Our women’s team tips off their season with a game against Lipscomb on November 4th. I’m putting out these pre-season pieces in an attempt to get you all here at Anchor of Gold on the hype train early, because this season is set to start fast and not let up until deep into March. Two weeks I reviewed our 2023-2024 season and some of the offseason, last week I looked over our roster and changes from this past season, and now today I am looking ahead to the season to come.
Tipping Off
We start off the season with an expectedly easy slate of out-of-conference opponents, kicking things off with Lipscomb and Austin Peay at home. We face a couple more early-season “warmup” opponents before facing off against Arizona in the Acrisure Invitational, to be shown on TruTV. The Wildcats have made the tournament each of the last four seasons including a runner-up finish to Stanford in the national title game in 2021, but last year they found themselves fighting their way in through the First Four just like us. This will be a great first test. I’d expect this team to be about even with us, and apparently so does Charlie “Crispy” Creme, ESPN’s resident bracketologist: he has both us and Arizona in his “Last Four Byes” category. Should we beat them, and I do think we’ll have the edge, we will face the winner of Cal–Michigan State. The Spartans more than likely win, which will set us up for a REAL tough one halfway through the out-of-conference portion of our season. Probably the first game we would play where we were not favored to win. The invitational, one way or another, should tell us a lot about our team.
Following the Acrisure Invitational, we have a buffer game against Appalachian State before another bubble team faceoff with Miami in the SEC/ACC Challenge, which will be televised on the ACC Network. Should be another good test for us against a team that, right now, seems to be on about the same level as us. Following that game, we close out the year with four games against out-of-conference schedule filler teams. I would predict between 11 and 14 wins out of a maximum possible 14 games. There shouldn’t be a single game prior to the start of conference play where we are far and away the underdog. Have fun, expect to win, basically. We win all those tough games and it could be enough to get us ranked without having to work all that hard, especially considering we are starting the season “33rd” in the AP poll. Yeah, like I said, it should be a fun season.
It Just Means More: Ramping Up
On January 2nd, we kick off conference play by welcoming Georgia, preseason SEC media poll No. 14, to campus. We beat this team twice last year, both times rather convincingly. The Bulldogs return Asia Avinger and former Commodore De’Mauri Flournoy from the starting lineup in those games, as well as Amiya Evans, Fatima Diakhate, and Savannah Henderson from the bench. Flournoy is far and away the star of the team; the other four players combined to go 8-of-31 (~26%) while bringing in only 16 rebounds across a total of 134 minutes played in those games. Of the other seven players on the roster, five are freshman and the other two are uninspiring transfers. I highly expect this game to go in our favor, helping get us back into the swing of things to start the new year.
We follow that up by welcoming in preseason conference No. 8 Kentucky, one of maybe the biggest stories of this past offseason. The Wildkitties hired Kenny Brooks away from Virginia Tech after the Hokies crashed out of the tournament following an injury to their star player and second round WNBA draftee Liz Kitley. Brooks brought along projected first rounder Georgia Amoore, Liz Kitley’s backup Clara Strack, his associate head coach, and four other high-level staff members. Kentucky comes into the season ranked 22nd in both the AP poll and the coaches poll. They’ll be really good, and this will be our most difficult game of the season up to this point, but completely possible we get our first statement win of the year here. Difficult to know too much until we’ve seen them play more, but I’m inclined to think we win this one (because I have my doubts about this experiment Kentucky is conducting).
A road trip to preseason No. 20 Ole Miss is up next. Both Ole Miss’s best starters, Kennedy Todd-Williams and Madison Scott, return from their game against us last year. The team made a number of big time portal signings in the offseason that have them looking to improve on their 7-seed NCAA berth last year. This team has a stacked non-conference schedule (opening with USC in Paris, playing in the same Thanksgiving tournament as UConn and Oregon State, and facing NC State in the ACC Challenge game) and is obviously expecting to make waves this season. We won’t be uncompetitive, but we will most likely drop this one.
Next we continue on to Baton Rouge where we face preseason No. 7 LSU. Angel Reese is gone, but Kim Mulkey remains. So do two of the three preseason media predictions for SEC Player of the Year, Flau’Jae Johnson and Aneesah Morrow. We got handled start-to-finish last year by LSU. I’d expect the game to be closer, but we may still not be at the point where we can really hope to steal a game like this. Tigers take it.
To round out this mini-portion of our schedule, we host THEM in Memorial for our only game against each other of the season. The Volunlosers only return Sara Puckett and Jewel Spear of the six players who started a game against us last year. The big news here is the new coach from Marshall, Kim Caldwell, taking over a program that is more than half seniors. Coach Caldwell’s Marshall ran a wholly unique offense last year, switching out like hockey lines and winning by making every game a cardio exercise as much as possible for the other team. I doubt we’ll see something similar here, but the creativity and talent level (lots of high-quality transfers on top of solid returners) are obvious. I think this one will go be close, but of course I think we pull it out.
It Just Means More: Holding Steady
After a pretty tough stretch, we get a hopeful breather game against Arkansas. The Piglets were picked to finish last in the conference, and I think we will be good enough that we handle business easily. Should be a good opportunity for the team to enjoy a slower week and what should be an easy win.
Alabama is next. The preseason No. 24, led by preseason All-SEC First Team pick Sarah Ashlee Parker look to be a serious challenge. The Tide return nearly all their production from last year. The thing is, we nearly beat them last year. We led the game into the fourth quarter. The Tide add two senior transfers including Zaay Green who will be playing for her fourth school in seven years this season. I don’t know if they will be much better than they were last year, but I am confident we will be. I think the Tide may be overrated. I’m hopeful for a win here.
After facing the Tide, we head to Gainesville where we’ll play the now-diminished Florida Gators. If you read my personnel review, you know the Gators’s best player from last year, Aliyah Matharu, just declared her intention to transfer. She’ll be on a different team by the time conference play commences, and it’s a little tricker to evaluate this team knowing she’ll be gone. I’d take us in this one.
We return home to host Ole Miss, the only team we face twice this year. Could see us splitting this series.
Rounding out the middle part of our schedule are the Texas Shorthorns. Madison Booker is one of the marquis names of the sport from last year on a team with national title ambitions. Like I said when talking about LSU, I just don’t know if we have the talent level to take on the tippy top of the sport yet, assuming the talent gradient remains as steep as it has in recent years. We maybe hold it close in the first quarter, but eventually Texas is almost sure to pull ahead and not look back.
It Just Means More: Winding Down (and South Carolina)
After the Texas game, we get a little bit of a breather starting with Mississippi State. Two of their three best starters return, Jerkaila Jordan and Debreasha Powe. We played the Bulldogs tight last year. Georgia Southern grad transfer Terren Ward seems ready to add a ton of scoring the moment the season starts in Starkville. Otherwise not quite sure this team is going to be all that much better? Probably about the same.
Next is Auburn, who supposedly finished worse than their record last year. They return just Celia Sumbane from their starting lineup and bring in just two proven transfers. I think we win this game a lot easier than we did last year. They are just missing too much production from last year without adding enough to make up for it. Having been to Auburn, I am a little surprised the War Tigers drew this much talent to that tiny little hamlet.
Things pick way way up against preseason No. 10 Oklahoma. The BOOMERS return their star player Skylar Vann and add standout transfer Raegan Beers from Oregon State in what is sure to be a big season in Norman. The Sooners will most likely overpower us.
Our final challenge of the season is South Carolina. The reigning national champions will beat us, and it won’t be particularly close. I am not gonna spend a bunch of time on them because like, what is there to know? They will lose maybe one game all year before the tournament, and I just don’t see it being to us.
Things start to wind down with Texas A&M at home. I wrote this article out of order and was pretty tired when I got to the Aggies, so I’m just gonna assume they didn’t get much better from last year based on vibes I’ve picked up looking at the other teams in the conference. I think we’ll beat ‘em.
Finally, we get the chance to end on a high note with Missourah (spits). The Tigers finished last in the conference and second-to-last in this year’s preseason media poll. Only one starter, Ashton Judd, returns. Handful of decent transfers, but I don’t expect this team has improved much. The athletic department (and NIL collective) has other priorities and there just wasn’t anything splashy enough this offseason to make me think we won’t be able to handle business before we head back to campus to prepare for the conference tournament.
General Conference Overview
Having now at least glanced at every team in the conference, I think there is a bit of a gulf between teams in two places. Using the preseason SEC media poll I’ve mentioned throughout this post, because it’s roughly how I’d rank teams anyways, I think you’ll see a sort of gap between Ole Miss and Alabama and another between Mississippi State and Auburn. Generally I’d expect all the teams to finish more-or-less within the tiers created by those gaps. For us, that means somewhere between sixth and tenth (I would drop Florida into the bottom tier).
What Else?
Found a graphic of every preseason AP ballot. One voter has us as high as No. 18. Otherwise, haven’t seen any big news this past week. Just looking forward to finally getting started next week. Keep an eye out for the game threads. See y’all there!
