Young Gophers women's basketball squad needs to major in growth

When the Gophers women's basketball team opens its season Monday night, the team that will take on Western Illinois will include 11 new faces on the 14-player roster. Eleven of the players are underclassmen.

The starting lineup will likely include redshirt freshman Katie Borowicz, who missed last season with an injury; true freshmen Mara Braun and Mallory Heyer, part of coach Lindsay Whalen's ninth-ranked recruiting class; sophomore center Rose Micheaux and, likely, graduate transfer Isabelle Gradwell.

For those counting: That lineup has played a total of 603 minutes in a Gophers uniform.

No wonder Whalen, after a practice late last week, said it felt like she was starting over in her fifth season.

"Somewhat, yeah, in a sense," Whalen said. "It feels like we have a little bit of a totally new group."

But with the season about to start, an old question:

How well can this team do?

"I would say top half of the Big Ten," Borowicz said. From the time the group starting working out together in the summer, she has been promising a team that, closer as a group than last year's, was going to surprise. She has not backed down a bit from that.

"People have us ranked low," she said. "They don't know what we really have. But we can finish in the top half."

Watch the team in practice and you can see how tight the group is. Look at the résumés of the players who have come into the program, and you can see the promise. The recruiting class was highly rated. Amaya Battle — the first guard off the bench — won two state titles with Hopkins, Borowicz one with Roseau, Heyer one with Chaska. Braun, the highest-ranked player in the Gophers class from Wayzata, has excelled playing against older players since she was in third grade.

This group has a pedigree. This group has promise.

But the Big Ten Conference is a difficult place to matriculate.

"The Big Ten, it will provide some obstacles," Braun said. "But it's the way we bounce back. We're not used to losing. We have a hunger to win. You can see it in practice. We take a hit, we come back and we're ready to get back at it. That's how we all grew up."

It will not be easy. The Gophers have already dealt with the adversity of losing two players to season-ending injuries. Nia Holloway, the fourth member of Whalen's 2022 recruiting class from Eden Prairie, is out because of a knee injury, as is Aminata Zie, who came via the transfer portal, because of a leg injury.

That has left Minnesota without much depth in the post behind Micheaux and transfer Destinee Oberg. That has meant having Heyer play a lot at power forward; there will be times and situations in which she will be asked to defend opposing centers.

Rebounding will be a constant challenge. So will their inexperience to the college game. It will all depend on how steep the learning curve is.

"We're the underdogs this year," Heyer said. "People are going to underestimate us. Because we have three returners this year and so it's a brand-new team. But I'm super excited. We've been working hard in practice. A lot of people don't know what's going on, what we're doing. It will be fun to show people, prove them wrong."

Although the Gophers were efficient from behind the three-point arc in their exhibition victory over Wisconsin-River Falls, the Minnesota offense could look different from last year's team, which was one of the best three-point shooting teams in the conference, led by Sara Scalia, who transferred to Indiana. The Gophers will rely more on movement without the ball, cutting and passing to get their shots.

The Gophers will need to take care of the ball, rebound and find a consistent way to score.

Perhaps that's why Whalen won't be pinned down with a prediction for the group. "I haven't let myself get there," she said. "Because I just feel like it's a group that has so much youth. They're excited, so willing and ready to learn, that it's, 'OK, what can we do today? What can we work on today?'

"They haven't gone through it together and they haven't done it at this level, so it's teaching that I've tried to focus on."

Heyer said the goal for the team since training camp began was to get 1% better every day. Battle agreed.

"It's inevitable that we're going to get better," Battle said. "We have that mentality."