The GW women’s basketball team opens its season Thursday night at the Smith Center in an exhibition game against a traveling team made up of National Women’s Basketball League players, including two former Colonials. The NWBL team will play wearing jerseys from the Tennessee Fury, one of the league’s regular teams.
The past two seasons, GW has lost its lone exhibition game. The Colonials fell to Hungarian professional team Zala Volan-ZTE last year after losing to Russian club team Dynamo of Moscow two seasons ago.
“Let me show you how much I (put stock in these exhibition games),” GW head coach Joe McKeown said. “I had no idea we lost the last two.”
The Colonials’ main goal will be testing different lineups to determine their starters for the regular season opener against Georgetown a week from Friday. McKeown said the game will also give freshman Kristina Gineitis and senior Val Williams a chance to see their first action against live opponents after both missed the team’s scrimmage last weekend against the University of Virginia with minor ankle injuries.
Making the game interesting will be the presence of former Colonials Kristina Alexander and Star Jefferson, who graduated four and three years ago, respectively. McKeown had high praise for both women.
“(They were) just great players, great competitors,” he said. “You couldn’t ask for any two players that competed any harder than those two. They really understood what our program was about.”
Asked if it would be strange to coach against them, McKeown quipped, “Yeah, they’ll know all our plays.”
The game comes two days after GW found out it was left out of the Top 25 in the Associated Press preseason poll.
“That one upsets me a little bit,” McKeown said, upon first hearing of his team’s omission. While GW also missed the ESPN/USA Today poll’s Top 25 by a single point, McKeown displayed more disappointment with the AP poll.
“It felt like last year, the AP was a little kinder to us, a little more pro-GW,” he said. “But again, it’s just preseason.”
Thursday’s tip-off is at 7 p.m.
