The Creighton women’s basketball team comes into the 2012-13 season with high expectations.
The Bluejays are returning four of last season’s starters and its five top scorers, including junior guard Carli Tritz, who was selected as the MVC preseason Player of the Year.
The Bluejays enter the season as the preseason favorites in the Missouri Valley Conference as the reigning conference tournament champions, and they received a vote in the preseason AP Poll for the first time since March 2003.
Creighton’s high expectations will be put to the test immediately with a tough nonconference schedule filled with talented opponents and seven games on the road. Headlining Creighton’s nonconference schedule are games at home against Oklahoma University, Kansas University and the University of Nebraska and games at Brigham Young University and South Dakota State University. All five of these teams appeared in last year’s NCAA Tournament. In all, nine of Creighton’s 11 nonconference opponents won 19 or more games last season.
“It’s as hard of a schedule as I’ve ever put together,” head coach Jim Flanery said, now in his 11th season with the Bluejays. “But I feel like we have the experience and the depth to be in position to win.”
Flanery said he believes an improved frontcourt will be the determining factor of the Bluejays’ success against these teams.
Returning starter junior Sarah Nelson leads the Bluejay frontcourt. Nelson has the ability to shoot the ball from almost anywhere on the court. She can dominate on the low block, knock down a jumper from the elbow and even score from beyond the arc. Nelson was second on the team in scoring and led the team in rebounding last year, averaging 7.6 rebounds per game.
Sophomores forward Alexis Akin-Otiko and center Alyssa Kamphaus will provide presence in the post as well. Flanery noted that each has greatly improved during the offseason. Both bring much needed size that allows the Bluejays to match up against major conference teams like Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska.
Depth is one of the key focuses for Flanery. After all, depth is what allowed Creighton to be sharp and outlast their opponents at the end of last season, most noticeably during Creighton’s 53-38 thrashing of the Drake University Bulldogs in the MVC championship game.
That win over Drake earned Creighton the MVC tournament crown and an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament. In its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament since the 2001-02 season and first under Flanery, a layup with only one-tenth of a second remaining in regulation was all that prevented the No. 14 seed Bluejays from knocking off St. John’s University.
Last season, all but two players averaged over ten minutes per game, and Flanery believes similar amounts of minutes will be needed from the bench this season.
The problem, however, is that Creighton is dealing with serious injuries this preseason.
Tritz’s season almost ended before it began. She had been out almost two weeks with a back injury, which Flanery said was feared to be a stress fracture in a vertebra. However, Tritz will be able to play limited minutes in Wednesday night’s exhibition match against Southwest Minnesota State University.
Whether the back injury will be a persistent problem this season is yet to be seen. Tritz led the Bluejays in scoring, steals and assists last season en route to being named to the All-MVC First Team.
Fellow junior and returning starter guard McKenzie Fujan also has been dealing with a back injury. Additionally, sophomore guard/forward Taylor Johnson is out for the season and has been given a medical redshirt as the result of a torn ACL.
With injuries looming, newcomers like freshman point guard Marissa Janning will have to step up to accommodate the loss. Rated as a three-star recruit and given a rating of 91 by ESPN.com as a guard at Watertown-Mayer High School in Delano, Minn., Janning has the playmaking ability the Bluejays need, whether it be from the bench or in the starting five in the place of an injured player.
Overall, Flanery said he is impressed with the improvement of all his players, and he believes the Bluejays are a team that can match up with any team in the MVC or beyond.
This belief all comes from the confidence the Bluejays gained last season in claiming the conference title and competing with St. John’s in its first round NCAA Tournament game.
“[Last season’s success] raised our expectations in terms of what we can achieve,” Flanery said. “We’re a year older and a year better … I feel like all our returners have gotten better. We ought to believe we should be as good as anybody.”