Girls' hoops preview

Oran girls basketball coach Ethan Evans lost one starter and one key backup from last year's team that won more games than any other and advanced to the final four for the first time in program history.

Brianna Stause was the lone senior.  She averaged seven points per game and two rebounds per contest.  Kenzie Graviett will not be on the roster this season.  She continues to be hobbled from a nagging ankle injury suffered during volleyball season.  Last year she contributed three points and two rebounds a game off the bench.

Coach Evans said, "With no seniors on the team, we have the perception of being a young team but we have plenty of varsity experience coming back. Our expectations are high. As with every year, our goal is to win every tournament we are in including districts and advance in the state playoffs. We also would like to set a school record for wins again and win the regular season conference title."

Setting the mark for wins this year will be a difficult task as the Eagles will have (more than likely) two fewer games to play during the regular season.  Delta will not have a girls basketball team this year.  Delta will continue their New Year's Invitational as first-year program Advance will take the hosts' place.  But then you take away the regular season matchup and the Scott-Miss tournament will only have seven teams, meaning the top seed will have a bye the first round.

Evans said, "We will be led by 2 time all stater Leah Cauble but I'm also excited at what Kaylee [Payne] and Jessie [Long] bring to the table. Claire [Ramsey] is one of those players who stuffs the stat sheet. Madison [Ramsey] and Taylor [Lowes] can shoot the 3 and Katelyn [Streeter] is really good defensively. Freshman Katie [Webb] brings us some really good size also.

When asked about the junior varsity, Evans told the blog, "I expect us to compete well at the JV level as well. We will have some girls that will need to play some varsity minutes also. We do return 3 starters on the JV (Savannah Below, Heather Gosche and Taylor Lowes) and I have expectations for us to win the regular season and conference tournament titles."

This year's roster looks like this:

For a printable roster click HERE

The Lady Eagles open the season tonight on the road at Malden starting at 6 pm.

The latest updated schedule has been posted under the "current schedule/results" tab from the blog homepage.  Of course, there will be some changes and some teams won't have a junior varsity squad.  We will try to update that as soon as we have the information.

As always, "Go Eagles!"