NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (KNOP) – After seeing lots of success over the recent years, the NPCC’s Women’s Basketball Team is ready to do much of the same in the 2022-23 season. Though this season they won’t be getting it done with the same group of athletes that they did last season, it is an almost completely different team with only two returners. The two players returning from last season include Fumnanya Ijeh and Dayonna Roberts. With so many new faces joining the program this year, the team has been doing lots of team bonding activities.

“We’ve done a lot of team bonding out of practice and not with our coaches, just a lot of team bonding and getting to know each other,” says Roberts.

The Knight welcome seven freshmen to the team this year and four sophomore transfers. Head Coach Jeff Thurman enters his fifth season with the program and says all of the gelling the team has to do will come with time and lots of trial and error.

“I thought preseason-wise, which it’s still really early, I thought they really responded well. You know we have a good mix of transfer student-athletes from different four years or a couple of junior colleges and then our newcomers. We’re happy with where we’re at, but you know I think we still have a lot more work to do,” says Thurman.

With a team goal of making it to nationals, it is crucial that the freshman and transfers begin to learn the ins and outs of Knight Basketball.

“I mean yeah, we still have high expectations and high standards of what we want to do and what we want to accomplish. I guess our goal as a coaching staff, and especially mine being my fifth year, is we want to be playing our best basketball by the middle of February or the second week of February, that’s our goal. It’s going to take time for a lot of newcomers and a lot of new faces on what we want to do schematically and what we want to do defensive and offensive concept-wise. Our goal is February and then that’s when we should be playing our best basketball hopefully,” explains Thurman.

The Knights open up the season on the road at Cloud County Community College in Concordia, Kansas on November 1st. The Knights will host their first home game November 19th against Northeast Community College.

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