Kayla Ard at USU vs Nevada women’s basketball, 02/26/22
In the Mountain West basketball preseason polls released this week for the men’s teams and last week for the women, Utah State was not viewed in a favorable light. The women’s basketball team was picked to finish dead last among the 11 teams while the men were slated to finish eighth. It’s the worst combined preseason prediction for USU since joining the conference in 2013.
Kayla Ard, head coach of the women’s team that’s now been picked to finish 11th three straight years, was bold in her response to her team’s placement in the poll, as was transfer guard Cristina Oliva.
“We all knew we were going to be picked 11th,” Ard said. “And we love it. We’re excited about it. The team is excited about it. That staff’s excited about it. That’s exactly where we wanted to be picked.”
“I couldn’t be more happy that we’re placed 11th. We’re a brand new team so anything that’s happened in previous years we don’t really care about because we haven’t been here,” Oliva said. “I’m just ready to prove people wrong. I know that a lot of people have talked down on us, talked down on my coach, talked down on our school whatever it is. We have new players coming in and we don’t care has been said the last couple years.”
Ard said openness about where the team was expected to be was part of her recruiting pitch. And the players who answered the call to come to USU are those who fit well within the underdog mentality.
“I was going after players that had a chip on their shoulder,” Ard said. “That other people had passed on or that didn’t have the opportunities that they wanted and people were sleeping on them or hating on them or whatever you want to call it. And I wanted to take a chance on them and they wanted to take a chance on me.”
Oliva spoke about how Ard believing in her really resonated and attracted her to come to Logan and has benefited her since she arrived.
“For a long time I had a lot of people who didn’t believe in me,” Oliva said. “So to hear that Coach K just really believed in me, she trusted me and she really wanted me to be a part of this program. I believed in her and I took it and it’s been great ever since I’ve been here.”
Ard said the chance to bring in almost an entirely new roster was “a huge opportunity for me as a head coach to kind of get a redo, a start-over. Hit the reset button.” And there’s confidence in the locker room that the players they’ve gathered have the talent to make a big run this season.
“We have every piece to the puzzle so once we put that together I think it’s going to be a really good season,” Oliva said.
Head coach of the men’s team, Ryan Odom, was much more reserved in his approach, being dismissing of preseason polls which have differed on where the his team should be. The MW preseason poll put the Aggies eighth, but Ken Pomeroy’s “KenPom” rankings projected USU as the third-best team in the conference. When asked which team he was – eighth-best or third-best – Odom replied “I have no idea.”
“Preseason polls are preseason polls,” Odom said. “You’re either going to earn your way into a higher finish or you’re gonna earn your way into a lower finish. We’re nowhere right now and none of us are to be quite honest. For us we can’t worry about where we’re picked or what others think about us.”