As the University of Charleston's women's basketball team went through the offseason in preparation for the 2016-17 season, the players and coaching staff began to adopt a slogan that pushed them.
"New year, new us."
Despite losing its leading scorer and rebounder from a team that finished seventh in the Mountain East Conference a year ago, the Golden Eagles enter this season excited about what the future does with a good mix of new faces and returning players who were picked to finish fourth in the league this year. UC begins its season at 6 p.m. Saturday versus Kutztown at West Virginia State's Walker Convocation Center in the MEC/CIAA Challenge.
"We're still finding out who they are as a team," UC coach Adam Collins said. "Your success is determined by the way you get your talent to work together, and we have talent with some new players and girls who are back. We have to find the way to get them to fill the roles we need and excel like we know they can."
A lot of those players who bring back experience are doing so thanks to UC being hit hard by injuries last season.
When several seniors went down, it forced coach Collins to look to younger players and experiment more with the rotations than he had originally planned - something that may have provided some frustration at the time, but can pay dividends now as those younger players have seen more time on the floor.
"When we had some of those girls go down last year, it put us in a spot where we had to take young girls who might have been in the mix for some playing time but went from playing 10 minutes to 30 minutes per game," Collins said. "Now we come into this year with a situation where we have a team that finished pretty strong and we have a group that has a lot of experience that they might not have had if we didn't have to go through some of the things we went through a year ago."
Leading the way among the returning players will be starters Mya Walker and Abby Watson, who will be back to play a big role once again. Walker averaged 8.8 points and 5.3 rebounds per game to lead among those who are back.
And while Collins likes the group that UC has back, he's also excited about the group of players who have come into Charleston and are looking to make their mark on the program. Among that group is a pair of Division I transfers and a junior college transfer who could come in and make an immediate impact, as well as a handful of freshmen who could grow into roles for this year's team.
Leading the way among that group of newcomers is Jordyn Peck, who comes to Charleston from Wagner after averaging 12 points per game two years ago and 8.8 last season. Peck is an all-around scorer who Collins believes can potentially make a big impact out of the gate, which was shown as she led the Golden Eagles with 19 points in an exhibition loss to Duke on Sunday.
"Jordyn immediately gives us a proven scorer, and that's something we lost after last year," Collins said. "We knew we had a lot of pieces back, but we felt like we were missing that person who had been a go-to scorer at that level, and she gives us that option."