Before we discuss ASU, Washington released their schedule with non conference games against San Diego State, Santa Barbara and Davis being the tougher games. As Coach McGuff says, “it’s all by design” “a very difficult schedule”. Well it’s all relative I guess. Sadly Washington lost their best player Kristi Kingma to a season ending ACL. She plans to return next season.
Last season ASU was 20-11 overall and finished 3rd in the Pac 10 with an 11-7 mark. This earned them a trip to the NCAAs where they lost their first round game. However in May the bombshell was dropped, that long time Head Coach Charli Turner Thorne was taking a leave of absence. She seems to be set on returning for next season.
Long time Assistant Coach Joe Anders takes over as the Interim Head Coach. Anders is in his 11th season at ASU and was the Head Coach for 6 years at Sacramento State. The big mystery, will Anders employ the hockey style substitutions of Charli?
Meg Sanders returns for her 8th season as an Assistant and now Associate Head Coach. She was Head Coach at Northern Arizona University for 7 years, having succeeded Charli there.
Chris Mennig is a new Assistant, coming from Bluestar Basketball, where he was coordinator of events. Bluestar hosts a number of big time travel basketball tournaments, and views and ranks High School players. Chris was also a college Assistant for 15 years before Bluestar.
Amy Wright is also a new Assistant, having spent the last 3 years at Cleveland State.
After 15 years as an Assistant at ASU, Laura Hughes is now the Head Coach at Cochise JC.
Losses:
ASU graduated 3 of their top 4 scorers so they have some big holes to fill. They also lost their top recruit as she elected to play close to home, Los Angeles, and enroll at USC.
Dymond Simon graduated and she led the team in scoring at 13 points per game. Simon also had the most threes, but only 36 and only at 27%. Becca Tobin also graduated. The 6-5 Center was 2nd on the team with 6 rebounds and 3nd in points at 8.5 per game. Tenya Watson was the 3rd big loss, averaging 7.5 points and leading the team in both assists and steals. These three averaged 27 minutes per game, easily more total minutes than the next four players. Markisha Patterson who was 8th in average minutes and 8th in average points also graduated.
Top recruit Karina Alofaituli decided to stay close to her Southern California home for family reasons and is now at USC. Karina was ranked # 26 in the nation by HoopGurlz.
Returning Players:
Kimberly Brandon is a Sr, 6-2 Forward who lead the team in rebounding, 6.5, and was 2nd in scoring, 9.5 per game. She has really improved since arriving in Tempe.
Deja Mann is a 5-7 Sr Guard who started 14 games, averaging 4 points per game.
Alex Earl is 5-10 Sr Guard who was 3rd on the team in threes and averaged 3 points per game.
Kali Bennett is a 6-5 Sr Center who averaged 4 points and 4 rebounds per game.
Janae Fulcher is a 6-3 Jr Forward who averaged 5 points and 3 rebounds per game,
These five have the inside track to be starters based on the playing time last season.
Adrienne Thomas played in all games, 10 minutes per game, and averaged 2 points. She’s a 5-9 Soph Guard.
Joy Burke is a 6-5 Jr Center who didn’t play much behind Tobin and Bennett and averaged 2 points and 2 rebounds per game.
Olivia Major is a 5-7 Sr Guard. Haley Parson is a 5-5 Jr Guard who has only played in a couple of games and redshirted one of her three years at ASU. She has a 4.0 GPA at ASU.
New Players:
Promise Amukamara is a 5-8 Guard from Apollo High School near Tempe. Promise exploded onto the scene last year averaging 22 points per game in High School. Great genes, her brother was an NFL first round draft choice this past draft.
Jada Blackwell is a 6-1 Forward from Etiwanda High School in Southern California. She was ranked # 118 last year.
Micaela Pickens is a 5-8 JR and a JC transfer. Pickens was a JC all American averaging 23 points per game this past season. In her career at Cypress JC in Southern California she averaged 20 points, 7 rebounds and 2 blocks. At 5-8 she holds the school record for blocks.
Eliza Normen is a player I loved in Oregon in 2010. High energy, very athletic and so skilled. The 6-0 Guard/Wing was ranked # 43 in the nation. Sadly Normen tore her ACL late this past season and will almost certainly have to redshirt.
The Schedule:
Games against Illinois, Rutgers, DePaul and Boston College highlight a good schedule. We won’t see the Sun Devils at Stanford as they don’t travel to the Bay Area this season and the Oregon schools don’t travel to the desert.
The Season:
While the Sun Devils have 7 players who played quite a bit this past season, only one is a returning starter or started more than ½ of their games. Plus losing Charli for even a year hurts. They have a couple of good new players and they have two 6-5 post players. However I think this will be a middle of the Pac 12 team at best.
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