The women’s bas­ket­ball team looks to adjust to a young lineup

The women’s bas­ket­ball team will rely on a young lineup to try to make a run in the GLIAC this season.

The Bulldogs have to replace the entire start­ing lineup from a sea­son ago. The team lost four seniors, includ­ing sec­ond team All-GLIAC guard Teghan Thelen.

Putting together an entirely new start­ing lineup is some­thing head coach Tracey Dorow will have to adjust to.

“It’s always some­thing you have to adjust to when you grad­u­ate play­ers, espe­cially a whole lineup,” said Dorow. “At the same time, it’s really excit­ing because we have a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties to sur­prise peo­ple since we’re some­what of an unknown in the league.”

With such a young team, which has five fresh­men on the ros­ter, the Bulldogs will look to some of its vet­eran play­ers for leadership.

One of the return­ing vet­er­ans the team will rely on this year is senior cen­ter Andrea Clancy, who earned the Sixth Player Award last season.

“Andrea has really stepped up into a lead­er­ship role and we needed her to,” said Dorow. “She knew that we were los­ing our vet­eran lead­ers and I’m pleased to see her step up and be a leader.”

Another vet­eran coach Dorow will look to lead is junior guard Becci Houdek. Dorow said Houdek is a leader on the court and has a knack for the game.

Even with hav­ing such a young team, Ferris is not con­cerned about the lack of expe­ri­ence of the younger players.

“We’re a young team, but the fresh­men are get­ting there,” said Clancy.

Houdek said she is not wor­ried about hav­ing a young team because peo­ple with expe­ri­ence have stepped up and have helped the younger play­ers on the team.

The Bulldogs fin­ished the 2008–2009 sea­son with a 13–15 record over­all, but won seven of the final nine games of the sea­son. Getting off to a fast start this year is some­thing the team believes will be cru­cial to the season.

“It’s really impor­tant for us to start out strong early in the sea­son,” said Clancy. “We had some issues to start last sea­son, but that’s not going to hap­pen this season.”

Ferris fin­ished third in the GLIAC North divi­sion last sea­son and made it to the semi­fi­nals of the GLIAC tour­na­ment. The Bulldogs have high expec­ta­tions for them­selves for this year.

“We’re a lot more bal­anced over­all this year and the team chem­istry has really improved from last year,” said Houdek. “We don’t care who does the scor­ing and we don’t care how it’s going to get done. We’re focused on just mak­ing it happen.”

The main goal for the team this sea­son is to get to the regional round of the NCAA Division II Tournament, accord­ing to Houdek.

Ferris will start the sea­son with an exhi­bi­tion con­test against Oakland University on Nov. 1 and will begin reg­u­lar sea­son play Nov. 20 against Gannon University (Pa.).