Wendy Haun
RICHMOND — Let the roller-coaster ride commence.
After a down year for the Lady Colonels, who failed to qualify for the Ohio Valley Conference tournament for just the second time in 18 years, coach Chrissy Roberts went out to recruit what her team had been sorely lacking.
Roberts brought in height — 6-foot-5 transfer Kaiti Cochren and 6-foot-1 true freshman Alex Jones — scoring threats — transfer Talisha Davis and true freshman Brittany Coles — and top prep prospects Michaelea Kleist (from Mason, Ohio) and Shakeyia Colyer (from Sanford, Fla.)
“We signed a good group of young talent this year,” Roberts said. “It’s probably going to be a roller-coaster ride for us, but we feel like it should be a good one for us. We’re going to have our highs and lows, but we’re going to be competitive and with the talent that we have on the team, we should be in a lot of games.”
More likely than not, most of the players wearing an Eastern Kentucky University uniform this season will be unrecognizable to Lady Colonel fans. There are only six returning players — including OVC preseason pick Nadia Mossong — who will be mixing it up with nine freshmen and transfers. That’s not all that is new. Roberts has been working on a new offensive scheme to speed up her team’s play, so all of the players have had to start fresh this year.
“We pretty much have a whole new offensive system, so we’ve all had to grow together,” EKU senior Colette Cole said. “We’ve had to learn just as much as the new players, so it’s been a group effort to get through it all. With all of the new people coming in, the coaches have done a good job getting them acclimated to the team. But they look to us to show them on the court how things are supposed to be done.”
The season did not start smoothly, with EKU falling to Division II Findlay last Sunday in an exhibition game by a staggering 19 points. However, Roberts said early in the season, her team won’t be concentrating so much on the scoreboard as on the production on the floor.
“Here early on, 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.”
However, with early-season games against Western Kentucky (Saturday in Bowling Green), at the University of Cincinnati (Dec. 18) and a trip to the Lady Pirate Invitational at East Carolina during Thanksgiving, the Lady Colonels will need to iron out the kinks in their offensive system and quickly.
“If you play against people who are the talent level like (the teams we’re going to play this season), it makes you play harder,” Cole said. “The obvious fact is, they are great teams and great athletes.”
