University of Arkansas at Little Rock Coach Joe Foley was quick with a joke when asked about the women's basketball nonconference schedule that includes five teams that qualified for the NCAA Tournament last season, including runner-up Mississippi State.
"I don't know exactly where I was, probably some bar somewhere, when that got made out," said Foley, who is entering his 15th season at UALR. "Nearly had to be to be that crazy."
Casting the joke aside, Foley called the schedule's strength a roundabout toast to the success of the Trojans, which are seeking their 11th 20-victory season in 12 years.
Last season, the NCAA mandated that the top 16 seeds in its postseason tournament would host the first- and second-round games.
"So now, all the schools that think they have a chance to get one of those seeds have strengthened their schedule considerably," Foley said Thursday at UALR's media day. "And they've got to get quality teams. That's why I'm saying I think they respect us as a quality program. Most of the time they expect us to win 20 games, have a high [strength of schedule rating]."
After UALR opens the season against Memphis (which did not make the tournament last season) on Nov. 12, the Trojans will play at Texas A&M (second round), Mississippi State and Kansas State (second round) while hosting Oklahoma (second round) and LSU (first round).
UALR would have been in the NCAA Tournament itself, were it not for a 79-71 loss to Louisiana-Lafayette in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament semifinals.
The loss left the Trojans to enter the WNIT Tournament with a 17-1 conference record, while Louisiana-Lafayette surrendered the Sun Belt's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament when it lost to Troy in the conference championship game.
Foley watched from the outside as Troy lost 110-69 to Mississippi State in the first round.
"It breaks your heart [watching another team go instead]," he said. "Especially when you went 17-1, when you know you're the best team in the conference and you just didn't play well. That's tough. The Power 5 conferences have got the big advantage. They're going to have five or six teams in, so you don't have to play that well in your conference tournament. And ours, you just have to play well."
UALR returns three of the five players who played the most minutes last season, including senior guard Monique Townson, who averaged 7.6 points per game.
"Afterwards, we thought back, looked back at the game and realized all the bad things we did," Townson said. "We just try to work on them and get better this season."
The Trojans dominated Sun Belt play with the top defense in the conference (55.2 points allowed per game), and their offense had the Sun Belt's highest team shooting percentage (.430).
But this year, the team will be without guard Sharde' Collins -- last season's Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year, who Foley hired to be the team's director of basketball operations after her eligibility expired.
UALR's top returning scorer is junior forward Ronjanae DeGray (8.8 points per game), and graduate senior forward Keanna Keys will return after missing last season to injury.
Keys and Townson are the only holdovers from the 2014-15 team that lost 57-54 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
"I was a freshman when it happened, so it was all surreal to me," Townson said. "That's another experience that I want to feel again. This is my last opportunity to do that."
Sports on 10/27/2017