While many NCAA basketball teams are idle right now, Morehead State's women have been practicing for the past several days. It's all in preparation for a trip to the Bahamas next week. MSU will spend six nights in Freeport and play two exhibition games.
Eight players, several staff and coaches and a handful of fans will depart Tuesday for Freeport. The Eagles will practice Wednesday and then face the Bahamas All-Stars Thursday at 7 p.m. ET and the Lady Flames Friday at 7 p.m. Those squads include several Bahamas National Team members. The team will stay at the Memories Grand Bahamas Resort Hotel.
"This should be wonderful trip for all of us," Head Coach Greg Todd said. "I have never been to the Bahamas and several of our travel party have not either, so we will enjoy the fellowship and use these games as chance to implement some new schemes and improve our team. The competition should be good, and it will give our team a chance to get up and down the floor together in a game-like setting."
As part of the "foreign trip" the NCAA allows 10 practices prior to departure.
"We have several new players, so we have used the practice time to introduce new concepts, and it's been a chance to pull our team closer together."
The games will take place on a high school floor, which is 10-feet shorter than a collegiate-sized court.
"It will be a little different on our pressure defense and fast breaks, but we would like to play at a faster pace than we did last year," Todd said. "We feel like with the players returning and who we brought in as newcomers, that faster pace will suit us well."
Returnees include junior forward Shay Steele, sophomore forward Eriel McKee, sophomore forward Brooke Todd, redshirt senior guard Natalie Greenwell and junior guard Aaliyah Wells. Redshirt freshman Dominique St. Louis will see her first action as an Eagle after sitting out 2014-15 as a medical redshirt. Newcomers slated to make the trip are junior college transfer guard Kay Kay Tate and freshman guard Miranda Crockett. MSU also has a couple of other newcomers for 2015-16 who will not making the trip but will join the program for the season.
"I know the team is very excited to be on the island and be at the beach, so we'll have some time to relax and have fun too," Todd said.
The Bahamas is a chain of islands, southeast of Florida and northeast of Cuba in the Caribbean. English is the official language of the Bahamas, while sloop sailing is its national sport. Currency is the Bahamian dollar, although United States dollars are widely accepted. The islands are on Eastern Time and have a population of approximately 320,000.
The MSU men's basketball team spent five nights in the capital city of Nassau, Bahamas last August and won three games against international competition.
