By Kim Doss, Her Hoop Stats
The Missouri Valley Conference will be full of newcomers in 2022-23. New coaches. New players. Even three new universities. The
University of Northern Iowa isn’t among the new faces, but the Panthers are looking forward to the changes.
“I used to think it was a competitive advantage because I knew everybody,” said UNI head coach Tanya Warren. “I kind of knew the scouting report in terms of what most teams were going to do. But, first of all, it's extremely exciting. It's exciting for me. It's exciting for our league with the three additions, the new schools. And when you look at the league, especially the last two to three years, everyone has gotten better. Our bottom half has really gotten better. So for me, I really am now going to have to take a lot of time to really dig into the new teams, their style of play, what they do, who's your best players, that sort of thing. So, the scouting report changed in terms of the newness of those three teams and in the newness of the coaches coming in. There's a lot of new faces.”
Warren is the longest-tenured coach in the MVC as she enters her 16th season at the helm. Her team also has experience with four seniors on its roster. As a result of that kind of continuity, UNI features years of success in one of the toughest women’s basketball conferences in the country.
The Panthers have finished above .500 every season since 2012-13. That year, they finished at exactly .500 with a 17-17 record.
Keeping that run intact will fall on the shoulders of the nine returners, led by sophomore point guard Maya McDermott, senior guard Kam Finley, and sophomore forward Grace Boffeli.
Finley is the top returning scorer on this year’s team, ranking second last year with 11.9 points per game. She led the team with 55 made three-pointers last season. Finley took 4.9 two-point attempts and 5.1 three-point attempts per game in 2021-22, indicating that she can score in more than one way, though. This year, Warren wants to see more consistency from her.
“She is the go-to player,” Warren said. “The most important thing for Kam is consistency and staying healthy. If she can stay healthy, that consistency will be there.”
It’s McDermott who will run the team, though. The sophomore point guard played just 12.9 minutes per game last year, but her coach says she will be central to their success this year. It will be especially important now after the graduation of Karli Rucker, a four-time First Team All-MVC member who finished her UNI career with the most assists and second-most points in program history.
“I want Maya to be able to create her own path and not be compared to Karli even though she will be,” Warren said. “Maya has been extremely patient. This is Maya’s team. Maya is more than ready and capable of stepping in and running this ball club. Not only does she shoot it well from the three, she’s very crafty off the bounce, and she makes those around her better with her incredible ability to pass the ball. So we're excited.”
Boffeli anchors the team inside. The 6-foot-1 forward led the team with 8.9 rebounds in just 21.3 minutes per game last season.
Even with their leading rebounder back, there are still some shoes to fill with the graduation of Bre Gunnels, who averaged 6.9 rebounds per game while starting all 34 games last year. Transfer Rachael Heittola, who came to UNI from Division-II Bemidji State, is expected to help in that regard.
However it ends up this year, the Panthers are hoping to enjoy wherever the path takes them.
“The most important thing is we talk a lot about the journey and enjoying each step of the journey and not focusing on the destination,” Warren said. “I think at the point you do that, then you lose a lot of things. So for us, it's one day at a time, control what you can control and everything else will take care of itself.”