All Clayton Nielsen wants for his team this weekend is a win.
That’s the obvious line for any coach, but after a winless pre-season the Medicine Hat College Rattlers women’s basketball team might be a little impatient.
“The benefit of pre-season is it doesn’t count,” said Nielsen, whose team went 0-7 in the leadup to this Saturday’s regular season opener in Calgary. “We were able to play the rookies, the first-years a whole lot more. Out of the five, two or three took some really big steps forward because they got more time against more teams.
“We have a couple players who are more ready now than if we had done the plan we had set out to do in the beginning.”
The plan was to ease the newcomers in, but injuries to second-year guard Rhiannon Ware and third-year forward Katelyn Rozdeba forced Nielsen’s hand.
Everyone’s expected to be ready for the opener against St. Mary’s, so the early pain could be worth plenty of gain as the season goes on. Just like women’s volleyball, the basketball team will host the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference finals in 2020 so a playoff spot is already guaranteed.
“What people are going to understand is for us, coming from a program that the last couple years has been really good in regards to how we finished and being a really vet team, is to show those rookies how to play at this level,” said Nielsen. “That takes time. You can’t rush it along because if you rush it, they might shut down and you never get them back again.
“We can take our time a bit to finish fourth, so we earn our way to playoffs. We’re going anyway but we want to earn our way there.”
Having finished first last season and summarily stunned by a quarter-final loss to Augustana, Medicine Hat knows all that really matters is how you finish anyhow.
With fifth-year guard Morgan Muir and fourth-year forward Paige Cooper anchoring the group, the question will be who will make up the offensive gap lost from Kendall Kuntz’s graduation and Kiana Mintz. Muir was more of a playmaker before, while Cooper and Rozdeba seem ready to shoulder the extra expectations.
“That will take time too, that will take time for them to get used to having more responsibility,” said the head coach.
“I think it’s going to be an interesting start for us. We don’t start with (veteran-laden) Olds so that should be good for us to work our game in a little bit before we get in to some teams that might cause us some trouble.”
The women’s first home game is Friday, Oct. 25 against Lethbridge.
Men’s basketball
The men’s basketball team has undergone a massive overhaul but there are some names that stand out as returnees based on the team’s roster on their website.
Kieron Burgess, he of the incredible 41-point, 31-rebound game last season, is apparently back along with veteran starters Josh Magpantay and Arthur Rosa.
After them – plus fellow returnees Nick Murschell, Jevon Fray-Woodbine and David Kent-Canalejo – stand eight rookies. Four of them are from Medicine Hat, plus Murschell, marking the most hometown players on the Rattlers in recent memory.
Head coach Rich Humphrey told the News he was unavailable to be interviewed Thursday. His team went 13-8 last year after enduring several high-profile disciplinary incidents, two of which resulted in players being removed from the team. Still, they wound up fourth in playoffs and played their final two pre-season games against the University of Lethbridge, losing 85-62 and 99-80 two weeks ago.
St. Mary’s, their first opponent Saturday night, hasn’t had a winning season since joining the ACAC in 2012.
