After sacrificing their summer and waking up to practice at 5 a.m., San Jose State women’s basketball players and coach said they have improved their offensive game and are confident going into the new season.
“I like the adjustments we’ve made to our offense,” head coach Jamie Craighead said. “I think it makes us quicker and more spread out and it’ll give our shooters more options.”
Entering her seventh season leading the Spartans, Craighead said she is both excited and nervous to begin the season but is focusing on playing one game at a time.
“I think that anybody who has competed at this level, coached at this level, if you don’t have those butterflies in your stomach, then you probably shouldn’t be coaching,” she said.
The team is coming back after finishing last year with a 6-24 regular season record, 5-13 in the Mountain West Conference. The team last year also averaged 63 points per game.
Senior guard and returning team captain Fieme’a Hafoka said she and the six other returning players don’t want to dwell in the past because it would mess up their mindset going into the new season.
Hafoka played all 30 games last season, averaging 8.6 points, 3.7 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game.
“The past couple years have been rough,” Hafoka said.
But she said that the team has high expectations this season with the amount of returning players who will bring that high level of performance.
“I think that’s in the past and we work with what we have now,” Hafoka said.
She said the team is going to focus on practicing hard and only worry about one game at a time rather than focusing on the season as a whole, similar to coach Craighead.
“I think we’re not really looking at the long run,” Hafoka said. “I think we’re just going to take it game by game and not worry about like, what we have next instead of what we have in front of us.”
Craighead said she also wanted to emphasize the idea of treating every opponent as a high-caliber team to her players because she wants the Spartans to win as many games as possible.
“Every game we’re playing this year, we’re going to treat our opponent like they’re the best team in our conference,” she said. “That’s our goal for this season . . . to win in those moments with those groups.”
Junior guard Megan Anderson, another returning player, said the team has also seen monumental growth even just in the offseason during summer.
“We’ve been training really hard and we’ve just been working really well together,” Anderson said.
She also said the team isn’t necessarily feeling the pressure of performing better than last season, but is just focused on the future and winning these upcoming games.
“We’re all really hungry and we’re just ready to win,” Anderson said. “We’ve just been working at it and it’s just our time now.”
Anderson ranked first in three-point field goal percentage on the program’s career list, shooting the three-ball at a 40.2-percent clip last season. She also averaged 8.9 points, 3.2 rebounds and 0.7 assists per game.
“I feel really confident because I feel like we have weapons at every position and I feel like all of our teammates are really locked in this season,” Anderson said.
Hafoka echoed this sentiment and said each position has several key players that will bring a lot of energy and skill to the table.
“We got to clean some things up defensively,” Craighead said. “But until you play somebody, you don’t really know where all the holes are, and it will be nice to go back and watch film and let our kids see those things.”
SJSU will play at UC Irvine Tuesday with the hopes of starting the regular season on the right track.
“I think the competitive nature of the game will help us move into Irvine,” Craighead said. “We have a chance as a group to do some things that are going to be pretty special and maybe even make a little history for San Jose State women’s basketball.”
