Changing of the guard

Change has been the theme of the off-season for IUP women’s basketball.
Change in the sense that IUP lost three 1,000-point scorers in Jahzinga Tracey, Staci Heberling and Kylie Miller.
Change in the coaching the staff where Head Coach Jeff Dow has brought in two brand new assistants in Jerod Alltop and Emily Briggs.
Change on the roster as a whole, as there are eight new faces on the team who join the six returnees to do what Dow will always expect out of his teams — win.
“I explained to them the expectations are always going to be the same,” Dow said during IUP basketball media day Oct. 29. “If I’m coaching here the idea is that we’re going to win 20-plus games, we’re going to compete to win the PSAC championship, we’re going to play in the NCAA tournament and hopefully we’re going to make a run in the NCAA tournament and that hasn’t changed.”
Those expectations may seem a little farfetched, being as though Dow lost more than 4,000 points in Tracey, Heberling and Miller, but Dow did not show much concern about losing talents of that caliber.
“They were certainly big losses to the program, but every team across the country loses somebody, so that’s the nature of how it goes,” Dow said.
What does IUP have now? Eight new players to play alongside the six returnees from last season who were brought in to keep up the level of excellence here at IUP.
They have one starter returning in Kierstin Filla and four other spots left up for grabs among the rest of the team as Dow described his starting lineup as “extremely open.”
One player that will more than likely join Filla in the starting lineup is fellow guard Lacy Claar, whose 9.5 points per game was second on the team last season while coming off the bench.
All of the other returnees are players who made significant contributions to the team last year, including Hillary Shope, Julie Lozon, Tara Powers and Eryn Withers, whom Dow has big expectations for this coming season.
“I think Eryn Withers is definitely somebody that’s looking to take an expanded role from what she had last year,” Dow said.
“We certainly had talked during the course of the season last year, after the season and obviously in the preseason a couple of times about more than anything being more consistent,” he added.
With the majority of the team either freshmen or new to the program, Dow expressed the importance of at least one of them stepping up, as it is inevitable that the team will need them to do so.
 “You can do the math and look at our roster, and clearly we’re going to have to have two or three freshmen establish themselves, and again those two or three may change from game to game, week to week, but at least they’re putting themselves in a position to get minutes,” Dow said.
Those players who will have to establish themselves are freshman guard Katelyn Marshall from Bowie, Md.; freshman forward Jill Perdue from Abingdon, Va.; freshman guard Lauren Taylor from Toledo, Ohio; freshman forward Brianna Johnson from Fairfax, Va.; sophomore guard/forward Vianca Tejada from Cherry Hill, N.J.; senior forward Sylvie Tefan, who is a graduate student from Pitt; junior guard Amber Dubyak from Hastings, Pa.; and freshman forward Sarah Pastorek from Johnstown, Pa.
With the potential of having a number of different lineups, IUP will go to more of a balanced offensive attack, opposed to its offense from last year, which was centered around Tracey.
“I think we’re going to have no choice but to be a little more balanced than what we were. It’s not inconceivable that our leading scorer this year might only average 12 points a game. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that,” Dow said.
“The challenge for us is to get several people anywhere between six to 12 points a game and have a balance both on the perimeter and inside as well,” he added.
Among all of the changes in the program, one thing has remained the same since the last time the Crimson Hawks have taken the court — they are the defending PSAC champions.
“We are the defending champions and until somebody wrestles that away from us, we are still the PSAC champions and will certainly compete to put ourselves in position to repeat for a fourth time,” Dow said.

 

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out