Women’s Basketball Preview: UCI building with youth

UC Irvine women’s basketball coach Doug Oliver fills his office walls each season with poster-sized photos of the program’s seniors. So, with only two photos on display this year, Oliver has plenty of creative white space with which to work.

Oliver, who singed a contract extension through the 2018-19 season after last year’s 17-15 unit posted the program’s best win total since the 1994-95 campaign, said he is excited, however, about the stable of newcomers that form a deeper, more talented roster than last year’s Big West Conference Tournament semifinalist.

“We only have two seniors and two juniors, so we’re very young,” Oliver said. “But we have better talent, overall, than last season. Unlike last season at this time, we’re still searching for our identity. And as coaches, we are very much still very much trying to figure out how all the pieces fit. But this group could really surprise me by Christmas.”

Oliver got the equivalent of a lump of coal after his team closed by winning five of its last seven games, went 9-2 at home, and averaged a school-record 72.5 points last season. Gone are five of the top six scorers and four starters, including first-team All-Big West Conference post Camille Buckley. All Buckley did was produce 19 double-doubles, finish No. 10 in the country with 12 rebounds per game, and top all but one Big West player at 18.5 points per contest.

Also departed is scrappy guard Jennifer Tsurumoto (13.4 ppg), as well as veteran role players Kelly Meggs, Lauren Spinazze, Jasmine Bernard, Vanessa Aguilar and Jazmyne White.

Methlyn Onogomuho, a 5-foot-11 senior who averaged 7.7 points and 6.7 rebounds last season, is the lone returning starter. And beyond 5-5 senior guard Madison McKenney, who contributed 5.4 points per game and made one start, the four remaining returners, two of whom earned medical-redshirt status, totaled a mere 59 combined points.

“We pieced it together last year, and there were times when we looked like a junior high team warming up,” Oliver said. “If we stay healthy this season and stick our nose in there and play with [a half-dozen veteran-laden conference rivals], we’ll build toward next season, when we can really have our chance [at a conference title].”

Oliver, in his third season, said his group has a chance to surpass expectations, which include the No. 7 spot in the nine-team preseason media poll. But he said expectations are deservedly tempered.

“We’re going to have some bumps and bruises while we are trying to figure this thing out,” Oliver said. “Last year we had some games where we struggled to score and it got ugly. But that group would get dinged a little, then come back and respond. I don’t know if this group will do that. Those are the kinds of things we have to learn about ourselves.”

UCI rooters are familiar with Onogomuho, a true wing who played the four position by necessity last season. This year, she will have more chances to use her perimeter skills, around a crop of inside players that include 6-0 sophomore Mokun Fajemisin and 6-2 sophomore Shereen Sutherland.

Fajemisin averaged 4.9 points and four rebounds in seven games last season, before tearing the ACL in her right knee for the second time in three years. But she showed no signs of injury while collecting 13 points and six rebounds in 19 minutes of Tuesday’s exhibition opener, a 77-63 triumph over NCAA Division III representative Cal Lutheran.

“[Fajemisin] is the best player in our program and is capable of being a good Big West player,” Oliver said.

Sutherland, who redshirted last season after transferring from the University of Arizona, had 15 points and seven boards against Cal Lu and is as long, athletic and skilled as any post player UCI has had in many years.

McKenney is projected to start in the backcourt, where returners Irene Chavez and Raelyn Cheung-Sutton will handle most of the ball-handling chores.

“I call them our couple of Smurfs,” Oliver said of Chavez, a 5-3 sophomore who had 16 points in 11 games last season, and Cheung-Sutton, a 5-4 junior who scored eight points in 16 games in 2013-14. “They may be undersized, but there is some skill there. Raelyn is quick and plays very good defense, and Chavez is a scorer. And both of them can get the ball from Point A to Point B.”

Jenny Dee, a 5-10 wing, figures to provide the kind of three-point threat that can help stretch opposing defenses. She made four of six from three-point range on Tuesday, when she shared the team scoring lead with McKenney (another sharpshooter from distance) and Sutherland.

Brittany Glassow, who played four games last season before an Achilles injury sidelined her for the year, is a 5-11 redshirt freshman who will contribute up front, as will 6-0 junior Olivia Montgomery, a transfer from Citrus Community College.

Also expected to contribute are 6-1 guard Ashley Merrill, a redshirt sophomore who also transferred from the University of Arizona, and freshmen Tierra Hicks and Chloe Kellum.

UCI plays host to Chapman in another exhibition game on Saturday at 4 p.m. The ‘Eaters open the regular season Nov. 14 at Northern Arizona.