A Quick Look At: Hamline

Heard back from new Hamline Head Coach Alex Focke recently and he was gracious enough to invite me to one of his practices when I get up and about (which I'm really thankful for!).  More importantly, he gave me a bit of a synopsis on what he's looking at in his first year as he takes the reigns from Kerri Stockwell who resigned after last season:


"As for our team, it has been fun getting out on the court with our team these past 3 days....We graduated 3 starters from our team last year with Chloe Graves, Tia Diggins and Ivannie Robertson.  They were 3 of our top 6 scorers from last year so those will be some big shoes to fill.  We are returning Alaina Quaranta, Reilly Geistfeld, Kaeli Stayer, Aly Sartain and Morgen Coleman.  They gained valuable experience last year and we will look to them to continue to grow and develop." 


No doubt losing Graves who averaged 11.8 ppg last year not to mention her leadership will be a huge void.  She had an uncanny ability to make things happen on both ends of the floor.  Fortunately for Focke and his staff, they do have Quaranta, the junior from Eau Claire, Wisconsin back.  Quaranta; who led the team in scoring last year with 12.1 ppg will be looked to for scoring again but what likely sets her apart from many other players is that she is an absolute terror on the defensive end and she snared 62 steals last season and I would expect that trend to continue going forward.  Geistfeld made significant strides last year in her freshman season and she'll be counted on heavily to anchor the front line.  But this is still a very young team and consistency is something I'm sure that Focke and his staff will be striving for as the season progresses.

The early part of the Pipers schedule is very manageable.  They start off on the road but those contests are against four UMAC teams:  at Crown on 11-15, at Northwestern on 11-17, at North Central the following day on 11-18, and then a trip up to the Twin Ports on 11-28 to take on UW-Superior.  They'll need to get any head of steam that they can as mighty UST comes a callin' to Hutton Arena on 12-4 to start off MIAC play.  Roadies to both St. Olaf and GAC follow that on 12-6 and 12-9, respectively, followed with a home date against CSB on 12-13.  Hamline has a home non-conference game with UW-Stout three days later on 12-16 and then, after the Christmas break, the Pipers head out for Vegas for (hopefully anyway) some fun and two games as well - against Occidental of the SCIAC and UC-Santa Cruz right before the first of the year.