FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (November 10, 2021) – Heading north to open its regular season, the Northern Arizona University women's basketball team will get a feel of what life is like in the Pac-12 as it faces Washington State and Washington in the span of three days.
Set to tip off at 3 p.m. against both the Cougars and the Huskies, the Lumberjacks will play in Pullman, Wash. on Friday before heading to Seattle for their second game of the trip on Sunday. It'll be the first meeting in program history between Northern Arizona and Washington State while head coach
Loree Payne returns to her alma mater for the second time with the Lumberjacks, falling 81-59 in the third all-time meeting with Washington.
While Payne returns to the Pacific Northwest to face off with the Huskies, three Lumberjacks also will make the trip back to their home state.
Regan Schenck,
Emily Rodabaugh and
Fatoumata Jaiteh all played high school basketball less than 30 minutes away from Seattle.
It'll be the first time since the 2011-12 season that Northern Arizona opens up the regular season with a Pac-12 opponent and the first time against a pair of them since Arizona State and Arizona in the 2010-11 season.
Picked to finish fourth by the Big Sky Conference's coaches and fifth by the media, the Lumberjacks will face the Cougars, voted sixth in the Pac-12 and the Huskies who landed in a tie for 10th.
Northern Arizona returns eight of its top nine players from the 2020-21 season, while adding
Lauren Orndoff and
Nina Radford, starters for all 31 games of the 2019-20 campaign, back to the rotation after the duo missed all of last year.
Schenck and
Khiarica Rasheed earned All-Big Sky Conference honors a year ago, with the former finishing the year at 11.4 points, 6.8 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game while Rasheed added 13.6 points and 7.0 rebounds.
Washington State, led by Kamie Ethridge in her fourth season with the Cougars after arriving from Northern Colorado, enters the season with sophomore Charlisse Leger-Walker coming off of a Pac-12 Freshman of the Year award and All-American Honorable Mention from the USBWA.
Averaging 18.8 points per game, Leger-Walker hit 32.8% from behind the three-point line and added 5.3 rebounds per game.
"Washington State is going to be really good, they are going to surprise a ton of people," Payne said. "They are returning almost all of their production, and so for us we are going in there and going to be facing one of the best players that we are going to face all year."
Washington enters the season with Tina Langley in her first year with the Huskies, having moved over from Rice in April. Hayley Van Dyke returns as the team's leading scorer from last season at 12.0 points per game, adding 5.8 rebounds.
A pair of former Rice players joined Langley in the move to Washington, with 6-9 center Nancy Mulkey named the 2021 WNIT MVP and 2020-21 CUSA Defensive Player of the Year. In 27 games last season, Mulkey averaged 15.7 points, 8.3 rebounds and 3.5 blocks per game while shooting 56.9% from the field. Forward Lauren Schwartz averaged 13.1 points per game for the Owls last season, hitting 42.0% from three-point range.
"We went down and played Rice two years ago, so it gives them a little bit of familiarity with somewhat of a system and we face some of the same players," Payne said. "But that's a big unknown with the new staff and the new system."
Both games will be available on Pac-12 Plus this weekend, with Friday's meeting with the Cougars
here and Sunday's game against the Huskies
here. Live stats for Friday can be followed
here and Sunday
here.
