The Missouri Valley Conference is always competitive no matter what sport is in season.
Including women’s basketball.
Last season, an MVC record-tying seven teams reached postseason play with five programs surpassing 20 victories. Murray State won the MVC tournament last year before falling to Iowa in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The Racers finished 25-8 overall and 16-4 in the conference, tied with Missouri State, which has since left to join Conference USA. Belmont, Drake and Illinois State are the other three schools that surpassed 20 victories.
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Murray State junior guard Halli Poock is the MVC’s returning leading scorer after finishing sixth last season behind five graduated seniors. The 5-foot-6 guard averaged 17 points per game in 31 games played last season. The leader who has since graduated was Drake’s Katie Dinnebier, who averaged 23.4 ppg.
Southern Illinois’ Uchenna Gift, who has since graduated, led the MVC in rebounding with an average of 12.8 per outing. The leading returner is junior forward Nevaeh Thomas, who finished ninth in the MVC with a 7.0 average.
Indiana State coach Marc Mitchell acknowledged the competition during the MVC’s Zoom media conference Thursday.
“Year 1 was an eye opener for me,” Mitchell said. “I can’t tell you how many great players are in this league and the coaching from everywhere. Everybody in this league coaching is extremely good and I’m just fortunate to be here.”
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While there are technically no expansion teams in college sports, one could say this season’s Indiana State team qualifies as one after all of its players graduated or transferred. So that gave Mitchell the task of putting together a brand-new roster over the off-season. With a new team comes growing pains and Mitchell talked about what they’ve had to deal with so far.
“Some days, we take two steps forward and then the next day, we’re taking three steps back,” Mitchell said. “Having all these new kids here and trying to mesh them all together is a challenge.”
It’s a brand new coaching staff as well, other than assistant coach Jason Pruitt and team manager in Aidan Thacker.
“So everybody else is new,” Mitchell pointed out. “So we’re trying to mesh all this together.”
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He said summer was important for the Sycamores as they got to know each other a little bit during the summer. But it’s been a challenge getting everyone to mesh as he also mentioned they’ve battled some injuries. However, he’s confident in the team’s future because they’ll figure it out by the time it matters most.
But what’s been the most exciting aspect about this newly assembled team? That would be athleticism, Mitchell said.
“The athleticism, the tenacity that these young ladies have, that we brought in, I’m really excited about that,” he explained.
Mitchell said his players need to either get on board ship or get out immediately.
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“So you’re in or you’re out,” he continued.
“That’s how I coach. I’m very intense. People who know me know that I’m a silly, fun, loving, crazy person off the court. But in between the lines, I’m extremely serious.”
Mitchell said he’s extremely vocal and said he gets after his kids.
“You have to have tough skin to play for me,” Mitchell said. “Our style is going to be up tempo, pressure defense. We’re going to use our athleticism. We want to create havoc on defense and we want to get out and run.”
The Sycamores tip off the non-conference slate of their season at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 3 at IU Indy.
“For the non-conference, I really want to just use that as a preseason,” Mitchell said. “All those games, we really have to learn what works for us and what’s not going to work for us.”
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According to Mitchell, they have to get healthy bodies back by the time the season starts and is hopeful they’ll get a couple back.
“We really want to use that non-conference to really mesh together and get ready for conference play,” Mitchell said.
