first time this year when Concordia comes across town for a 7 o’clock exhibition game tipoff. It will also be the only time we see the Pilots until November 29 when UW comes south for rematch from last year.

Cassandra (Cassie) Brown, Kari Luttinen, and Amy Pupa are the nucleus of the team, but Cassie has been plagued by a injury this fall and could miss considerable time…I guess we’ll find out tonight

I’ve been following the Pilots Women’s Team for a long time, but this is the first time I haven’t had some well-founded optimism about our ability to win games. The Pilots are YOUNG and inexperienced with just three juniors and no seniors…..and virtually all the team’s scoring graduated last May.

It would be wonderful to see to see the team parlay a difficult preseason into decent showing in WCC play….and avoid having to play on Wednesday afternoon in Las Vegas in March.

Well, it's a good start. Hard to tell for sure how good a team is in a non-D1 exhibition.

Kari Luttinen can play. She had a handful of steals she ran back for layups. She can drive to the basket and shoot a little too. Of the freshmen Nurmi and Holopainen had the best games coming off the bench. Nice to see everyone who was healthy get some minutes.

Well, unless you can stomach a bunch of turnovers, you are probably not going to be much of a fan of Pilots Women’s Basketball early in the season. It just seems to be a trend that has been going on for a number of years now, but the team does have a young but solid nucleus that should grow together as a team and show quite a bit of improvement by January.

Tonight the Pilots scored 44 points in each half on their way to a 88-51 win over Concordia, but except for about 15 minutes of quality basketball, it was not pretty as UP turned the ball over 21 times and CU had 25 turnovers.

The Pilots definitely have their starting lineup:
F Amy Pupa; Jr
G Kari Luttinen; So
PG Alexis Byrd; Jr
F Cassandra Thompson; So
G Jasmine Wooton; So

Sadly, missing from this list is UP’s arguably best athlete and scorer, Cassandra Brown. It is unknown if Cassandra will be able to play at all this year due to surgery this past summer that resulted in a titanium rod being placed in her chest. Cassandra, from British Columbia, is a fan favorite and will be sorely missed, but we all wish her well in her recovery regardless if she plays basketball again this year.

As PPT said, the top substitutes tonight were the two Finnish players:
F Annika Holopanen; Fr
G Ellen Nurmi; Fr

Both are very strong and showed some real skill….they just have to adjust to the speed of the game.

RS-So C Elyse Snyder looks a lot more mobile this year, and newcomer RS-So C Erin Boettcher has good to potential to develop over the year. Fr G Jazmyn Johnson will also be an asset in the years to come, but Fr F Sara Ines Hernandez from Italy has a long way to go to catch up with the speed of the American D-1 game, losing 3 turnovers in 9 minutes of play tonight.

Outlook: A tough, tough preseason schedule should toughen a fairly soft team, but they are going to have to make much sharper passes, not settle for the three point shot, and cut down on turnovers if they are to have any success.

WCC finish: my head says 8th, but my heart thinks they could finish 6th or 7th with some good team development and chemistry. But with the likelihood of losing Cassandra Brown for the year, they may end up playing on Wednesday in Las Vegas.