By Megan Gauer, Her Hoop Stats
Things look much different in Carbondale, than they did a year ago. Following a successful season where the Salukis took home their first regular season MVC title since 2007, head coach Cindy Stein retired after nine seasons at the helm of Southern Illinois. Kelly Bond-White replaced Stein as head coach after 15 seasons as an associate head coach at Texas A&M.
The coaching staff is not the only part of Southern Illinois that looks different for the upcoming season. The Salukis return just 29 percent of their minutes and 18 percent of the scoring from last year's team. Therefore, much of the first offseason of Bond-White’s tenure has been focused on building out the roster for 2022-23.
“We spent quite a bit of time focused on recruiting and didn't get this entire roster here till about two and a half weeks ago. So that was a challenge in itself,” Bond-White noted in late September.
Now that Southern Illinois has their full 14-player team on campus, the focus has been able to shift to preparing for the upcoming season. That has included an emphasis on instilling the culture of the program amongst a roster with a lot of new faces.
“The staff is building chemistry. And we've really been in a good place in terms of how we wanted to go about making sure these young ladies jelled early, but it has been a challenge. We are very young and our veterans are new, so they're still learning,” added Bond-White.
That blend of new and old veterans and youth in this team is evident throughout the roster but perhaps most notably in the backcourt - a group that centers around Southern Illinois’ only returning starter from the 2021-22 team, Quierra Love, at the point guard position.
Love, who averaged 5.6 points and 2.2 assists per game last season, will need to shoulder a bigger offensive load in her junior year following the departure of all three of Southern Illinois’ double-digit scorers from last season. Additionally, Coach Bond-White will look for her to be a leader for this team at the point guard position.
“I kind of warned her from the beginning that my teams are point guard led, and that my expectations of her in that position would always exceed all others because she has to be not just an extension of me, but our staff,” said Bond-White of Love. “So I've challenged her quite a bit, and she responded; she stepped up. She was a huge voice for me this summer. And now that we have other pieces kind of settled in place, she can lead a little bit by example too, and not have to just carry the load of being the vocal and verbal leader,” she added.
Included in those other pieces is veteran combo guard Ashley Jones, a graduate transfer from Mississippi State, who’s also played at West Virginia and Temple throughout her collegiate career.
“She has had several stops at some major universities, so she's battle tested. She's been through the fires, if you will, so nothing really rattles her. She's very even keeled, very observant, and she's been a huge support system for [Love],” said Coach-Bond-White.
Jones averaged just 10.5 minutes per game in Starkville last season but has proven her ability to be an offensive threat through her time at Temple in 2019-20. She averaged 16.0 points, 4.3 assists and 4.5 rebounds per game for the Owls and can help lessen the pressure on Love in the backcourt as another veteran guard. While new to Southern Illinois, her experience in college hoops will help provide some of that veteran leadership as well.
That leadership from Love and Jones is, in fact, already helping to shape freshman Jaidynn Mason into an important piece of the Salukis backcourt as well. Bond-White described Mason as a “breath of fresh air” on this year’s squad.
Bond-White added, “I'm just super high on this young lady because she is a sponge. But she has a tremendous skill set and is a great combination of the two. She has the speed of [Quierra] but the presence of Ashley as well. And not something that you would expect necessarily in a freshman knowing that we jumped on her really late coming in.”
Veteran leadership is also paying off with young talent in the frontcourt for Southern Illinois, this time in the form of a former Saluki. Gabby Walker (who averaged 12.8 points per game on SIU’s MVC title team last season) has made appearances at practice and has especially made an impact on Central Arizona transfer Sierra Hughes. Hughes, who averaged 15.6 points and 11.6 rebounds per game in her freshman season on the junior college circuit, has impressed early on as a stretch four.
Looking ahead to the season, with such a young roster including Hughes and Mason, the focus for this first team of Bond-White’s tenure at Southern Illinois is improving each day.
“We always preach about NBA: next best action,” said Bond-White. “The only way we can come close to having that kind of success [of last year’s team] is if we are where our feet are. And that is to take the next step every day and get better every day.”
She added, “We worry about the next step and not the big picture.”
The Salukis will officially kick off their season at home against Middle Tennessee on November 12 at 7 p.m.