Going into the 1st year, it was obvious that we knew that Coach Summitt never had a losing season. So I was trying to schedule with that in mind, hoping that Coach Charles would have a potentially similar fate. The world is a lot more competitive now than it was in the early 70s for women's basketball, but I still tried to set things up to provide her with the most success possible.
Luckily, there are a lot more teams now and so..it was a lot easier to setup a schedule that would give us something to work with and the team of transfers seemed to get the job done led by our two standouts.
I think the easiest way to do this dynasty is to just recap each four-year class. That way, I don't have to do the stat dump thing and can instead just focus on performance and highlight anyone that's worth talking about.
So with that, let's recap Coach Charles
First Class (1999-2002)
1999-2000
First season in D1 for the program and Nebraska State didn't miss a beat from its D2 days, going a surprising 23-7 in the regular season. Despite key losses, the squad played some tough competition early in the year which gave them a strong (inflated?) RPI and helped the school to its first postseason appearance in the bigs. The Pronghorns earned a #4 seed in the West region of the WNIT.
WNIT 1st Round: (4) Nebraska State 97, (5) Western Michigan 67
WNIT 2nd Round: (1) Drexel 80, (4) Nebraska State 75
So the first season ends with a record of 24-8. Coach Summitt went 16-8 in her first season, giving Coach Charles a 6 game lead to start her career.
No #1 seeds made the NCAA Final Four that year. (3) Houston beat (3) Mississippi State in one semi-final and (2) Tennessee beat (2) Notre Dame in the other one. Houston beat Tennessee in the national championship. It's their 4th title in program history, but the first one they'd won since 1973.
2000-2001
Our recruiting class was ranked #95th in the nation, inking four three-star recruits including the best player in Nebraska,
Ximena Lafreniere.
We will be independent again this season, but have a short list of conferences that we might be interested in. They include the Summit League, Big Sky Conference and the fictional Blue Sky Conference comprised of schools I created (some were suggested by people here) and the Western Athletic Conference.
Depending on which league we join, there's a possibility we'll be able to start in our new conference as early as next season, otherwise we'll be two years away. I have divested control of recruiting for the time being, mostly because it's time-consuming and I want to sim years not be bogged down trying to find the best players for the team, plus this first group of kids are so young that there aren't many scholarships for a bit anyway.
Down the road, I'll be adding potential recruits to deepen the Nebraska pool but I haven't done that yet.
SEASON RESULTS
So this year was a bit different than last as the games were backloaded since I scheduled a bunch of home and home series purposely. So it added a different complexion to our late schedule and might have cost us a few wins.
We ended the 2nd regular season at 26-5, but firmly outside of the Bubble Watch’s predictions for the tournament, mostly due to a strength of schedule that was 361st in the nation (though our RPI was 78) and so it looked like another trip to the NIT for Coach Charles and the Pronghorns. But despite that, we were making a name for the program and people were noticing the little engines that could from Western Nebraska. That was the goal all along and sets the table for what we hope were future successes.
In the 2000 NIT, we were the #3 seed in the South Region.
WNIT 1st Round: Nebraska State 67, Carolina State 53
WNIT 2nd Round: New Mexico State 95, Nebraska State 92
So for the 2nd straight year, we make a departure in the second round of the WNIT. We end the 2000-01 season with a final record of 27-6. Wake Forest beat Georgetown in the WNIT.
In the NCAA Final Four, (1) Notre Dame beat (1) Washington and (5) Iowa knocked off (3) Nebraska to face off in the final, which was won by Notre Dame, their 3rd title overall, the last coming in 1996.
With no scholarships to give this year, there won’t be a recruiting class. But maybe that’s a good thing while the conference situation gets figured out anyway.
Ava Ramsey is coming off a season were she was National Freshman of the Year and a 3rd team All-American. Not bad for a player that didn’t fit at Virginia Tech. This season, she’s a 2nd-team All-American and really the only reason this team is nearly as good as it is. Topping her was Iain Gidley, who at the center position was a 1st-team All-America. This surprised me, but anytime you get a recruit from Florida I suppose it’s a good thing.
2001-2002
Season three starts with the decision on a conference. Our options are 1) Summit League 2) Big Sky and 3) Western Athletic Conference. We could probably win the WAC right now with our current squad, but it’s a pretty down on its luck league and we’re not sure what that’ll do for our SOS and so forth. The Big Sky is probably a better fit and the Summit League is the best fit. The problem with the latter of the three is largely that we’d end up being in the same conference as Nebraska-Omaha and that might hurt recruiting because we’ll both essentially be playing for the same possible tourney bid each year.
In the end, the decision was made to join the WAC. We will become members of the WAC effective this season. Hooray, we’re in a conference!
The WAC’s membership in this universe is comprised of:
New Mexico State
Idaho
Texas State
Utah Valley
UT-San Antonio
Southern Utah
Alaska Anchorage
Boise State
Texas-Pan American
Sacramento State
Denver
Last year, Utah Valley won the conference tournament and was a 16 seed. New Mexico State who beat us in the WNIT were the regular season champ going 16-2 in the conference. The AD raised $17k to put our budget over to $461k. That puts us as the top budget program in the WAC which isn’t saying much but is pretty nice in the grand scheme of things. With two players on our roster who are among the best in the nation, we’re hoping for a tournament appearance. Anything less would probably be a disappointment.
We’ll finally have two scholarships to use for recruiting freshman, as two of the players I initially recruited will be seniors this year. What’s even more interesting is the motherload of players that we’ll lose in two years -- SEVEN -- we’ll really have to rebuild the team then. We’re hoping that we can have enough success in the next two years to warrant having a club to really build.
Here’s our roster for the upcoming year sans any walkons we get:
Code:
NEBRASKA STATE PRONGHORNS General
Player # Pos Yr Ht Wt Sch Acd Status Hometown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Madelynn Poisson 53 PF Sr* 6-0 197 Yes 76 OK Hopewell Junction, NY
Brianna Stocks 0 C Sr 6-1 242 Yes 43 OK Alma, WI
Fatoumata Carruthers 13 SF Jr* 5-9 175 Yes 84 OK Princeton, NJ
Ally Jackson 32 SF Jr* 6-3 224 Yes 75 OK Daingerfield, TX
Iain Gidley 21 C Jr* 6-1 247 Yes 98 OK Deltona, FL
Sofia Foster 1 PG Jr* 5-9 196 Yes 68 OK Apopka, FL
Moriah Barnhart 55 SF Jr* 5-10 209 Yes 81 OK Panhandle, TX
Ava Ramsay 20 SG Jr* 6-1 193 Yes 79 OK San Antonio, TX
Anne Tompkins 33 SF Jr* 5-10 212 Yes 40 OK Salem, NJ
Ximena Lafreniere 41 SG So 5-10 183 Yes 25 OK Cozad, NE
Emily Camper 43 PF So 6-0 241 Yes 57 OK Veteran, Canada
Chloe Desmuelliers 11 C So 6-6 229 Yes 27 OK Longlac, Canada
Katharina Schwager 34 PG Fr* 5-2 164 Yes 56 OK Kempten, Germany