MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – A few days after her young women's basketball team managed a preseason split with the Brandon Bobcats, Katherine Adams' squad hits the road for another key weekend of preparation.
They flew to Ontario on Wednesday for exhibition games against Western (Thursday in London, Ont.), Laurier (Friday in Waterloo, Ont.) and York (Saturday in Toronto).
"This is our first trip away, and similar to last weekend when we tried to simulate a league weekend with back-to-back games against a league opponent, this is our first time traveling and competing," said Adams, whose 2017-18 Griffins includes eight first-year players. "Just being able to get away, stay in hotels, get in the habit of what that looks like will be good.
"At the same time, we're going to Toronto and some of the girls have never been before. They're excited to see a new city and compete against teams we don't normally see."
All Adams really knows about this weekend's opponents is what they've done against other Canada West schools. Both Western and Laurier beat Manitoba in preseason matches last week. York, meanwhile, has lost big to Calgary (63-28) and swept UBC-Okanagan in a pair of games last weekend.
"Truthfully, I don't know much about them and I stand by what I said before the Brandon weekend," noted Adams. "We're still in the phase about worrying about us. We want to go out and try some new things, show that we can continue to compete in three-consecutive games. The preparation for opponents will come."
The nice thing is she's seen improvement from their first preseason game when they fell 76-35 to Calgary on Sept. 17. Last Friday, they beat Brandon 63-61 before losing to them a night later (66-60).
"There was a lot of growth from our game against Calgary to our games against Brandon this weekend," she said. "We had tweaked some things in practice and changed the way we approach things a little bit. It certainly showed in our level of compete this past weekend.
"It was really good for us to gain experience against a veteran team. That's a playoff team last year."
The three games this week will be the Griffins' final preseason tests before they kick off a new season on the road at Thompson Rivers, Oct. 27-28.
