Radford women's basketball begins its 39th season, heading to Virginia's east coast for the 2009-10 season opener at William & Mary on Sunday. The Highlanders and Tribe will tip off at 2:00 p.m.

Game Notes

The Highlanders under second year head coach Tajama Abraham Ngongba finished the 2008-09 slate with a 9-7 mark in Big South play and a 10-18 overall record. The Highlanders look to improve on last season's mark and will look to Big South  Preseason All-Conference selection Kymesha Alston (Hampton, Va./Manhattan).

The red-shirt senior averaged 11.3 points and a team-best 8.3 rebounds per game, while shooting a team-high 47.8 percent from the field. The Heritage High School product upped her numbers in conference play, posting 14.3 points and 9.1 rebounds per contest and a 52.9 percentage from the floor. She is joined on the floor by four returnees and seven newcomers, which include five freshmen and two transfers.

William & Mary concluded the 2008-09 season 14-17 and 6-12 in the Colonial Athletic Association. The Tribe were 8-5 at home, but struggled away from Kaplan Arena (6-12). The Tribe return a pair of all-conference selections in Tiffany Benson and Taysha Pye. Benson was the 2008-09 CAA Defensive Player of the Year and Pye was a league finalist for Rookie of the Year.

Radford and William & Mary will be tipping off for the 18th time with the Highlanders holding a 13-4 lead in the series. In their last meeting, the Highlanders defeated the Tribe, 71-58 at the Dedmon Center on Nov. 23, 2007. Prior to that, William & Mary had won three straight contests.

SEASON OUTLOOK (by Patrick Reed)

Tajama Ngongba has a 12-piece puzzle to put together with her Radford women's basketball team in 2009-10, with a mind-boggling number of possibilities.

Some pieces she knows more about than others. Some pieces, like the seven newcomers, will make the puzzle a season-long process of trial and error. But in year two as the head coach of the Highlanders, it's a task she's willing and ready to take on, and one that she thinks her group of “puzzle pieces” is willing to take on together.

“I'm a confident person, and confident in our goal as a program to put as unified a group on the floor as we can,” Ngongba says. “To be successful, we have to get to that place, and our players understand that.”

Getting to that point has been the goal leading up to this season and it's taken steps on and off the court to make strides.

“We've had three things that we've lived by this offseason: effort, attitude, and knowing each other,” she says.

On the court, that means that both Ngongba and her group need to know who works well in certain situations.

“We've got to figure who likes to pass to a certain spot, who can knock down a key shot, and who can run the floor well.”

This preseason, her goal for the Highlanders is figuring out how to maximize each of the skills, talents, or abilities that each of the 12 pieces on the floor can bring to the table.

“It's difficult to make someone who has limitations meet expectations,” Ngongba says. “If we can maximize those skills that each individual has, we can make what we're trying to do a lot easier.”

First things first for Ngongba: find out early on where each player's skill level is, and then add in the wrinkles and challenges of the Division I game.

“After we jump start or improve the skills of our players, the next step is develop that into a full court game. We're going to run, so we want to find out how our players are going to do when we go full speed. Then, we'll find out how they do full speed, with other players around.”

If it sounds like a deliberate process for Ngongba and her team, it is. But she believes it's the best way to mesh a group of seven new faces with five returning players of varied experience.

“Our overall goal is to have solid chemistry. This is part of getting there.”
One player whose experience, and performance, stands out from the rest is preseason all-conference forward Kymesha Alston, the team's only senior.

A player that didn't start at all as a second-semester sophomore transfer from Manhattan, Alston was forced into a frontcourt starting position last season with clear expectations from Ngongba to perform.

Alston came through, posting 11.3 points and 8.3 rebounds per game, while turning her play up a notch during the Big South slate. In her 16 conference games, Alston knocked down 14.3 points, 9.1 rebounds (seven double-doubles) and hit on 53 percent of her tries from the field.

Along with proving herself in the scorebook, Alston took on both tangible and intangible roles for the then-first year head coach. Radford started 1-10 last year before Alston hit on 9-of-10 shots in a career-high 23-point performance to lift the Highlanders over Gardner-Webb on Jan. 5, sparking a 9-7 run to close out the regular season.

Ngongba is equally proud of Alston's performance as a leader, both late last year and early in this season.

“Her commitment is 100 percent, and her desire to win a championship is unparalleled,” she says. “You see that in the way she approaches workouts, in the way she approaches her teammates. She's had the talk with the underclassmen where she says 'I want to cut down the nets before I leave.'

“She's spreading a wonderful, contagious attitude of getting things done, now.”

On the court for Alston, there are even more expectations in 2009-10.

“I think consistency is the next step for Kymesha,” Ngongba says. “We now know she's capable, but it's being able to maintain that performance day in and day out.

“Our goal for this year is that she doesn't feel like she's the only threat, because we have other weapons out there.”

What those weapons are, only time will tell. Alston went from unheralded to producer last season, and Ngongba will look for copy-cat performances from others this coming season.

Two players Ngongba will look to didn't see the court for Radford last season, juniors Jewell Kinlaw and Brooke McElroy. But both can play the guard and forward positions, and bring experience to the table. Kinlaw averaged 11.8 points and 7.8 rebounds per game for Northwest Shoals Community College (Ala.), hitting 53 percent of her shots and posting a pair of 30-point games. McElroy, who sat out last season after transferring from Monmouth, started in nine games as sophomore in 2007-08, scoring seven points with four rebounds per game while collecting a co-team-high 20 blocks.

“Jewell's going to step in and play in the front court for us, and as athletic as she is, we're going to rely on her to hold down the interior for us,” Ngongba says. “And Brooke has been hungry sitting out the last year, and I know that she's eager to get out there and make everyone better.”

Two returning players that started for the Highlanders at times last year, juniors Denay Wood and Ciara Hayes, are also part of the mix in the frontcourt. Wood logged 13 starts during the Big South portion of the schedule, playing 26 minutes per outing (3.7 ppg, 5.3 rpg in conference games). Hayes (2.3 ppg, 1.9 rpg) started four times last year and played 12 minutes per contest.

Ngongba is also looking for contributions from junior guard Kaylyn Crosier and sophomore center Kahealani Vick, both of whom played in better than 20 games last year off the bench.

“It's a great group that can provide some leadership,” Ngongba says. “I've explained to those ladies that they need to be leaders, and that one of them has a chance to serve as one of our co-captains because of great leadership, effort, and positivity.”

Five true freshmen will also compete for a spot on the floor, and it's a class that Ngongba wants to see leadership out of as well, even though their experience is non-existent.

“The great teams have many players that can bring leadership qualities to the floor,” she says. “I want this group to step up, and speak up, especially if we're getting beaten on something. Even if they're on the sideline, I want them to take a leadership role from the sideline.”

Even though Ngongba has called on specific players to provide specific skills and abilities, while counting on everyone to speak up, it isn't about what each player does on their own.

But each is an equally important puzzle piece in 2009-10.

“Last year I came to a team with a lot of pieces to figure out how they work,” she says. “I have a better idea on some players this season, but the bottom line is the individual piece is not as important as how it all fits together.”