LEWISTON – The 2024-25 Warrior Basketball season is just around the corner and schedules are live for fans to preview the year ahead. The Warrior women will open the year with a pair of NCAA Division I exhibitions at Washington State and Idaho, and both will open the regular season at home on Nov. 2.
Season ticket renewals are live now and have been emailed through HomeTown Ticketing. The renewal deadline is Oct. 14. General admission season passes are on sale now at lcwarriors.com/tickets and reserved passes will go live on Oct. 17.
The Warrior women will head to Pullman to take on WSU on Oct. 20, and the Oct. 25 contest at Idaho will feature the Wallace sisters of Clarkston going head-to-head.
“Washington State is extremely athletic, long, and competes extremely hard,” Head Coach Caelyn Orlandi said. “They win big games, and this will be a great experience for our team to play in Beasley. Idaho boasts a new roster with a new coach, and we look forward to competing against their new team. Our freshman, Kendall Wallace, will get the opportunity to compete against her sister, Ashlynn Wallace, who has had a great career up at Idaho.”
The season starts at home when LC State hosts a contest between Northwest Indian College and Haskell Indian Nations University on Nov. 1. Both Warrior teams will take on Haskell Indian Nations on Nov. 2.
After the home opener, the Warrior women head to Arizona to take on Embry-Riddle (Ariz.) and Park-Gilbert (Ariz.) Nov. 6-7. They will then host rival Carroll College and DIII Puget Sound for a non-conference tournament. LC State will face DIII Whitman on the road in the middle of the season.
“We decided to play them back-to-back to replicate our tough conference schedule of playing back to back games on the road,” Orlandi explained. “These will be our first away games of the season and we will have to be locked in and ready to compete. Carroll is always tough, and you can always expect an excellent game between our two programs. Coach Sayers always does a fantastic job with her teams. We travel to Walla Walla to play Whitman who had a 20-6 record last season. Coach Ferenz always has well-disciplined teams who compete fiercely. They have a deep roster with excellent players and this will be a great match up for us.”
The men hit the road for a pair of non-conference tournaments at College of Idaho and Montana Tech in November. The Warriors will take on some of the top teams from Frontier Conference at the tournaments in Montana Tech, Carroll (Mont.) and Providence (Mont.). They will also face Florida College as a non-conference opponent in the middle of the season.
“With only six non-conference games, we wanted to continually challenge ourselves against great competition,” Head Coach Austin Johnson said. “We play Florida College on a neutral site and they have been a national tournament team the last few years. Montana Tech has won the Frontier Conference for three straight seasons and have been a consistent top 15-20 team nationally during that stretch. Carroll is another NAIA tournament team from a year ago, Providence is going to be a much-improved team with some key returners and Dickinson State lost in their conference tournament championship game. We learn a lot about ourselves in our non-conference schedule.”
The Cascade Conference proved once again to be one of the premiere groups in the NAIA with four women’s teams and three men’s teams in the 2023-24 NAIA national tournament. On the men’s side, regular-season champion College of Idaho and tournament champion Oregon Tech return healthy portions of their rosters.
“The CCC gets better every year, and I would presume this year will be the best yet during our few years in the league,” Johnson said. “OIT and C of I return just about their entire rosters and it is very clear that every other team in our league is poised to improve with what they signed in recruiting, coupled with what they return. Since the 2019 NAIA national tournament, there has been six appearances in the NAIA Fab 4 from our league. I’m not sure any other conference can lay claim to that type of postseason success during the same stretch.”
For the women, conference champion Southern Oregon and fellow front runner Eastern Oregon will likely battle with the Warrior women for the top spot.
“The CCC schedule that we play is so incredibly tough,” Orlandi said. “Playing back-to-back games on the road is very difficult. Having to play on Friday, turning around and traveling to the next destination, and playing again on Saturday is not for weak teams. Mental toughness is required, and upper classmen must pave the way.
“Traveling to Southern Oregon and Oregon Tech may be the toughest trip of the season,” Orlandi added. “Two of the top teams back-to-back at their place is a big weekend. Both have excellent players and coaches and finding ways to win on the road is a must in this conference. I believe this league will continue to be tough and taking four to the national tournament last year shows that our conference competes. I would expect the same competitiveness this season if not more.”
