Expectations

This season for the Lady Red Foxes will be a season of can you top this. Last season the Marist Women's Basketball team had the best season in Marist women's basketball history reaching the sweet 16 of the the NCAA Tournament. To make a run like they did last year would once again shock the nation and provide a buzz the Poughkeepsie area hasn't had since the days of Rik Smits.
There are many questions fans and critics have of this 2007, Brain Giorgis coached squad. First off this team is returning 4 of 5 starters from last year, which is always a good sign when that starting lineup was the one that made the Lady Foxes one of the top womens teams in the nation last year. However that loss in the starting lineup is 2 time MAAC Defensive Player of the Year Alisa Kresge. Although Kresge was not a scorer, ironically she is also probably the most irreplacable player this women's team has had in awhile. Although her game didn't revolve at all around putting the ball in the bucket, she ran Brian Giorgis offensive perfectly and was also their defensive stopper. With Kresge gone Marist will have to turn to a new player to take over at the point gaurd position.
Although Kresge is gone, this is by no means a year where Marist should expect results that fall below last year. That doesn't mean however that if they fail to reach the sweet 16 again it is a dissapointment. But they are expected to dominate the MAAC conference again and also hopefully make some noise in March. Kresge is a big loss but is practically all they lose. Not to mention the fact a new face on the Marist squad is the 2006 Canadian Player of the year Elise Caron, a freshman that I'm sure Giorgis will be training to take over where Kresge left off. Don't expect her to play too much early on, but she will develop into a monster here at Marist. They also return sharp-shooting Julianne Viani, the athletic Nikki Flores and one of the best frontcourts in all of Women's College Basketball consisting of Meg Dahlman, Sarah Smrdel and oh yea speaking of that frontcourt, reigning MAAC rooking of the year and MAAC preseason player of the year Rachele Fitz is back and only getting better. Hopefully the mixture between the experienced backcourt of Flores and Viani, a deep bench, and this dominant frontcourt will expunge all worries of no Kresge. Be ready for Marist to roll through the MAAC, crack the top 25 poll, and do some damage in the NCAA tournament this year.