GREEN BAY — The UW-Green Women’s basketball team is fresh off an NCAA tournament appearance last year. This year, they’re not off to the start they wanted. They are 6-4 on the season under first year head coach Kayla Karius who’s back coaching her alma mater. But she and the players know, they’re still feeling each other out and there’s plenty of time to get this thing right to reach their lofty goals.
“We know that we’re going to get everybody's best shot,” said Karius. “At least that’s how it feels and we have to accept that and you’ve gotta know that you gotta bring your best every single night and that’s the mentality we’re trying to impress upon our players right now.”
The only new pieces coming into this season were Karius and her staff. The Phoenix returned all five starters from last season but not everything is going to mesh early on in the year with the staff implementing their new system and trying to find what fits with their players.
“A few months of getting to learn each other,” said senior forward Jasmine Kondrakiewicz. “Figuring out what works best. Implement their new ideas into what we already do.”
“It takes time and we’re figuring that out and I think we’re in a really good place, but we are going to be navigating that the entire year, I think” said Karius.
While there have been some negatives, such as getting into early deficits, a positive Karius has seen from her squad is resiliency.
“We have veteran players who know how to win and they know to stick with it when things aren’t going their way,” she said. I do think that is a real positive.“
One of their leading scorers Natalie McNeal (12.8 ppg) has missed a few games due to injury, but if she’s healthy or not, Karius wants to see more from the offense. The team as a whole is shooting 40.7% from the field, which is No. 189 in the NCAA.
“I feel like offensively, we’ve gotta take a step,” Karius said. “We’ve gotta be scoring it at a higher rate. We’ve gotta be getting to the free throw line better. Certainly we were without our leading score last week, but we gotta have people step up.”
The Phoenix head coach says she still has to pinch herself sometimes as a reminder of how lucky she is to coach at her alma mater. So far they’ve only had three home games and Karius is excited to get back in front of the fans at the Kress.
“We’ve been on the road a little bit, it is not the same everywhere that we go. We have the best fans and we really feel that support when we’re at the home games for sure. Feel really fortunate to be at the spot I’m at right now," she said.
Next up for the Phoenix, they’re at UW-Milwaukee on Wednesday night before they return home to Kress for a five game homestand.
