Wendy Haun
Ready or not, the Lady Colonels will be facing their first opponent of the 2009-10 season today.
Eastern Kentucky University will play host to the University of Findlay in an exhibition matchup at 2 p.m. in McBrayer Arena.
“It’s hard to believe the season’s here,” EKU coach Chrissy Roberts said during the team’s annual media day Wednesday. “I guess we have to be ready. It’s probably going to be a roller-coaster ride for us, but we feel like it should be a good one for us.”
Today’s matchup will be the first meeting between the two schools. The University of Findlay is a member of the Division II Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletics Conference, and is located in Findlay, Ohio. In the Lady Oilers’ first exhibition on Wednesday, they fell to Bowling Green, 80-50.
Findlay is led by senior guard Audra Mihalic, sophomore guard Laura Bardall and freshman Ashley Andrews.
Lady Colonel fans will get their first look at what is almost an entirely new team. They only return six players — Colette Cole, Nadia Mossong, Cherie White, Sarah Fraser-Jones, Sonjia Hoston and Jasmine Lewin — while adding nine new players.
Kentucky products Alex Jones (of Elizabethtown) and Brittany Coles (of Henry Clay) will likely immediately contribute, as well as junior college transfers Kaiti Cochren and Talisha Davis.
“One thing that’s great about the team this season is we should be balanced,” Roberts said. “It’s not going to be about one or two scorers. We should be able to get point production from everyone on the floor, which is nice.”
The game will be the only exhibition for EKU, which will open the regular season against Western Kentucky next Saturday in Bowling Green. Coming off a tough season, during which the Lady Colonels finished 7-20 overall and 4-14 in Ohio Valley Conference play, Roberts said she has focused early on in practice to undo some of the mistakes her players made last year.
“It’s been about not taking breaks and completing every play, whether it’s getting a rebound or scoring and going hard at all times,” she said. “A lot of times (last season), we would get bombed or hit and we would tend to stop and pout. Once we get to that point of not worrying about what has happened, but working on what we can do to make up for it, we’re going to be all right.”
