University of Minnesota Athletics
Guards at a Glance
10/21/2017 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
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A mix of youth and experience will give the Golden Gophers a deep backcourt and plenty of different lineup options this season. It has already raised the intensity of Minnesota's practices.
"You pretty much earn everything in life and playing time is no different," head coach Marlene Stollings said. "Once November gets here, the cream rises to the top…. I love the competition that we have going on. We sit in here as coaches and we meet before practice and each day I have the coaches give me their starting lineups if we played that night. And almost every day, we have had four different lineups. I think that's very encouraging to our players and I think it's exciting for some of the depth and things we are going to have going into this season."
Carlie Wagner is the most familiar name in the Gophers' group of guards. The senior is a two-time All-Big Ten Second Team selection and currently ranks eighth on Minnesota's career scoring list with 1,597 points. She averaged a career-best 19.1 points per game last season and made 82 3-pointers.
Kenisha Bell made her Gophers debut as a redshirt sophomore last season and had an immediate impact. The team's second leading scorer after Wagner, she averaged 16.1 points per game and led the team with 148 assists and 67 steals.
"One of my main goals is to have a 2 to 1 ratio with assists and turnovers," Bell said before her junior season. "Try to limit my turnovers this year so that I can be more effective with the ball and be more poised with it, just because I got a feel for it, so this year should be better for me."
In addition to upperclassmen Wagner and Bell, Minnesota returns a pair of experienced sophomores in Gadiva Hubbard and Jasmine Brunson. Hubbard, a starter early in the season, filled a valuable sixth-player role after returning from illness and injury. She averaged 12.5 points per game and was second on the team in steals and 3-pointers despite missing a handful of games. Brunson started the last 10 games of the season and saw the floor during every contest.
Guard/forward Destiny Pitts and fellow freshman Paloma Gonzalez have the coaching staff excited, and sharpshooting junior college transfer forward Irene Garrido Perez could also have an impact in the backcourt. Gonzalez looks forward to putting the Gophers' fast pace of play into action in a game.
"I want to contribute more creative play because I really like it and I think it's so fun and I want to do it for the team," she said. "I also want the rest of the team to feel comfortable with me while I'm playing because I think everyone deserves to make a layup or make a shot and I want to (get assists) because I don't want to be selfish."
Gonzalez is a member of the Spanish national team, Pitts is a three-time Michigan state champion and Garrido was an all-region selection at Western Wyoming.
"We like that we have some depth at each of our guard positions," Stollings said. "That's something that we have not really had since we've been here. We've had to play people 39 minutes per game and things like that, so we like the fact that there's competition by position more than anything. I think it has raise the level of play of our returners, and our returners have helped our newcomers adjust and get better faster."
Stollings said last season's difficult schedule and experience playing in hostile environments like South Carolina helped the young Gophers gain maturity and a sense of what it takes to be successful. That returning experience combined with talented newcomers has created a productive practice atmosphere for the team.
"Everybody works with high intensity," Bell said. "Not all of them are the same speed, but we all work as if we have the same speed. Everybody just gets after it and we have the same mentality on defense and offense, so I look forward to playing with these guards because everybody wants it. Everybody wants the same goal and I think we're going to get it this year."
