Last year, the Odessa College women’s basketball team was picked to finish fifth in the WJCAC standings and ended up finishing third.
So it might be a good sign that the Lady Wranglers were picked to finish third in this year’s poll, assuming that same pattern continues for the 2023-24 season.
Either way, Odessa College head coach Franqua Bedell and his players will be using it for motivation.
The Lady Wranglers enter this season hoping to take the next step and qualify for the NJCAA tournament for the first time since the COVID-canceled 2020 tournament.
“I’m excited for this team,” Bedell said. “I’m excited with what we have back. I’m also excited about what we have with some of the new players. I think we’ll be good.”
After a short hiatus in which the program was furloughed for a full season before coming back in 2021, the Lady Wranglers have gradually gotten better.
The team went 8-18 overall, 5-9 in conference play, in 2021-22 before going 16-10, 9-5 last year.
“I do feel like we’re a little bit closer to the standard for this program,” Bedell said. “I think we made a huge jump last year in getting to the region tournament and finishing third after being picked fifth. This year, being picked third, it shows that we’ve made a jump. Now it’s just up to us to do our part and keep the players healthy and motivated and keep grinding.”
The Lady Wranglers will enter this season with four players back from last season.
Among those players coming back is Ivana Krajina who was All-Conference last year.
“Ivana’s coming back,” Bedell said. “She was all conference. Kimora’s coming back. I think she’s going to stand out. We have two sisters, Sarengbe and Mariam Sanogo have really stood out because of their presence and size. We have some freshmen that are good. … We have a lot of people that have helped set the tone. We’ll see what happens.”
The Lady Wranglers will begin their season on Nov. 3 against Wayland Baptist JV at home.
Bedell and his players are excited to get the new season underway.
“You get tired of practicing against yourself,” Bedell said. “You get tired of beating up on each other. I think the players are really excited to play against new competition. There’s a lot of energy. We’re healthy. We have a lot of size and experience back. We have kids that can help teach the younger players and the newcomers. It’s been exciting. Practices have been really good.”
As far as the style of basketball, Bedell said the Lady Wranglers will be the same as last year.
“We’re going to be chaotic,” Bedell said. “We’re going to press. We’re going to have a lot of fun and hopefully make layups and shoot threes. We’re going to play fast and try to score a hundred points each game. We’re going to make it fun for people to come watch us play every game.”
New Mexico Junior College was picked to finish first in this year’s preseason poll while South Plains College (coached by former Lady Wrangler head coach Ara Baten) was picked second.
“There’s always motivation,” Bedell said when talking about using the preseason rankings as motivation. “I pin them up and use everything that we can as motivation. I’m a competitor, so we always want to be number one. That’s part of trusting the process but it’s also part of the fun of getting that top spot when you weren’t picked to finish that high.”
Odessa College was picked to finish ahead of Midland College in the preseason poll.
Bedell knows the conference will be difficult like always.
“It’s going to be fun,” Bedell said. “I know it’s early, but South Plains is always big. Ara (Baten) does a good job. New Mexico Junior College is the same. Frank Phillips’ coach (Gerald Ewing) has them playing hard and fast. Clarendon is going to be solid. It’s going to be a good year and fun season. We have one of the best conferences in the country. We’re going to have to play hard every single game.”
