STARKVILLE — Vic Schaefer begins the 2016-17 season today with one big question: Are there different degrees of young?
A year ago, the Mississippi State women’s basketball team looked to build on a 27-win season and a trip to the second round of the NCAA tournament with a team made up largely of underclasswomen. The five-win improvement from the previous season solidified hopes that the Bulldogs were making strides to becoming a top-tier program in the Southeastern Conference and one that could contend with the nation’s top teams.
This season, MSU figures to be wearing the bull’s eye that it often has looked for on the backs of teams like South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas A&M, and LSU. The Bulldogs will tackle that challenge with an older team that features four seniors from Schaefer’s first recruiting class.
But this will be the first season those players, the members of a talented junior class, and the rest of the Bulldogs will have to contend with a three top-10 preseason rankings and a fourth that has MSU at No. 12. While the high expectations might not be new for Schaefer and the members of his coaching staff, he is curious to see how his players handle the burden of not taking anyone for granted and giving best effort every day.
“It is a matter of how much better have we gotten, what’s our motivation, is there still a taste in your mouth from the UConn disaster?” Schaefer said. “There is always a chance, all you have to do is look at the (NFL’s) Carolina Panthers. They are coming off a Super Bowl. What are they now? 1-3? They are not playing well. It is the same team, but it ain’t workin’. Whatever it is, it is just not clicking for them. As a coach, I am constantly coaching the ghost trying to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
MSU will try to start answering some of those questions at 4 p.m. today when it holds its first practice of the season. It will hold 30 practices in 40 days before its only exhibition game, a game against former MSU assistant coach Elena Lovato and Arkansas-Fort Smith at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, at Humphrey Coliseum.
MSU will face Purdue at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 11, in the first round of the Maine Tipoff Tournament.
Schaefer said there was some “trepidation” last season as the Bulldogs began a journey to see if they could improve on their 27-win season. He said the departure of key seniors like Martha Alwal, Savannah Carter, Kendra Grant, and Jerica James thrust younger players into bigger roles. Those players responded in a big way, pushing MSU to 11 wins in the SEC, to the title game of the SEC tournament, and past Michigan State in the second round of the NCAA tournament into the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament for the second time in program history. A 60-point loss to eventual national champion Connecticut ended the season in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Schaefer hopes the players have some of the fire in their belly to use the loss to UConn as fuel this season. Senior Dominique Dillingham, who averaged 7.9 points per game last season, said the Bulldogs are “antsy” to get down to business.
“I think we are hungrier than last year,” Dillingham said. “We got a taste of the Sweet 16 last year, so we want to go farther than we got last year.”
Schaefer hopes that is the case because the non-conference schedule features a lot of “good, healthy competition” in the first two months to get the team ready for SEC play. The marquee matchup should be a game against Texas, a preseason top-10 team, at 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 20, at Humphrey Coliseum. Texas beat MSU 53-47 last season in Austin, Texas. Schaefer hopes his team has learned from that experience and is ready to show its relative inexperience dealing with the rigors of being a top-10 program won’t be a stumbling block.
“I have got the All-Airport team,” Schaefer said. “They look good walking through the airport. That isn’t the piece, though, that wins championships. Now, if you don’t have that piece you have no chance at the other. I have that piece, but what makes the championship team is the guts, the guts of each individual. … I think that’s the piece that until you can get around them and coach them every day, work with them, that is the piece that you’re really searching for and trying to see what that looks like.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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