Women's Hoops at Richmond Nov 25

The Lady Hokies open the season as part of a doubleheader at Cassell on Nov 25. The men play Radford at noon; the Ladies play Richmond at 4PM. I think you can watch the game on ACCNx.

The Ladies will have a significantly different roster this year. Lydia Rivers and Taja Cole have run out of eligibility. Trinity Baptiste(6th player of the year in the ACC) transferred to Arizona. And Dara Mabrey transferred to Notre Dame. There are 3 or 4 transfers, depending on whether Azana Baines get a waiver to transfer from Duke, Other transfers are 6'3" RSr F Asiah Jones from USC. She played in 26 games, starting 4 times; she averaged 5 pts and 3 rebounds per game while playing 14 minutes. She also blocked 24 shots. With her and Kitley down low, defense around the basket should be very good.

Da'Ja Green 5'6" RSr G from Wofford started and played 30 games last year. She scored 12.7 pts and picked up 4.1 rebounds per game while having 142 assists and 57 turnovers. She averaged 34 minutes per game. While her stats look very good, the starting PG is projected to be Georgia Amoore, a true Freshman from Australia.

The other transfer who is likely to play is 6'2" Jr F D'asia Gregg from Gulf Coast State, where she played in 18 games, starting 9, averaging 29 min/game. She averaged 15.3 pts and 6.1 rebounds per game.

The complete Roster is below, with projected starters highlighted in green. Players that have left the program are at the bottom:

Below are the players stats from last year. I did not include stats for freshmen. Stats for transfers are from the last year they played at their previous school. Players who have left the program are at the bottom; so you can see what we lost:

Just on a stats basis, the transfers in look like they can fill the space by the transfers out. We will be a taller team and coach Brooks says we will play more inside out ball running the offense through Kitley, who is reputed to have improved a lot(If the ACC Freshman of the Year has improved a lot, she should be very good). We still have the ability to shoot 3's; but we may play a little slower than last year.

This is Coach Roussell's second year at Richmond. They improved to 15-17 last year from 9-21 the year before. The Spiders lost 2 players who were contributors last year, Jaide Hinds-Clark contributed 11.8 pts and 6 rebounds, while starting all 32 games. Amy Duggan started 4 games and played in 28 contributing 2.6 pts and 2.5 rebounds in 10 minutes per game. Claire Holt is the leading returning scorer averaging 10.9 ppg. The other guard Kate Klimkiewicz contributed 10.1 ppg. At 6'1", she may be too tall for Amoore or Sheppard; Cayla King may be the one assigned to slow her down. Below are stats, etc for the Spiders:

Although, it may appear the Spiders match up fairly well with the Hokies, remember those stats are against A10 teams and the Hokies will have a significant height advantage. I hope this game is a typical early season warm up for the Ladies.

Go Hokies!