Besieged with injuries over the past two seasons, Southeastern women’s head basketball coach Darin Grover definitely has fingers crossed for avoiding the injury bug in the upcoming campaign.
Each of the last two years the Savage Storm have finished the year with just eight healthy bodies with an exorbitant amount of injuries sidelining player after player.
“It’s been tough with a rash of injuries,” Grover commented. “Hopefully, we can avoid some of that but have already lost Holli Lindley until at least Christmas to a knee injury.”
Lindley was the team’s second leading scorer a year ago with 8.9 points and led the club with seven rebounds. She was one of only two players to start every contest last season joining fellow returnee Caitlin Kobiske, who pumped in a team-best 14.6 points an outing while shooting 45 percent from the field.
That duo is joined by sophomore Kenzli Warden as returning catalysts. Warden got off to a slow start but was one of the team’s most consistent players by season’s end with 7.7 point per contest.
“Kobiske has been one of our best players the last couple of years and with Lindley and Warden will be our three primary scorers,” Grover said. “Kobiske and Warden are capable of scoring over 20 points on a given night. They just need to be consistent because scoring has been one of our problems.”
Southeastern has a pair of dynamic transfers that will bolster that scoring punch as well as making the team tougher in other areas as well.
McAlester native Stevie Stinchcomb transfers in after a pair of seasons at Emporia State while Hugo product Kaydrin Scott comes from Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa where she was an All Region selection as well as ranking high nationally in several categories a year ago.
Stinchcomb enters her junior season after starting 16 contests last season while averaging 7.3 points a night and shooting 39 percent on three pointers.
Scott should be an interior presence as a 5-foot-10 junior and led her junior college squad with 17.1 points and 10.9 rebounds per contest. Her 75 steals and 212 field goals made led the conference and she was also third in the entire nation in defensive rebounds.
“We were very familiar with Stinchcomb out of high school,” Grover said. “She gets after it defensively and can do a little bit of everything. I think she will be a very effective player for us.
“Scott can really score and plays with no fear around the paint. She is a great rebounder and extremely explosive as either a wing or forward. We feel like they both are going to be tremendous additions for us.”
Several other players return as well after getting thrust into battle last year with the plethora of injuries.
Those include seniors Ashton Hackler and Brianna Wietelman, junior Abbie Barr and sophomore Eryn Dolan. Wietelman made three starts and averaged 3.5 points, Barr started a pair of games and tallied 3.6 a contest with Dolan chipping in 2.4 per outing with 15 starts as well.
Grover is also extremely excited about the addition of talented freshman Akiera Hawk, a 6-1 forward from Pittsburg, Oklahoma.
“Hawk is a little ahead of where most freshmen are at this time,” the Savage Storm coach added. “She has good length on her and plays hard and has looked good in our scrimmages. She could definitely help us as a freshman.
“We’ll probably be able to go 10 deep comfortably with more depth than we’ve had because of injuries.
Beyond the injuries though we have to play better. Early last year we had most of our players healthy but didn’t play very well at the start of the conference season.”
With five of six non-conference games to start the year on the road, the Savage Storm will definitely be tested before the start of league play in December.
They’ll start the season November 8 in Alva for the Central Region Challenge against University of Minnesota Duluth.
“We are playing two Northern Sun schools from our region on the opening weekend and Northeastern at home in the first week,” Grover said.
“We’ve got a road game at Tampa University, who will be a Top 10 team in the country, so that will be a major challenge. We are going to have our hands full in those early games, but we want to be tested.
“It’s been a frustrating couple of years, so we just want to stay healthy and give us all the bullets in our gun for the stretch run of conference play.”