2019–20 Drake Women’s Basketball Preview
The Drake women’s basketball team didn’t finish last season the way they had hoped, but you won’t catch them losing sleep over it.
“You know, I think it’s really fun because in the offseason you get so hungry and so solid on what you want to do different and better,” said Drake head coach Jennie Baranczyk. “The way that we ended the season wasn’t the way you want to end the season, but we were a really good basketball team, and that has propelled us this season.”
Last season’s team had high aspirations, and despite the first-round overtime loss to №7 seed Missouri in the 2019 NCAA Tournament, they are proud of where they are and how they got there.
“We’re able to celebrate great players who have graduated and we’re able to coach some great players that are coming up,” Baranczyk said.
Even though they lost four veteran leaders from a year ago, Baranczyk is excited for the chance to go back to basics with an influx of new talent.
“I love this team. I love that we have so much experience combined with so much new [talent],” Baranczyk said. “And really that comes with some challenges but it also has some really great rewards because you can reteach some things.”
The Bulldogs will welcome five newcomers this year, including redshirt sophomore Kierra Collier, who had to sit out the 2018–19 season after transferring from Washington. The 5-foot-6 Collier will bring depth to the guard position that lost three key veterans to graduation.
While at Washington, Collier put together an impressive freshman campaign before a hand injury eventually resulted in her being shut down in February.
Prior to the injury, Collier had averaged 8.8 points per game, and she finished with 2.1 assists and 1.0 steals to garner Pac-12 All-Freshman honorable mention in her shortened season.
Along with Collier, junior Maddie Monahan and sophomore Maggie Negaard make up the restructured point guard corps for the Bulldogs.
“I’m really excited about our point guards,” said Baranczyk. “We’ve been able to put a lot on our point guards this offseason, it’s been fun to really go to basics and really talk about what it really means to be a point guard.”
The facilitator role is one of the keys to the Drake style of basketball. Baranczyk’s teams run an up-tempo, pass-happy offense with a lot of ball movement and unselfish play. The Bulldogs have led the NCAA in assisted shot rate in each of the last two seasons and were second in 2016–17. No other team was even in the top-10 in all three seasons.
“It’s fun to be able to be validated in a stat. You never chase a stat, but at the same time, the validation is pretty cool to be able to see that what we do every year works and it is a lot of fun,” Baranczyk said of the stat.
Drake will return its two leading scorers from last season, Becca Hittner and Sara Rhine, who were the first and second-leading scorers in the Missouri Valley Conference in 2018–19 with 19.7 and 18.3 points per game, respectively.
Hittner, the two-time reigning Jackie Stiles MVC Player of the Year, led the team with 76 three-pointers on 40.4 percent shooting from beyond the arc. The senior is likely to surpass that total this year after the graduations of sharpshooters Nicole Miller (41.8 percent) and Maddy Dean (41.3 percent).
Rhine, who led the team with 8.3 rebounds per game in 2018–19, looks to continue her trend of scoring at a higher volume and efficiency in her redshirt senior season.
Last season, Rhine shot the ball 71 more times than in 2017–18 and managed to increase her field goal percentage from 59.1 to 61.2 percent.
Rhine and Hittner are both on pace to surpass 2,000 career points this season, which only four players have reached in Drake’s history. A strong season from senior Brenni Rose could also make her the 34th Bulldog to join the 1,000 point club.
Another returning veteran for the Bulldogs is Monica Burich, a redshirt senior who transferred from Colorado after her sophomore season. Burich is an efficient rebounder and the coaching staff has high expectations for her this season.
When asked about the increased recognition nationally for Drake and the MVC as a whole, Baranczyk said, “[the team isn’t] going to be sneaking up on as many people as we probably have been able to in the past, so we have to be ready from day one, which is also really exciting and really fun in terms of where our program is at.”
In the end, national recognition is nice for a smaller school such as Drake, but the Bulldogs are driven by a different level of recognition.
“Honestly, I care less about the national recognition,” Baranczyk said. “What I’m really excited about is to see our fanbase continue to grow. I think that’s a huge part of what you do and your style of play. To me, the biggest stat I want to see is [attendance], and I think that is going to come.”
Attendance numbers have shown that the trend is already beginning. Drake averaged 3,788 fans per game in 2018–19, an increase of nearly 800 from the prior season and nearly 1,500 more than in Baranczyk’s first season as head coach of the Bulldogs in 2012–13.
The Des Moines community has embraced the Bulldogs, and Baranczyk is proud of her team and their effect on growing the fanbase.
“You cannot help but fall in love with this team, you cannot help but be part of it,” she said “We’re accessible. These women are incredible role models for your children. They’re just really fun people to be around.”
Part of that push to connect with young fans in the community is the annual Pack the Knapp game where thousands of local elementary and middle school students bus into Des Moines for an 11 a.m. game. Last season’s game drew an event-record crowd of 6,031, including close to 5,000 students.
This year’s Pack the Knapp game is against Waldorf on Dec. 5. The Bulldogs will kick off their regular season with back-to-back home games against South Dakota State, on Nov. 8, and in-state rival Iowa State, on Nov. 10.
