UALR opens without two key cogs
Today will mark Joe Foley’s 27th season-opener as a college basketball coach, and he can only recall one other team entered a season similar to how his UALR Trojans will enter this one.
It was more than a decade ago, when Foley was still at Arkansas Tech and he lost two guards to anterior cruciate ligament tears before the season began.
The early season injury hits remind him a bit of what he’s facing this year, as UALR tips off at 2 p.m. today at the Jack Stephens Center in Little Rock against Sam Houston State minus two projected starters who could be lost for the entire season.
“It’s just part of the game,” Foley said. “Somebody has to step up and play.”
That Arkansas Tech team, Foley recalled, went on to finish as national runner-up.
The jury is still out on how well this UALR team can respond to its key losses. The Trojans, who finished 24-9 last year and reached the WNIT, were picked to win the Sun Belt Conference by league coaches, but Foley and his players have tempered expectations a bit after the losses of guard Ka’Nesheia Cobbins and forward Hannah Fohne.
Cobbins, who evolved into UALR’s best defender a year ago, tore an ACL two weeks before practice started and Fohne, whose 57 starts are more than anybody but guard Taylor Ford, has a back injury that will keep her out an undetermined amount of time. Foley said the earliest Fohne could return is early next month and a doctor’s visit scheduled for next week will determine if she can make it back at all.
“We’ve got a few unknowns,” Foley said. “It makes [the start] a little bit uneasy. Every day, it’s just a different day trying to let somebody step in and see what they can do.”
Considering UALR’s depth at guard, the loss of Fohne could be harder for the Trojans to fill.
Without Cobbins, Ford will slide back into a point guard role that she grew into last year, and Taylor Gault will play shooting guard. Both are three-year starters and were named preseason All-Sun Belt first team.
“It’s my position now,” said Ford, who averaged 9.9 points and 4.5 assists last year. “Coach Foley, he put me into the position so I just kind of had to learn it and had to do it. I’ve forced myself to be the best I could.”
Filling Fohne’s absence in the post might take a bit longer to develop. In addition to her experience — she started 32 of 33 games last year and averaged 31.8 minutes — she was at her best on defense, setting up on the low block and directing her teammates where to go.
Without her on the floor, Foley will turn to a group of players thin on experience at the collegiate level. The most seasoned is sophomore Shanity James, who grew into a reliable post scorer toward the end of last season but said she’s still learning a position she didn’t play in high school.
James and fellow sophomore Carolee Dillard, who has missed some practices while playing for the UALR volleyball team, will play the bulk of the minutes in the post, but freshmen Keanna Keys, Kaitlyn Pratt and Antoina Robinson could also be needed.
“I still have a long ways to go,” James said. “We’re going to play play some big people this year, so I think it’ll be a test.”
While Foley’s peers picked his team to win the Sun Belt, he picked them third because of the unknowns, but still isn’t putting a cap on their potential.
“We’ve got plenty of time,” he said. “It may not show early, but we’ll be getting there.”