Young But Experienced Skyhawks Look For More Success In 2024-25
11/1/2024 9:01:00 PM | Women's Basketball
Fresh off their fifth NCAA Tournament appearance, the University of Tennessee at Martin women's basketball team heads into the 2024-25 season looking to return to "The Big Dance" in back-to-back years for the first times since 2012-13 & 2013-14, in addition to competing for their eighth OVC crown.
With six regular season conference championships on his resume, UT Martin head coach Kevin McMillan enters his 16th season at the helm. During his tenure, the Skyhawks have posted a 281-194 record while winning 73.0 percent (189-70) of their conference games. Heading into the campaign, the Skyhawks were voted second out of 11 teams in the annual OVC preseason poll after a 2023-24 campaign in which the team went 16-17 and 11-7 in league action.
When asked his thoughts on the upcoming season, McMillan replied, "I thought going in that we were going to have a chance to be really good, and I still think that, but after practicing for a couple of weeks I forgot or ignored the fact that we are still extremely young. Even though we had a good end to last year, we did it with mainly freshman and sophomores. So you start out this season and you think those freshman and sophomores after the year we put them through are junior and seniors, but they're really not, they're still freshman and sophomores or still sophomores and juniors. So the team is young again. If we can stay healthy or get healthy, we may have some depth and do some things that we haven't been able to do in years. So we''re kind of holding our breath to see if we cant go back to some basketball that we saw from us in the middle of the 2010's."
While last season was a trial by fire for McMillan's young Skyhawks, he thinks the experience they gained will eventually pay dividends, but perhaps not right away.
"I think when you've got players that played 38 to 40 minutes for the majority of the season last year, what you'll see is that they can't help that much in practice... yet, because players don't learn in practice, typically. They have to learn though experiences, so when we start paying games, I would expect that we will struggle out a little bit out of the gate, then there will be a game pretty early where that experience forces some of the other players to have an 'a-ha moment' and I think we will make a pretty big jump. We do have pieces that will fit together, they just have to realize what we need to do. So when you have four or five players that have that experience from last season, some of them are going to go 'Oh, that's what we're doing' and when there is a majority out there playing, it helps, but when you only have one or two and they are not a majority it is had to get those players to understand very quickly. I think our experience will play pay off, but I think it will be middle of December before we start to see the kind of results we had at the end of last season."
The Skyhawks will return four starters in 2024-25, along with three other letterwinners, 79.1-percent of their scoring and 72.4-percent of their rebounding. In addition to 2023-24 All-OVC first teamers Anaya Brown and Kenley McCarn, 2022-23 All-OVC selection Shae Littleford returns to UT Martin for her junior year, after missing the majority of last season due to injury. Also returning for the Skyhawks is Lexi Rubel who was sixth in the OVC in rebounding a year ago with 7.1 boards per game and fifth in assists per game at 3.6.
Brown finished the 2023-24 campaign fifth in the league in scoring at 15.1 points per game and third in rebounding at 8.8. Meanwhile, McCarn put together an outstanding freshman season in which she led the Skyhawks with 16.5 points, the third highest average in the OVC, while also posting 4.5 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game. As a duo, Brown and McCarn combined for 48.5-percent of UT Martin's scoring last year and 39.4-percent of its rebounding.
Much like in seasons past, the Skyhawks will be challenged early and often with their schedule. UT Martin will face eight teams which competed in the postseason last year (NCAA-Louisville, Tennessee, UCLA; WBIT-Hawai'i, Missouri State; WNIT-Butler, Central Arkansas, Southern Indiana), while squaring off against 10 different conferences – including the ACC, ASUN, Big East, Big Ten, Big West, HBCU Athletic (NAIA), Missouri Valley, Mountain West, SEC and the Sun Belt.
The 2024-25 season begins at home Oct. 4 against North Alabama, the first of six non-conference games at the Elam Center including Arkansas State, Central Arkansas, Fisk, Louisville and Missouri State. Despite, only having three non-conference away trips, the Skyhawks are making them count with visits to Tennessee, Butler and "Indiana's Basketball Cathedral" Hinkle Fieldhouse and a three-game stretch in the American Savings Bank Rainbow Wahine Showdown in Honolulu. While on "The Big Island", the Skyhawks will face off against UCLA, Fresno State and host Hawaii.
The 10-week OVC season runs from Dec. 19 through Mar. 1 before the league's top eight teams will advance to the OVC Championship tournament, which will be hosted once again by the Ford Center in Evansville, Ind. on March 5-8. This year's OVC schedule will be a true round rob with each team playing each of the other 10 teams in the league in a home-and-home series.
With six regular season conference championships on his resume, UT Martin head coach Kevin McMillan enters his 16th season at the helm. During his tenure, the Skyhawks have posted a 281-194 record while winning 73.0 percent (189-70) of their conference games. Heading into the campaign, the Skyhawks were voted second out of 11 teams in the annual OVC preseason poll after a 2023-24 campaign in which the team went 16-17 and 11-7 in league action.
When asked his thoughts on the upcoming season, McMillan replied, "I thought going in that we were going to have a chance to be really good, and I still think that, but after practicing for a couple of weeks I forgot or ignored the fact that we are still extremely young. Even though we had a good end to last year, we did it with mainly freshman and sophomores. So you start out this season and you think those freshman and sophomores after the year we put them through are junior and seniors, but they're really not, they're still freshman and sophomores or still sophomores and juniors. So the team is young again. If we can stay healthy or get healthy, we may have some depth and do some things that we haven't been able to do in years. So we''re kind of holding our breath to see if we cant go back to some basketball that we saw from us in the middle of the 2010's."
While last season was a trial by fire for McMillan's young Skyhawks, he thinks the experience they gained will eventually pay dividends, but perhaps not right away.
"I think when you've got players that played 38 to 40 minutes for the majority of the season last year, what you'll see is that they can't help that much in practice... yet, because players don't learn in practice, typically. They have to learn though experiences, so when we start paying games, I would expect that we will struggle out a little bit out of the gate, then there will be a game pretty early where that experience forces some of the other players to have an 'a-ha moment' and I think we will make a pretty big jump. We do have pieces that will fit together, they just have to realize what we need to do. So when you have four or five players that have that experience from last season, some of them are going to go 'Oh, that's what we're doing' and when there is a majority out there playing, it helps, but when you only have one or two and they are not a majority it is had to get those players to understand very quickly. I think our experience will play pay off, but I think it will be middle of December before we start to see the kind of results we had at the end of last season."
The Skyhawks will return four starters in 2024-25, along with three other letterwinners, 79.1-percent of their scoring and 72.4-percent of their rebounding. In addition to 2023-24 All-OVC first teamers Anaya Brown and Kenley McCarn, 2022-23 All-OVC selection Shae Littleford returns to UT Martin for her junior year, after missing the majority of last season due to injury. Also returning for the Skyhawks is Lexi Rubel who was sixth in the OVC in rebounding a year ago with 7.1 boards per game and fifth in assists per game at 3.6.
Brown finished the 2023-24 campaign fifth in the league in scoring at 15.1 points per game and third in rebounding at 8.8. Meanwhile, McCarn put together an outstanding freshman season in which she led the Skyhawks with 16.5 points, the third highest average in the OVC, while also posting 4.5 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game. As a duo, Brown and McCarn combined for 48.5-percent of UT Martin's scoring last year and 39.4-percent of its rebounding.
Much like in seasons past, the Skyhawks will be challenged early and often with their schedule. UT Martin will face eight teams which competed in the postseason last year (NCAA-Louisville, Tennessee, UCLA; WBIT-Hawai'i, Missouri State; WNIT-Butler, Central Arkansas, Southern Indiana), while squaring off against 10 different conferences – including the ACC, ASUN, Big East, Big Ten, Big West, HBCU Athletic (NAIA), Missouri Valley, Mountain West, SEC and the Sun Belt.
The 2024-25 season begins at home Oct. 4 against North Alabama, the first of six non-conference games at the Elam Center including Arkansas State, Central Arkansas, Fisk, Louisville and Missouri State. Despite, only having three non-conference away trips, the Skyhawks are making them count with visits to Tennessee, Butler and "Indiana's Basketball Cathedral" Hinkle Fieldhouse and a three-game stretch in the American Savings Bank Rainbow Wahine Showdown in Honolulu. While on "The Big Island", the Skyhawks will face off against UCLA, Fresno State and host Hawaii.
The 10-week OVC season runs from Dec. 19 through Mar. 1 before the league's top eight teams will advance to the OVC Championship tournament, which will be hosted once again by the Ford Center in Evansville, Ind. on March 5-8. This year's OVC schedule will be a true round rob with each team playing each of the other 10 teams in the league in a home-and-home series.
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