A fire has been burning inside the Idaho women’s basketball team since the end of last season when the Vandals failed to make the Big Sky Tournament.
“Last year we were a little bummed with how the season went,” Idaho senior Christina Salvatore said. “We all thought we could have done better. It’s serving as our motivation and our fire to come out and really prove ourselves.”
Salvatore, a 5-foot-11-inch guard, started all 29 games last season. She averaged 9.8 points per game – which leads all Idaho returners – and 7.2 rebounds per game.
She said she is confident in the team, despite the loss of star guard and team captain Stacey Barr.
Barr is playing professionally for the Perth Lynx of the Women’s National Basketball League in Australia.
Regardless, the 11 returning members bring experience for the Vandals.
“(The freshmen) are still learning the defensive parts of the game, still learning our offenses and sets and stuff but that’s to come as freshmen,” Salvatore said. “They’re really coming in clutch when we need them to. They get after it, they work hard, they can all shoot the ball.”
Senior post Ali Forde was a two-sport athlete (basketball and volleyball) for the Vandals until this year when she decided to focus solely on basketball.
“I do really wish I could have played this fourth year (of volleyball) but everything has to end sometime,” Forde said. “I want to play basketball overseas next year and so I really wanted this year to focus on basketball.”
Forde averaged 9.4 points per game last season.
The Vandals play Lewis-Clark State College in an exhibition game at 5:30 p.m. Friday at the Memorial Gym.
Idaho’s regular season begins against UC Santa Barbara at 2 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Memorial Gym.
Idaho coach Jon Newlee said this season’s team has a lot of confidence in its ability to play together as a unit.
Idaho is picked to finish eighth by the Big Sky Conference media and sixth by the Big Sky coaches.
This year’s Big Sky Tournament will be in Reno, Nevada, and will include all 12 Big Sky teams. In past years, only the top eight teams qualified for the tournament.
“We’d definitely like to win our season and get to that tournament,” Forde said. “We want to win a game in the tournament. We have a really good team this year and I think we can do it.”
Tess Fox can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @tesstakesphotos
RAFOX
Way to go Tess. I liked your Vandal football pictures too.
Agent
Way to go Tess. I liked your Vandal football game photos too.