Gophers women’s basketball veterans and newcomers already connected

The Gophers women’s basketball team has all five starters and 84% of its scorers back from last season’s team, which advanced to the WNIT final.

There are many new faces that will see minutes. But some of those new faces are actually old friends.

Taylor Woodson transferred to Minnesota from Michigan after her freshman season, where she rejoined her old Hopkins High School teammate Amaya Battle.

Annika Stewart, who came from Nebraska to Minnesota to play her final college season, is Mara Braun’s old teammate from Wayzata High School.

“I’ve played a lot of basketball,” Stewart said Tuesday. “But with this being my last college season, I’m just so excited. You realize how fast it goes. I can’t believe only five years ago I was playing with Mara. It feels like yesterday. It’s just fun to play with her again.”

Apparently Battle and Woodson have a special handshake for each other. Braun and Stewart say they haven’t come up with one of those yet, but the chemistry has returned quickly.

“I feel like when I come off screens, I just know where she’s going to be,” Braun said. “It didn’t take long to get that back.”

But no handshake.

“We don’t need a handshake to show it,” Braun joked.

With less than a week before Monday’s season opener against Central Connecticut State, the Gophers say they learned from a team that finished its season just over a week ago: The Minnesota Lynx.

The Lynx just finished their run to the WNBA Finals, losing in overtime in the deciding Game 5. The way that Lynx team played — connected, unselfish, on a string on the defensive end — is something Gophers coach Dawn Plitzuweit said she both admired and showed to the team on tape.

“I think there’s a huge impact having a team like the Lynx in this market,” Plitzuweit said. “Especially the way they played and the energy they played with. The unselfishness they played with, their camaraderie, the way they rallied this community around women’s basketball.”

The team went together for at least one of the Finals games at Target Center. Other players made it to games throughout the season.

Braun was at a number of games, sometimes sitting courtside.

“They were very connected,” she said. “Definitely the way we’re going for.”

Rarely does a college team have such a good example playing just down the road.

“We talk about skills development within our program,” Plitzuweit said. “Yes, there are techniques of the game you can get better at. Ball handling, becoming a better shooter. But then you have basketball I.Q. I really believed it’s helped our basketball I.Q. continue to grow.

“I hear what they say about how the Lynx played and I just kind of smile. We can use that to become a better defensive team, or to share the ball like they did.”

On another level, Plitzuweit hopes her team can perform at a level that will allow the heightened interest in women’s basketball to put more fans in Williams Arena.

“We’re hoping to capitalize on that, in all honesty,” she said. “The growth of women’s basketball in this community. That would be big for us.”

Guard Kennedy Klick, coming off knee surgery last fall, is close to being given full clearance to play. She is taking part in controlled drills. Plitzuweit said the goal was to have her for the opener.

“We’re getting pretty close to that,” the coach said. “I don’t know if she’ll be full-go on that day, but pretty soon.”