Preseason action gets underway for the Lady Frogs on Sunday as the team takes on a WNBA showcase team.This matchup will be the second year in a row the Frogs will face the Lake Truck Lines squad.
Last season, TCU lost to the WNBA team by three points, said Jeff Mittie, TCU head coach.
“We’ve played almost all of them before,” Mittie said. “These are veteran players who were good college players.”
In preparation for this game and the season at large, the Lady Frogs have been practicing against an all-male scrimmage team made up of TCU students.
“They are very physical with good speed, and it puts us into compromising situations for what we may face,” Mittie said.
During a scrimmage Thursday, the women’s team beat the male practice squad in a scrimmage, but the Lady Frogs’ performance has a couple holes, Mittie said.
“We gave up too many three-point plays today, because we were not physical enough,” Mittie said. “We weren’t going in hard enough and we were just trying to slap them out of the way.”
Leading the Lady Frogs into Sunday’s exhibition will be junior shooting guard Adrianne Ross, a preseason All-Mountain West Conference nominee. Ross averaged 12.2 points per game and 2.8 rebounds per game in the 2005-2006 season.
Although the Lady Frogs lost guard Natasha Lacy, Frogs’ 2006 season lead scorer, the team still has four returning starters, three of whom are juniors. Making up that core of juniors are forward Lorie Butler-Rayford, foward Jenna Lohse and Ross.
The competition, presented by the Lake Truck Lines team, will include former All-American Nikki Blue from UCLA, former All-ACC winner Deedee Warley from the University of Maryland and 2003 WNBA second-round draft pick Ke-Ke Tardy from LSU.
The talent TCU will be going against will set a bench mark for how the team will need to work for the rest of the season, Mittie said.
“This game will give us a good gauge of where we are right now,” Mittie said.
Both during the exhibition and regular season, depth and versatility on the court will prove to be key for the Lady Frogs, said junior point guard Moneka Knight.
“I think it will be very important as anyone can take control,” Knight said.
The game against these select WNBA players will be a predecessor for the BTI Classic in Maryland on Nov. 18.
