2008 Woodie Awards
Women's basketball team wins
Mitchell Woll
Issue date: 11/5/07 Section: Sports
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The University of Northern Colorado's 76-59 victory against the Colorado School of Mines marked the beginning for a new women's basketball team.
UNC women's basketball only has four returning players from last year, Chelsie Luhring, Danielle Hagen, Alisa Christopherson and Whitley Cox. Cox received the most playing time last year and Hagen and Christopherson's 2006-2007 season's were cut short due to injuries. Luhring was forced to sit out last year due to transfer regulations.
Despite not having any experience with the Bears team, the new players still showed their stuff at the Butler-Hancock Sports Pavilion during UNC's win against the Orediggers on Friday.
"That's what our goal was - was to win, to run our offense, to play great defense," Cox said.
Cox said she could see the difference between this year's new team and last year's.
"Everyone loves to shoot the ball," Cox said. "We're not afraid to take matters into our own hands and we like to play defense. We talk, we're just more together."
Communication during the game was a factor toward winning. New UNC guard Jamie Schroeder said talking was key for a solid defense.
"We really wanted to work on talking today," Schroeder said. "I think we did a pretty good job with that."
Bears head coach Jaime White said Cox, as a veteran of the team, must be a leader.
"Whitley is really the only one coming back with playing time and she got a lot of it," White said. "She averaged about 38 minutes last year, so we need her to be a leader. We need her to score. She hit some threes tonight which she hasn't done in the past, so that's big for her."
Cox certainly led the Bears against the School of Mines, scoring a total of 23 points and playing for 31 minutes, followed by Kate Kevorken who scored 16 points and played for 11 minutes.
Cox said the entire team played well and the new team will be different.
"Our offense worked really, really well," Cox said. "We had a lot of hustle plays. We just played really hard and we played together and you could tell the difference from this year's team from last year's."
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