After a major injury and a January transfer from Villanova kept her out for a full season, Kelly Jekot was looking forward to get back on the court and help Carolyn Kieger’s rebuilding efforts with the Penn State women’s basketball team this winter.
Needless to say, it hasn’t been quite what the two-time Gatorade Pennsylvania high school player of the year envisioned.
“I got adjusted to a team. Then a global pandemic hit, and I went home,” Jekot said. “Then, basically our entire team transferred out, and I had to meet a bunch of new people.”
Jekot’s not exaggerating. When the Lady Lions take the floor in a couple of weeks against an opponent still to be named, it will be with almost no players from the team that was 7-23 in Kieger’s first year and dropped 15 straight games to end the season.
The roster reset includes 13 new faces, including eight freshmen. Starting point guard Makenna Marisa, part-time starting guard Shay Hagans and stretch forward Anna Camden are the only returnees that got any run last year. All three are sophomores.
It’s not what one would consider the ideal way to right the program’s fortunes — Zoom meetings and living in a hopefully COVID-proof bubble. Kieger and five players discussed that challenge and a number of other subjects during a virtual media day on Thursday afternoon.
“Doing this during a pandemic definitely has its challenges, but we have to embrace those challenges,” Camden said. “There are some positives, such as the fact that we are forced to bond together. Right now, we are all we have.”
Thrown into the veterans of this season’s squad, Camden and Hagans both averaged around five points per game last year. The 2019 Pennsylvania Class 6A scholastic player of the year, Marisa finished third on the team behind Kamaria McDaniel and Siyeh Frazier in scoring (9.2) and second to the first-team all-Big Ten McDaniel in assists (68) as a freshman.
“It was pretty crazy,” Marisa said of adjusting to essentially a whole new team. “But I love everyone on our team. We all have such good relationships. We’ve gotten to know each other so well during this whole COVID-19, just being together all the time and not being able to leave our bubble.”
It wasn’t expected to be this extreme a change. However, McDaniel, among one of the best scorers in the conference, entered the transfer portal in late July and now is at Baylor. Starting forwards Alisia Smith and Lauren Ebo also left early, landing at Michigan State and Texas, respectively.
Kieger was left to essentially rebuild the roster from scratch along with the program. She already had swing player Jekot and former West Virginia guard Nia Staples sitting out the year as transfers, and Johnasia Cash, formerly of SMU, and Niya Beverly, late of Wisconsin, decided to use their senior years of eligibility at Penn State. Cash and Beverly’s eligibility for this season still is up in the air.
Kieger also added junior college transfer Britnay Gore to the front court.
The freshman class that will comprise half the roster is highlighted by Swedish National Team member Tova Sabel and 2020 Class 6A state player of the year Maddie Burke from Central Bucks West, both guards.
“It’s been really unique times, not being able to have (recruiting visits). We’ve recruited some people just off virtual tours,” Kieger said. “I’ve been amazed with how quickly the chemistry has formed with this new group.”
Kieger said she and her staff used any resources they could to piece together the new class. Ohio guard Nyam Thorton was recruited by Kieger when she was coach at Marquette. Sabel played for one of Kieger’s former players overseas.
The next steps were to try to balance out the roster with the transfers who filled needs and also, hopefully, had postseason experience. Jekot was the state’s prep player of the year at Cumberland Valley just west of Harrisburg who Kieger coached against before coming to Penn State. The cousin of former UConn and WNBA star Swin Cash, Cash is from the Pittsburgh area and wanted to see how she could do against a step up in competition while playing closer to her home.
“One thing that leads me to a program like this is happiness,” said the 6-foot-2 Cash, who made 55 starts with the Mustangs and averaged nearly a double-double last year. “I always asked myself, ‘What kind of player would I be? What kind of player could I be?’”
Jekot, 5-10, is expected to make an immediate impact. Before being injured in the Big East tournament, Jekot was averaging 13.8 points and 4.6 rebounds, shooting better than 40% from three-point range.
“I’m a scorer. I’m a facilitator,” Jekot said. “Just being a leader and helping people get into their right spots and just having that extra knowledge and experience is going to be very helpful to this young team.”
Only four forwards are listed on the roster, as Kieger hopes to continue to develop a team that plays with pace and often will put five players on the court at the same time that are threats to shoot beyond the arc. The Lady Lions’ second-year coach said the points of emphasis will be to improve a field goal percentage defense that was 13th in the conference and better an 0.9 assist-to-turnover margin.
Of course, the other looming question is where the offense will come from without McDaniel, who boasted the second-best scoring average in the Big Ten and erupted for 40 points against Pitt.
Marisa thought picking up the scoring slack would be a team effort.
“Everyone on the team can score,” Marisa said. “The underclassmen, everyone is super-talented. We have a lot of scorers, a lot of shooters, that I’m really excited to play with.”
Things will be on the right course if the year’s experience was well-spent by Marisa and Hagans, who’ll be called upon to set up and distribute the ball.
“We’ve just got to work at it and make sure we get it consistently down,” Hagans said.
One of the other challenges of the pandemic for the players has been working on their games and trying to improve or add elements.
“It really was going back to the basics,” Camden said. “I was out in my driveway, using my outdoor ball, scuffing up my knees and my shoes every day during quarantine because that’s what I had access to. In a way, it was everything that I needed.”
The goal, once again, is a Big Ten championship, but, in a world turned upside down by the coronavirus, Kieger and several of the players brought up the word “patience,” and giving this new team a chance to come together.
“That’s the key. You’re not going to turn a program around overnight and win a national championship in one year. Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Kieger said. “I think we’ve done a great job of lining up the pieces to the puzzle that we need here.”
