Very proud of the team's performance in the A10 tournament. The team played their hearts out in Wilmington. Kyara certainly made her mark in the tournament and I think she can definitely say she went out on a high note. It was nice to get revenge on La Salle and their whiny coach after the Senior Day heartbreak and make it all the way to the quarterfinals. The defensive identity is clear under McCombs and I definitely think great things are on the horizon. We ran out of energy at the end of the third game against VCU, but played with full determination the entire contest. VCU going to Bloom late in the game made a difference, and it makes me wonder how much better this team could have been with Ali still on the squad. While offense was tough to come by at points during all 3 games, I think the balanced scoring across our roster actually made us harder to defend, and different players stepping up at different times helped us continue to put up points when we needed it. There isn't too much of a difference between teams in the A10 after the top 3 in the league in my book and a few lucky bounces our way could have made the difference against VCU. We actually showed more "havoc" than their team did. It's a shame we couldn't get it done on Mayowa's birthday.

Now the offseason begins. We are graduating Kyara, Sierra, and Maddie (along with Ty from midseason) and are bringing in two freshmen. It will be interesting to see how many of Rizzotti's holdovers remain on the roster next year.

Sheslanie, Nya, Faith, Mayowa, and Essence will all be seniors.
Aurea and Taylor will be juniors.
Michelle, Leila, and Sophie will be sophomores.

Assuming all return, that leaves one open spot I believe (although Maxine may take that scholarship given her play for next year). Any transfers I assume will probably be from the rising sophomore class as none of them saw much action in the second half of the season. All of the rising seniors/juniors saw some action in the tournament and I figure they'll all be back next year.

The biggest thing to address for next year is finding a go-to player to lift the offense and come up big late in games. If we had one this year we would have easily won like 5 more games. Sheslanie showed some flashes of potentially becoming that player at times during the tournament, but she's inconsistent. Laureano and Lok showed that their ability to create their own shot made us tough to guard (their raw abilities are better than many players in the A10) but there were some issues finishing. Nya in particular was prone to losing the ball when putting it on the floor after a stellar OOC.

It would definitely be helpful to bring someone in from the transfer portal who can fill that role. Finishing shots and free throw shooting should be two primary areas of improvement for next year. Defense was great and unlike MBB both the rebounding and ball movement on offense was pretty strong all year as well. We just need to finish the layups a bit more and bring in a bit more firepower on offense. Mayowa did a great job all year down low but it would certainly help her out if we added more size down low for next year.