With five seniors coming back for Virginia, fans may be asking what will be different about this year's women's basketball team that will allow the Cavaliers to turn their backs on a season in which they went 13-16 and missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 21 years. One answer to that question may be the new freshmen.
While this year's Virginia team is chock-full of veterans, the Cavaliers' new blood may be just what the team needs to put last year's dismal season in the past and move forward. The "Blue Star Index" ranked Virginia's recruiting class No. 10 in their Top 20 list of best classes. With three freshmen joining the team, there will plenty of competition for coach Debbie Ryan's older players, and she has made it clear that fans can expect to get to know this year's freshman class pretty well, even early in their careers.
One of the new players, Sharnee Zoll from Marlboro, N.J., has already been listed as one of the probable starters in this Thursday's season opener against Arizona State in Baton Rouge, La. The 5-foot-7-inch point guard was a three-time "Street and Smith" All-American from Highland High School and was the seventh-ranked point guard nationally according to the "All-Start Girls Report." She was also a USA Today Super 25 honoree in high school.
"Sharnee Zoll is a true, quintessential point guard," Ryan said. "She's a throwback point guard. If you go back to the 1950s and '60s of men's basketball and think of all the guys who played point guard, that's Sharnee Zoll. She's worked hard and she's really going to be someone that we get to know intimately in the next couple of weeks"
While Zoll may be the only expected starter at this point, she is not the only touted member of her class. Denesha Kenion from Oxon, Md. seems to embody what Ryan wants from this year's team.
"She is a terrific athlete," Ryan said. "She went through [new strength and conditioning coach] Ed [Nordenschild]'s preseason program and sort of killed it. She never missed a sprint and when other people were gasping for breath she was like 'when's the next one?' She's a really well-conditioned athlete."
This athleticism helped the 5-foot-9-inch guard win a spot on the All-Metro Washington D.C. team in 2003 when she averaged 14 points, five assists and five steals per game while leading her high school team to the final four.
Last but not least, 5-foot-11-inch guard Takisha Granberry was rated No. 18 in the country by "All-Star Girls Report" and No. 22 by the "Blue Star Index." Granberry averaged 16.8 points, 10.3 rebounds and four assists for West Charlotte High School. While she has been struggling with a knee injury, Ryan said she is recovering quickly and has already been cleared to play.
"She's a big guard for us and gives us some inside-outside look," Ryan said.
She's a player you can post up, a player you can play outside and she's really going to push hard for playing time early because she's a very good athlete."
Even the senior Cavaliers are emphasizing the importance of a new look and new blood for this year's Virginia team.
"Though we do have five seniors, we're a younger team now," senior Kate Kreager said. "We have an influx of new and an outflux of old."
Ryan and her Cavaliers can now only hope that new faces will lead to a new result in 2004-2005.
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