Women’s basketball rebounds to start strong

The UW-River Falls women’s basketball team was the pre-season pick to finish third by the WIAC, and coach Cindy Holbrook anticipates a strong season with eight returners.

The team expected a quality season last year, but several injuries kept key players out of the game.

“One of our biggest concerns is something we can’t control which is injuries. Taylor House will be out for a while because of a back injury,” Holbrook said.

The team finished the 2010-11 season with an overall 16-11 record, and a 7-9 in conference games and finished fifth overall in the WIAC.

With eight returners this year and five of those being seniors, Holbrook has no set captains, but a leadership committee made up of those returners. Holbrook said there are a lot of key players and not one kid to “light it up” every night. “We’re going to have a really fun team this year, it will be
an exciting season,” Holbrook said.

Senior Taylor House said the team has great potential and is focusing on practice everyday.

A goal that we as a team have this season is to become a “great” team. We want to be the top team in the conference and to do this we need to come to practice everyday working to get better, pushing each other, and doing all we can to be- come the great team we strive to be,” House said.

The Falcons are ranked in the top 25 in the nation and are anticipated to finish third behind the WIAC defending champions, UW-Stevens Point, with UW-Whitewater picked to finish second.

Although the WIAC has Stevens Point and Whitewater as the Falcons’ main competition, Holbrook said, “In our conference, honestly every team is our biggest competition.”

Senior Tiffany Gregorich was the Falcons’ leading scorer in the 2010-11 season.

Going into the 2011-12 season she only needed 71 points to reach 1,000 points for her career. She reached the prestigious milestone on Nov. 30 in a home game against St. Scholastica.

She now has 1,009 points for her career thus far.

“My personal goal is that I just try to stay healthy and be the best that I can be to help my team. Being ranked third gives us more drive to be better. We are third and we have teams to beat, and we are in a position that we can’t get beat. We have the ability to be No. 1 still. It’s a preseason poll, but it is what’s at the end that matters,” Gregorich said.

The team has nine newcomers this season, eight of those being freshmen, according to Holbrook. “We have a lot of new freshman this year that all have opportunities to play, so it should be really fun to see what us returner can do with the new freshmen,” Gregorich said.

Another lead scorer, senior Maranda Dohrn, says a goal for the team is to play more consistently from game to game. Holbrook added that a focus at practice this year is to win, to compete every day with each other, and to get the details.

The Falcons’ next home game is Saturday, Dec. 17 against Simpson College. Action is set to get underway at 3 p.m. at the Karges Center.