The starting five of the 2018-19 Acadia Axewomen basketball team will be significantly different than the quintet which celebrated the AUS Final 6 championship on the floor of the Scotiabank Centre last March.
“Our hopes are still the same as everybody’s but it’s definitely a different looking team this year, for sure,” said Len Harvey, the conference’s reigning coach of the year who’s entering his fourth season as Acadia bench boss.
The all-star back-court of Chanel Smith and Paloma Anderson, the U Sports women’s basketball player of the year, league leading scorer and two-time conference MVP, has graduated. So has versatile forward Katie Ross, a two-sport varsity athlete, and six-foot-one post Allie Berry, a 2018 AUS first-team all-star.
The lone returning starter from Acadia’s 80-58 rout of the UPEI Panthers in the league championship final on March 4 is Haley McDonald, who as a sophomore last season was an AUS second-team all-star and the fourth-leading scorer in the conference.
A significant turnover from a squad that went 20-2 in the regular season and AUS playoffs and was the third seed at the U Sports national championship.
But that doesn’t concern Harvey, nor do the expectations of being the defending AUS champs. To him, each team in the eight-team league are starting at zero when the season opens on Thursday.
“There’s no king or queen of the mountain, so to speak,” Harvey said. “We all walk back down the side of the mountain and we all start at the same place as we try to climb back up.
“I hate the words defending the title or knocking somebody off. We’ve all walked back down to the bottom of the mountain with the other seven teams in the conference and we’re all trying to get back to the summit the fastest.
“The biggest thing for us is we’re not talking about defending the title. We have standards every day that we try to work towards. For sure, we have the blueprint on what it takes to win but every year is a new journey up the mountain.”
Harvey isn’t concerned about a lack of experience, either. Forward Kelsey Rice, who started six games for the Axewomen last season, and McDonald are expected to be in the starting lineup for Acadia’s season opener Thursday evening against the host Saint Mary’s Huskies at the Homburg Centre.
They’ll line up alongside senior Ellen Hatt, who Harvey said “was kind of like the sixth person for us last season,” and transfers Jayda Veinot, formerly of SMU, and Shalyn Field, who played four years at Dalhousie.
“We have some transfers who have some experience so that’ll help us this season,” Harvey said.
“We’re really excited for all of the different players that we have right now. They’re chomping at the bit to get going.
“It’s just finding that right balance of being patient but pushing them at the same time. There’s an understanding that we still have expectations of accomplishing things right now. It’s not about waiting for years down the road. It’s about right now.”
The SMU-Acadia matchup is the lone game on the schedule Thursday. The Huskies (11-9 last season) will also start the new season without four of their starters — Jasmine Cain, Kennisha-Shanice Luberisse, Shanieka Wood and Katrina Murrell — from a year ago.
The St. Francis Xavier X-Women, who finished last in the conference last season with a 1-19 mark, open at home Friday against the UNB Varsity Reds (10-10). It will mark the debut of new St. F.X. head coach Lee Anna Osei.
On Saturday, the Cape Breton Capers (13-6), led by Mackenzee Ryan and senior Hannah Brown, visit the Dalhousie Tigers (5-15), who return 11 players including co-captains Diedre Alexander and Robertha Charles.
Acadia returns to play SMU in Halifax on Saturday. The Axewomen are coming off a busy six-game pre-season schedule condensed over nine days in Kingston, Ont., and Ottawa.
The results were mixed. They dropped an 86-70 decision to a tough Laval squad and a close 72-70 setback to Queen’s. But the Axewomen earned a 70-63 win over Alberta and took Carleton to overtime before losing 56-53.
“We’ve tried over the last few years to have the toughest exhibition schedule that we could put together. I think that’s important,” Harvey explained.
“Laval will be the No. 1 team in the country. But I would like to have the Queen’s game back. We could’ve won that game.
“But I like where we are. We still have some kinks to work out like everybody else. We have some coachable girls who are trying to do the right stuff and are working hard. That’s all you can ask for.”
