LOGAN – The official start of the season is quickly approaching for the Utah State women’s basketball team. Fans were able to get their first in-person look at this year’s new-look team at the second annual Aggie Madness at the Wayne Estes Center on Tuesday.
The Aggies unofficially begin their season this Friday with an exhibition game against Fort Lewis. It’ll be the first chance for the team to prove wrong the preseason poll voters who picked them to finish 11th in the Mountain West. Utah State head coach Kayla Ard, now entering her third season in that role, spoke with Jason Walker and Eric Frandsen of the Full Court Press (4-6 p.m. on 106.9 The FAN) about the team’s prospects on Tuesday prior to the event.
“We’re still building,” Ard said. “We feel really good about the team we have this year, feel great about the staff that we have. But we kind of expected to be picked 11th. Nobody has any idea what we have except for us.”
The term “building” has taken on a whole new meaning for this team. The Aggies lost six players to graduation and seven more to transfers. That led to Ard bringing in 12 new players, effectively an entirely new roster. Only junior guards Olivia Wikstrom and Kinley Falslev-Wickizer remain as players from last year’s ninth-place finishing team.
Developing chemistry and cohesion among these players has been a focus of the team. None of them knew each other prior to this summer and now they face the challenge of turning around an entire program. But, in terms of off-the-court bonding, the team has hit the ground running.
“We’ve just done a lot of stuff off the court that doesn’t have anything to do with basketball. Just letting them get to know each other,” Ard said. “And it’s paid off for us on the court. I see our chemistry growing every single day.”
“The chemistry is great. We all click really well,” Wikstrom said. “We hang out a lot off the court and it’s just been really great.
“I feel like everyone’s really, really together,” Falslev-Wickizer said. “We’re all really best friends. None of it’s fake. It’s all real. Real relationships that’ll last forever.”
The reports from the coaches and players at this point of the season will never be anything but glowing (that being the nature of the PR game), but those words could be confirmed by ones own eyes at the Aggie Madness event on Tuesday. In pre-scrimmage layup lines they were joking with each other, exchanging banter during the short scrimmages and smiles were all over the place the entire night. The players clearly like being together.
Among the 12 newcomers are trio of guards that figure to make a big impact right away – Maria Carvalho, Tamiah Robinson and Cristina Oliva.
Carvalho comes way of Utah Valley University where she garnered multiple all-conference honors. In 2019-20 and 2021-22, Carvalho was Second Team All-WAC and in 2020-21 she was First Team All-WAC. She was twice named to All-Defense in 2019-20 and 2020-21. In her four seasons with the Wolverines, Carvalho averaged 10.4 points, 3.8 assists, 4.7 rebounds and 1.5 steals per game.
“[Carvalho] comes with a lot of IQ,” Ard said. “Really good passer. Has a lot of assists, she can also score it. Great defender.”
Robinson earned Junior College All-American honors at her previous stop at Labette Community College of NJCAA Division II. In two seasons there, Robinson averaged 11.7 points, 4.8 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 1.7 steals per game. She also shot 35 percent from three and 43 percent from the field overall.
“She can score it on all three levels,” Ard said of Robinson. “Really good defender; very, very athletic player.”
Oliva is joining USU after spending her freshman season at Sierra College of the CCCAA (California Community College Athletics Association). Oliva earned First Team All-Big 8 honors in that lone season where she averaged 15.3 points per game, 4.5 rebounds and 1.4 assists per game.
“Cris Oliva had a great year at her junior college,” Ard said. “Big-time scorer. She’s a really good shooter. We really like what she’s doing.”
Just with those three, the backcourt could be crowded enough, but returners Wikstrom and Falslev-Wickizer also figure to be in the mix. Both are solid shooters (arguably the best last year when balancing 3-point percentage and volume) and will help space the floor. Wikstrom could be especially pivotal, standing a 6-foot-1 – quite tall for a guard – she can provide length and shooting on the wing.
In the frontcourt, the battles for minutes has yet to clear up. The most experienced players on the inside are graduate transfers Abby Wahl and Prima Chellis, and senior transfer Ashya Klopfenstein. All three are Division I transfers.
Wahl is coming to Logan from Eastern Illinois of the Ohio Valley Conference where she spent the last four seasons. Her best of those four was 2020-21 where she scored 14.5 points per game while grabbing 7.4 rebounds on average. That earned her First Team All-OVC that season.
Chellis began her collegiate career in the junior college ranks but then went Division I by transferring to SIU Edwardsville. In the last two seasons, Chellis has averaged 5.5 points and 4.6 rebounds.
Klopfenstein also started her career at a JC, playing two seasons at Dawson CC before spender her most recent season at Robert Morris. In 2021-22 she averaged 8.1 points and 5.3 rebounds. In her time at Dawson, she was a WBCA Two-Year College Coaches’ All-American in 2021. During that season, Klopfenstein averaged 16.2 points and 10.5 rebounds per game.
The official start of the season will take place on the same day as the men’s basketball team. The women will face College of Idaho on Nov. 7 at 3 p.m. in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum with the men taking on Utah Valley later that night at 7 p.m.
