The West Coast Conference Preseason Coaches Poll is out, and BYU Women’s Basketball comes in third. Two Cougars are on the Preseason All-WCC team as well.
College basketball is almost back, which means the preseason polls are trickling in.
The West Coast Conference Basketball Tip-Off has begun in Las Vegas, a two-day media event to hype up the upcoming season.
On Wednesday the focus is on the women’s side, including the release of the WCC Preseason Coaches Poll and the Preseason All-WCC team.
In the poll, the conference’s coaches picked BYU Women’s Basketball to finish third, behind defending conference champion Gonzaga and St. Mary’s.
The Cougars received 66 total votes and one first place vote, compared to Gonzaga’s 79 points (seven first place votes) and 73 for St. Mary’s (2 first place votes). Loyola Marymount came in a distant fourth in the poll with 52 votes.
BYU also features two players on 10-woman Preseason All-WCC team. Junior guard Brenna Chase and sophomore center Sara Hamson both represent the Cougars on the team.
Last season, Chase was second on the team with a 13.5 point per game average, adding three assists and 2.2 rebounds per contest. She’ll step into a bigger scoring role with the graduation of Cassie Devashrayee.
Hamson makes her mark on defense. While she only averaged 5.6 points, she pulled down 7.7 rebounds and led the nation with 4.3 blocked shots per game.
The two-sport star will miss the first part of the season, though, as she continues to rehab a knee injury she suffered just before the start of the volleyball season. The Cougars hope to have her back in December.
Both players will need to step up big for BYU, since the Cougars are a young team filled with a lot of new faces. Six new players are on the team, and there’s only one senior and four total upperclassmen on the 16-woman roster.
The Cougars will face off in the annual Blue White Scrimmage on Thursday at 6:30pm MT, and play Dixie State in an exhibition on November 6th before the regular season tips off with a November 9th home game against UC Riverside.