With four starters gone from last year’s national championship team, the biggest obstacle to a successful title defence for the Saskatchewan Huskies women’s basketball team may be inexperience, especially after two returning veterans went down with pre-season injuries. But head coach Lisa Thomaidis has a more positive outlook.
“Not having them I was a little worried about what we’d look like but to give those young players full credit, they’ve come in and they’ve kind of picked up where we left off,” she said.
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It doesn’t hurt that a pair of Huskies rookies recently completed a stint with the junior women’s national team. Guard Libby Epoch and forward Summer Masikewich spent the summer playing for Team Canada at the FIBA Americas U18 Women’s Championship, where they won silver.
“It was amazing. To represent your country is a huge honour and to go through it with my teammate was incredible,” Masikewich said.
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The Canadian squad played a similar system to that of the Huskies, making the transition to U Sports basketball a smooth one for Epoch.
“We ran the same offensive sets as we do here at Sask so that gave me a lot of experience and especially as a point guard it was great to have that exposure,” she said.
That experience will benefit the Moose Jaw, Sask., native as she steps right into a starting role in the Huskies backcourt alongside second-year player Sabine Dukate, the team’s only returning starter, whose pre-season injury allowed Thomaidis to get a good look at Epoch at the point guard position.
“She’s exceptionally intelligent. She plays with a lot of poise and she never gets rattled. She’s a very smart player like I said. Knows the game, has played a tonne,” Thomaidis said, adding that Epoch has played so well in the pre-season that it may allow the Huskies to shift Dukate to shooting guard.
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Meanwhile Masikewich, who hails from Calgary, should provide a much-needed presence in the paint after the graduation of three-time All-Canadian Dalyce Emmerson.
“She’s a very different player than Dalyce. No one’s gonna replace Dalyce by any stretch of the imagination, but she has a lot of basketball background, very good basketball IQ and she’s put up some good numbers here early on,” Thomaidis said.
With such a talented pair headlining their rookie class, it’s easy to see why the Huskies feel their youth won’t prevent them from being one of the top teams in the Canada West conference again this season. Now it’s up to them to prove it. Their first regular season test comes when they visit the University of Fraser Valley Cascades for a pair of games this weekend.
“The pre-season prepared us well and me well for the upcoming regular season and I’m just excited to get out there and show the world what this new team is capable of,” Epoch said.
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