Let's be honest: a 9-25 season is the kind of thing that makes you want to delete the group chat and pretend you didn't see the score. But Kamie Ethridge's women's basketball team isn't running from it. They're using it. That matters to us, because we watched this program weather the portal exodus and somehow come back with Continuity pays off as Cougar women return every starter for the first time since the portal exodus. That kind of stability doesn't happen by accident, and it's the foundation for what Ethridge is trying to build now.
Our take is simple: this team won't be good because they forgot last year. They'll be good because they remember it. Mackenzie Chatfield said it best with that crack about losing 30 games, it's a joke, but it's not funny. She spent the summer retraining her three-point shot after a shoe gave her nerve damage. That's not a stat. That's a story. She went from 35% shooting behind the arc to attempting exactly one three-pointer all of last season. That's a broken confidence, and she's rebuilding it by hand with assistant coach Laurie Koehn. We're watching a point guard who averaged 4.6 points and 3.3 assists decide she wants to be more than that. That's the kind of work you can't fake.
The returning starters, Villa, Covill, Abraham, Valancic, Ruud, all came back. That's rare. That's the same group that went 9-25, and they chose to stay. Alex Covill missed 14 games with a foot injury and still averaged 10.8 points. Eleonora Villa dropped 560 points last season. Those are real numbers. Ethridge says they're more balanced, more physical, and communicate better. That's coachspeak until you see it, but the fact she's saying it in October, not February, is worth noting. She knows the offense still has to show up consistently. "It's a shot-making game and a decision-making game," she said. Translation: they can run the right play and still miss the bucket. That's the difference between January improvement and another long winter.
The biggest question is the six new faces, including 6-2 SMU transfer Elizaveta Filchagina and a pile of freshmen. They're fighting for bench minutes right now. Ethridge needs them to grow fast. That's the open question: can the freshmen and sophomores catch up before the conference schedule gets mean? Because if they do, and if Chatfield's three-point shot comes back, and if Covill stays upright, this team has a shot at being the kind of February team that makes people forget September. If they don't, it's another season of watching the scoreboard and hoping.
The one concrete thing to watch is Chatfield's three-point attempt count. She took one last year. If she's taking five a game by December, that's the signal. That's the proof the summer work stuck. Go Cougs.