The Lady Bison basketball team is off to a promising start. Though right now they stand 1-2 in non-conference play, the Lady Bisons look to flip things around and start over tonight against Missouri Southern State tonight at 7 p.m. in Joplin, Mo.
The Lady Bisons have been using their time on the road to prepare for the upcoming season. Their games will continue to be on the road until Nov. 28 when they play their first home game against Central Baptist College.
They will have had four games on the road before playing with a home court advantage, which according to head coach Tim Kirby can be tough, especially on new players.
“That’s probably the biggest negative to starting out on the road; we’re throwing some freshmen out there to go try to win games on somebody else’s floor and that’s pretty tough for a veteran team, much less someone that was playing high school basketball last year,” Kirby said.
Though Kirby said that the team is not necessarily a young team because they are returning several experienced players, the Lady Bisons are returning only three starters: senior Sierra Rollins, who received All-Conference honors last year, senior Kallie Bartee and sophomore Kristen Celsor.
The team lost sophomore point guard Michaela Brown to a torn ACL at the beginning of the school year. Kirby said that her injury was a significant loss to the team, but that they have freshman talent that, with some work, can step up and fill her role.
Kirby also said that the scheduling of away exhibition games was purposeful. The new Great American Conference now includes several schools in Oklahoma, which is a much farther distance to travel for away games than any of the schools in the old conference, and games on the road are difficult for the new players.
“The closest of those teams is five and a half hours away,” Kirby said. “The younger players don’t know how to handle that at this point in their career. We scheduled three exhibition games that we’re traveling a long way to play. Hopefully they got some road experience from that.”
The Lady Bisons lost their first two exhibition games to Missouri State University and University of Missouri-Kansas City, but Kirby said he did not see this as detrimental.
“It was probably good for us, because we saw some positives in those games.” Kirby said. “The freshmen — you could see, their eyes were opened and you could see them kind of figuring things out as the games went on.”
Rollins agreed that the freshman players just need some time to settle into the groove of college ball.
“They’re trying to do the best that they can, and they’ve actually been a huge asset to us because they know how to play basketball,” Rollins said. “It’s just that transition from high school to college.”
The freshmen proved that they are learning, as the Lady Bisons went on to win their last exhibition against Lipscomb University 45-51. Freshman guard led the Lady Bisons with a game-high 14 points and freshman forward Arielle Saunders led HU with nine rebounds.
