Women's Basketball Opens New Era with Homestand

Starting Five

Kansas City officially enters a new era this week with Head Coach Dionnah Jackson-Durrett at the helm. Jackson-Durrett comes to Kansas City after two years and two Elite Eight trips at Texas.
In addition, KC's roster will look quite different than it did last season. Seven players return, but six new faces join the KC bench, including two transfers and four freshmen.
Utah State transfer and Kansas native E'Lease Stafford will be looked to as a leader for this Roos team. She averaged 9.3 points and 6.3 rebounds last season for the Aggies.
RaVon Nero is back for her fifth year of college basketball and will be an impact player for KC. The former Summit League Sixth Woman of the Year averaged 6.9 points and 2.2 rebounds in 16 games last season and was named Preseason Second Team All-League.
Kansas City opens the season with four-straight games in the Swinney Center before taking a road trip that will span over three weeks between the end of November and beginning of December.

Westminster Notes

Monday's game will count as an exhibition for the Bluejays, who posted a 18-10 record and lost in the finals of the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletics Conference last season.
Westminster Head Coach Talisha Washington enters her fourth year with the Bluejays, winning the SLIAC championship in the 2020-21 season.
Westminster boasted five players that averaged double-digit points per game last season, three of whom return this year. Avylina Powell-Qualo, Annette Ramirez and Shelby Kurtz all come back after averaging between 10.0 and 10.6 ppg last year.

Tennessee State Notes

The Tigers open their season with a home game against the NAIA's Fisk prior to traveling to Kansas City on Friday.
TSU is coming off a 12-19 record last season, posting a 6-12 mark in Ohio Valley play. The Tigers were able to pull an upset over Eastern Illinois in the OVC Quarterfinals before falling to Austin Peay in the Semis.
The Roos and Tigers faced off in December of last year in Nashville. Kansas City emerged victorious, 74-70 behind a team-high 18 points and 12 rebounds from Brooklyn McDavid.
Tennessee State loses leading scorer Tatyana Davis, but returns Gia Adams, who scored a game-high 21 points in last year's meeting with the Roos.
In addition, the Tigers bring in Kansas transfer and former two-time SoCon Defensive Player of the Year, Erica Haynes-Overton.

UTEP Notes

UTEP will open the season with a home game against New Orleans on Monday evening before coming to the Swinney Center for Sunday's matchup.
The Miners look to build on last year's 14-15 record, accumulating a 6-12 mark in Conference USA play.
After opening the year with a 12-5 record, UTEP finished the season by losing 10-of-12 games, including an overtime C-USA First Round matchup against Texas-San Antonio.
Head Coach Kevin Baker enters his sixth year at the helm for UTEP, having posted three winning records in his first five years.
The Miners will be tasked with replacing leading scorers Destiny Thurman and Katia Gallegos, each of whom averaged double-digit points per game last year. Their leading returning scorer is sophomore Elina Arike, who started 25 games, averaging 8.8 points and a team-high 6.6 rebounds per game.

Winning Pedigree

Head Coach Dionnah Jackson-Durrett is no stranger to success, entering the 2022-23 season with five-straight trips to the Elite Eight under her belt.
Last season, as an Associate Head Coach at Texas, the Longhorns won the Big XII Championship and earned an Elite Eight bid in the Spokane Region.
In 2020-21, the Longhorns upset #3 UCLA and #2 Maryland en route to an Elite Eight bid.
Throughout her final three seasons at Mississippi State, the Bulldogs made back-to-back National Championship appearances in 2016-17 and 2017-18, and an Elite Eight showing in 2018-19.
Jackson-Durrett also had success as a player, making four NCAA Tournament appearances during her Oklahoma career and making a NCAA runner-up finish as a freshman.

Hometown Heroes

Of the 13 players on Kansas City's roster, five are from the states of Kansas or Missouri.
E'Lease Stafford, Machia Mullens and Dani Winslow all boast Kansas roots, with Winslow coming from the KC suburb of Olathe (pronounced oh-LAYTH-uh).
Ava Murphy and Zaire Harrell both come from the Missouri side of the border. Murphy's home town of Liberty is just 21 miles from the UMKC campus.
In addition, Sanaa' St. Andre, originally from Louisiana, graduated from Rock Bridge High School in Columbia, Mo.

Starting Anew

Prior to the beginning of this season, RaVon Nero was the only Roo to have ever started a game in the Kansas City uniform.
Kansas City ran out the same starting lineup in all 32 games in the 2021-22 season, none of whom return to the roster this year.
E'Lease Stafford has the most Division One starting experience on the Roos' roster, making 60-career starts between her time at East Tennessee State and Utah State.
Winslow is the only returner to have played in all 32 games last year, averaging 16 minutes per game.

Comeback Kids

Last year's Kansas City squad had a knack for the comeback.
On the season, the Roos made eight comebacks after trailing at the beginning of the fourth quarter, including a comeback in the Summit Quarterfinals against North Dakota State after trailing by 14 at half.
Overall, the Roos outscored opponents by an average of 4.3 point in the fourth quarter on the year.

Home, Sweet Home

The Swinney Center home court has been a place of solace for the Roos ever since the remodel that happened prior to the 2019-20 season.
In three years since, the Roos have accumulated a 32-10 home record.
Included in that record is a 17-7 home record in conference play.
Two of the biggest wins on the Swinney Center court came in the 2019-20 season. A 59-56 win over Missouri was the first Power Five victory in five years, and the 61-53 win over Utah Valley clinched the first conference championship in program history.

University of Missouri Kansas City Athletics