Toledo women hoping to get back to winning ways

As college basketball season kicks off, it’s quite common for teams who finished the previous year on a high note to reference the success, using it as fuel for the upcoming season.

Not so for the University of Toledo women’s basketball team.

“I think this year is going to be different in many aspects,” said senior forward Inma Zanoguera. “We want to focus on being more consistent, we know we have the talent and potential to do well by the time Mid-American Conference season starts.”

After an up-and-down season last year, the Rockets reached the second round of the MAC conference tournament, a positive end to their .500 season. But this year brings a host of fresh new faces and a clean slate, according to UT head coach Tricia Cullop.

“Because we have so many new parts we are kind of an unknown commodity,” she explained. “I think we’re kind of relishing in that because in years past people have always known what we had and I think this year people don’t know what to expect.”

This year’s Rockets will have a particularly youthful look. The roster features ten underclassmen compared to just four upperclassman. And these rookie Rockets also seem to take the roll of unknown commodity as a positive.

“It’s kind of fun because our team can go out and earn the opportunity to be considered one of the better teams,” Cullop said. “Every night we need to pay the price in order to gain some respect.

“We’re going to have to prove it every night by how we perform and how we get better in practice.”

With so many underclassman in Rockets’ uniforms this season, it will be essential that leadership on and off the court be present. Cullop said even though the team may be young, there is certainly no shortage in leaders.

Zanoguera embraces the role of a leader and sees it as something that comes with being a veteran on the team.

“I feel they see me as a leader and I definitely see myself as a leader,” she said. “It’s a 24/7 job and my teammates know they can come up to me for advice anytime and I’m very happy to offer them that and I’m very glad to see they trust me like that.”

The underclassman embrace the idea of a clean slate for the upcoming season, considering the majority weren’t even in a Rocket uniform last year. Freshman Michaela Rasmussen sees the fact that the team is so young as a perfect opportunity to build strong bonds.

“We’re developing really good chemistry among the team,” she said. “With the new offense we are just able to know what everyone else is going to do.

“We’re really fast and we have a lot of tall people this year.”

As a freshman, Rasmussen finds comfort in knowing that she can seek many teammates and coaches for advice

“The really great thing about this team is I feel comfortable going up to anybody that’s older than me,” she said. “I have really good relationships with all of them.”

One young player, sophomore forward Janice Monokana, has been hard at work crafting her game, and has caught the attention of her head coach.

“[Janice] shows a lot of confidence,” Cullop said. “She was always a great driver, but now she’s really improved her outside shot which will open up a lot of things for our team.”

Of course all eyes are on improving from last year, even if the players and coaches don’t want to reference what happened last season.

“The overall skill of our team, we’ve got a lot of people who can shoot, pass and handle the ball,” Cullop said. “Not only that, but having a little bit more length that we had in years past we can post up a lot of kids. We did not shoot the ball well last year.”

“You’re going to see a much better shooting team this year. You’re going to see a team that’s a lot deeper. We had some kids that were running on fumes last year because they had to play so many minutes and now we can give them some rest.”