Christina Quaye, Jasmine McCullough, Danielle Kamm and Efueko Osagie-Landry. Those four players represent the top four rebounders from last year's women's basketball team. Those four players also graduated.
Enter Svetlana Kovalenko, Kelly Lam and Marissa Thrower. As far as the post game goes for this year's team, these three players will be expected to fill the gaping hole in the lane.
Last year Quaye, McCullough, Kamm and Osagie-Landry accounted for 35.7 of the team's 70.9 points per game, as well as 20.5 of the team's 40.3 rebounds per game. The Golden Eagles will surely miss the production on the inside, but head coach Terri Mitchell does not want that to be an excuse for any drop-off in production this season.
"I know that everyone is looking at our team and saying we graduated, coming off our best season ever, we graduated four seniors who were really important contributors," Mitchell said. "I just want everyone to know our expectations never change."
Expectations have not changed, but the offensive system has. With so many viable post options last season, Mitchell used what she calls a three-out, two-in set. This called for there to be two post players on the inside always, with three players working the perimeter.
This season the Golden Eagles will be running a four-out, one-in set in order to account for the lack of depth in the post as well as the increased depth at the guard positions.
"I'm used to playing both inside and out just because after playing with Christina or Jasmine, it's always just reading and who's got mismatches," Kovalenko said.
Last season Kovalenko averaged 4.0 points per game and 3.8 rebounds while spending much of her time inside the lane. Kovalenko is one of the tallest players on the Golden Eagles' roster standing 6-foot-3 inches tall along with freshman Jocelyn Mellen and junior Kelly Lam.
As a sophomore last year Lam averaged 4.4 points and 2.6 rebounds. The other returning forward is junior Marissa Thrower, who averaged 3.6 points and 2.5 rebounds as a sophomore.
With Lam and Kovalenko working on the inside along with freshmen Paige Fiedorowicz, Jasmine Collins and Mellen, Thrower will be spending much of her time slashing and cutting at the wing position.
"I like the wing because once the ball has been reversed to me I can look to shoot the three," Thrower said. "If the three's not there I have the ability to go to the hole."
The combination of Thrower, Kovalenko and Lam is a step down from last year's post players, but Mitchell said the proper modifications will be made to best suit the team.
"Look at the talent and say, 'How can I as a coach and a coaching staff adjust our system to our team, never compromising that we're going to be a good defensive team?' " Mitchell said.
Keeping a defensive mindset should not be difficult for Lam and Kovalenko, who combined for 40 blocks last season, second and third on the team, respectively.
As far as adjusting to the talent, Mitchell has a bevy of speedy guards at her disposal, and she plans on using them.
"You take one negative and say, 'Okay we're smaller than probably most teams we're gonna meet, but then we're faster than a lot of them, so how can we accentuate that strength?' " Mitchell said.
Kovalenko and Thrower both understand the strength of their team right now is its speed and said they are excited at the prospect of running on teams as much as possible.
"We're definitely gonna run on anybody and everybody, and we're gonna press and it's going to be a little bit different game because we're very fast this year," Kovalenko said. "All of our incoming freshman, our guards are very very fast."
With the success that last year's team had and the ensuing losses of key players, the outlook of this year's team is cloudy.
"I mean, we know we're good, but I think it's up to us because I feel like we're almost like the underdogs," Thrower said. "It's up to us to prove to everybody else that we're good."