After a season in which the UW-Milwaukee Women’s basketball head coach Kyle Rechlicz labeled as “inconsistent,” the Panthers will look to bounce back and compete for a Horizon League Championship this season.
Last year the Panthers finished 8-22 with a 4-12 conference record, which landed them in 7th place in the Horizon League. Going into conference play last year, the Panthers stood at 4-9 but after a win at Green Bay it looked like the Panthers were on their way to a promising season. Unfortunately for them, over the next three months they experienced three losing streaks that reached three games or more. Although last year didn’t go well for the Panthers, Rechlicz and the rest of the team are only focused on the present.
“The challenge is if we look to the past or to the future,” Rechlicz said. “I always tell them to be in the moment, because we have very capable players that just haven’t been seen yet.”
Ashley Green, Macie Dorow, Sydney Howard, Jordyn Swan and Christina Wakeman are the five returning players from last year’s team but Green was the only player out of the five to average more than 15 minutes of playing time per game. Coach Rechliz will be looking for all five of those players to step this year on the court and especially Green and Dorow to also step up as leaders.
“Ashley Green is someone we’re really relying heavily on. She has really improved her game in all areas, in all phases, and even the mental side. Shes really become a leader. And issomebody we’re really relying on to be that vocal leader in the locker room, outside the locker room, and on the court with all of our newcomers we have this year, ” says Rechlicz. “Jordyn Swan is actually another one. You haven’t seen her a lot because she’s been very injury prone in her past but she has really stepped up into a new role this year and she’s bringing a lot of high level energy, communication, and hustle to our team, so I see her being on the court quite a bit.”
Along with the five returning players, the Panthers welcome seven new players to the team, with four of them being true freshman. Kelsey Cunningham, Cree Hammond, Jenny Linder, and Steph Kostowicz are the four freshman on this years roster and all four of them will be counted on to contribute to the team’s success.
“The biggest thing for them will be which one shows up consistently every single night,” Rechlicz said. “As freshman you know they will have their ups and downs, but I told them by the time they reach conference play they won’t be freshman anymore.”
The other three newcomers to the roster are Jalessa Armstrong, Alexis Lindstrom, and Hannah Kaul.
Armstrong transferred to Milwaukee after spending two years at Malcolm X Community College. She is a very quick guard that can score and pass and could find herself in the starting line-up very early in the season.
Although Kaul is a newcomer to the basketball team, she isn’t new when it comes to being apart of a Panthers athletic team. Kaul spent the past four years playing for the soccer team at UWM and decided to use her last year of eligibility to play basketball.
Lindstrom finds herself at Milwaukee after she spent two years at Northern Illinois University. She will have to sit out this season due to the NCAA transfer rule.
One of the challenges the team will have to face to start the season is replacing former point guard Angela Rodriguez. Rodriguez, who graduated last spring, led the team in points per game at 17.1 and also minutes at 36.3 per game. Replacing Rodriguez is not an easy task, but with the depth of this year’s team, the responsibility of the scoring shouldn’t have to fall on one person’s shoulders.
“I think our team moves the ball this year better than we ever have in the past,” Rechlicz said. “It’s going to be one of those year’s where you see a variety of people scoring in different ways and it will be in different games.”
The Panthers are picked to finish seventh this year in the Horizon League but the coaches and players won’t be paying much attention to the predication.
“We haven’t talked about it once,” Rechlicz said. “Rankings in the beginning of the season don’t really matter. To me that stuff doesn’t really predict anything besides what you have returning and we don’t have much returning this year.”
Milwaukee’s home opener for the regular season will take place November 22nd at the Klotsche Center where they will take on the Bowling Green Falcons.