Redettes looking to replace several key players

MARQUETTE — The Marquette girls basketball team are the defending Great Northern Conference champions and are coming off another Class A district title. Replacing a stellar senior class will be tough for the Redettes, but the hope is that those players helped set a good foundation for this year’s team.

“I think we’ve been doing some pretty good work through the first few weeks of practice. Every now and again we hit a little lull, but we usually pick it up. The girls have been good at keeping each other going in the right direction. Everything is not going to be pretty ever and it certainly hasn’t been this month. But I think as we move forward, we’ll keep seeing improvement,” head coach Ben Smith said.

“I think it was pretty important for a lot of us underclassmen to get some experience, just to know what kind of competition we’ll be expecting this upcoming season. Just working hard and seeing what’s going to happen with the team is really important to us,” forward Stasha Warchock said.

The Redettes are one of a handful of U.P. teams who have to play both downstate and U.P. teams throughout the season. Coach Smith wants to use the small tournaments early on to figure out how his starting lineup will shake up.

“At this point, it’s hard to figure out exactly what everyone has when it’s hard to tell exactly what you have. We’ve had one scrimmage with Ishpeming and did a few good things and did a few things not quite like you want to do. But this Saturday, we head down to Midland andwe’ll have three different schools to go against down there. We’ll kind of take inventory of where we’re at then, and then regroup and head down to Petoskey on December 1st and hopefully be ready to go,” said Smith.

The Redettes will open conference play at home on December 5th against Gladstone.