Women’s basketball has begun its season with success, handily winning all of its first six games. Although they haven’t yet started conference play, the Knights plan to push through to win the SUNYAC Championship for the third time in the past five years.
Entering the 2018-2019 season, women’s basketball underwent a leadership change as head coach Scott Hemer left Geneseo to join the Division I team at Canisius College. Assistant coach Alyssa Polosky ‘11 stepped into the head coaching role. Since then, the Knights have won six straight games.
“It’s been quite an adjustment for me being a new head coach, but also not new since I’ve been around here,” Polosky said. “It’s definitely a different role, but the players have bought into what I’m saying and they’re receptive. We’ve had a good start, but the season is long, so we want to take it one game at a time.”
Senior forward McKenna Brooks expressed her enthusiasm for Polosky’s new position, especially with her experience as a former member of the team.
“It’s nice to have someone who was in the program and who was an amazing player,” Brooks said. “We feel so lucky to have her as the head coach because she knows exactly what she’s talking about. We love her.”
While some of the wins came handily with 30-point margins of victory, Geneseo’s home game against William Smith college on Nov. 10 started slowly. Knowing that William Smith was coming off of a successful season with victories against highly ranked teams, the team entered the game with some trepidation.
“In that game we kind of came out a little timid and shy, but the second half hit and we just kept scoring and they couldn’t keep up,” Brooks said. “A lot of this year, we’re going to try and be quick and do more of that kind of stuff.”
The Knights have prepared themselves for SUNYAC play, according to junior guard Sara Ciotti.
“I think going into SUNYAC play we are ready to implement what we have worked so hard on in the preseason and what we have been successful with so far,” Ciotti said. “We are much better conditioned this year and have a more effective running game this season. We are so excited to start defending the title and work towards another one.”
Regardless of their opponents, Polosky feels that the most important aspect of the early season is analyzing the team’s own performance.
“For right now, we want to keep the focus on us, not so much on who we’re playing,” Polosky said. “We want to be playing our game and making sure we’re holding ourselves accountable. We always say that if we play the way we know we can play, the scoreboard takes care of itself.”
The Knights’ season looks bright, but so does the season of their competitors, according to Brooks.
“We have the same team back essentially because we only lost one senior so we kind of have that same chemistry carrying over from last year,” Brooks said. “The teams in our conference this year are kind of like our team where they didn’t really lose a lot of players, so it’ll be pretty competitive.”