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Jimmies women's hoops preparing for tourney game against The Master's

Maxwell O'Neill, The Jamestown Sun, N.D.
·4 min read

Mar. 15—LEWISTON, Idaho — The University of Jamestown women's basketball team is back in the NAIA National Tournament for the second consecutive year and will face The Master's (Calif.) on Friday, March 15, at 9:30 p.m. at the P1FCU Activity Center.

"Anytime we play national tournament games it's top level competition and our first round matchup is definitely a top level opponent," Jimmies head coach Thad Sankey. "We're expecting a pretty competitive game and a team that has a good identity of who they are and how they play well and is really challenging."

The No. 12-seed Jimmies come into the tournament at 17-12 overall. The No. 5-seed Mustangs enter the tournament with a 25-6 overall record and a three-game winning streak.

While the two teams have never played before, Sankey said the internet has allowed film study to become a lot easier. Sankey said the team uses an online film service called Synergy which gives allows his team to watch every Mustangs possession from this season.

"You're reliant on film, you're reliant on seeing comparable teams and so it's a balance of being the best version of yourself and knowing, how do you match up and how do you work against a team like The Master's," Sankey said. "They're big and they have great scorers and really talented on ball, so those are a couple areas for us that we have to prepare for on top of us knowing ourselves really well, how do we play our best game."

Last year, the Jimmies finished the regular season at 21-8 and beat Indiana University South Bend in the first round of the tournament. Out of the nine players who made an appearance for the Jimmies in that game, eight remain on the roster.

"I think it's a huge plus," Sankey said. "It was a great experience last year in Helena and the games were something that really built some confidence in our players and expectations and an understanding of what does it take to win at that level, that intensity level for 40 minutes. ... That experience of playing playoff basketball is really valuable."

The Jimmies are trying to win a game in the first round of the NAIA tournament for the ninth time in program history.

While Sankey said he doesn't know which one of his guards will defend the Mustangs' leading scorer, Isabela Hernandez, he knows the Jimmies will have their hands full with the senior. In order to slow her down, Sankey said his team needs to communicate well and switch into the matchups they want.

Sankey also highlighted the matchup between the Mustangs' 6-foot-4 center Madeline Cooke and the Jimmies' Audrey Rodakowski. This season, Rodakowski is averaging 13.8 points per game and six rebounds. This season, Cooke is averaging 7.6 points per game and 10.4 rebounds.

Sankey said his team needs to force the Mustangs to miss shots and get Kate Cordes open looks, create lanes to the basket, stay aggressive and mix up their offense.

"Cooke's a fantastic shot blocker, she's super long," Sankey said. "Overall, they're gonna challenge us with their length a little bit, they're significantly bigger than we are but can we handle that and still get the shots that we want."

The Jimmies last played on Feb. 28 when they lost in the GPAC tournament to Briar Cliff. Despite the loss early in the postseason, Sankey said it was a little bit of a blessing in disguise for his team after playing 16 games since Jan. 1.

"It's been great," Sankey said. "We've gotten a little bit of everything that we've needed. We've needed to clean up some things, we were able to do that and improve ourselves. We were able to get a little bit of time off and refresh and we certainly needed that after the stretch in the second semester that we had. When we came back last week we were able to lock back in and really compete hard. One nice thing about having a longer break like that is we got more live reps and more competitive reps in practice over the last week than we had over the rest of the second semester combined because we were just going from one opponent to the next to the next and we were on the road so much that this was our chance to really resharpen ourselves and establish who we are."