Women's college basketball: UW-Eau Claire persevering through steady roster changes
Jan. 18—Injuries, quarantines, schedule reshuffling — if it's not one thing the UW-Eau Claire women's basketball team has had to deal with, it's the others. Naturally, the Blugolds have learned several lessons in flexibility this season.
As conference play begins to heat up, it's been a while since UW-Eau Claire has been at full strength. The Blugolds have been without starting forward Bailey Reardon since mid-December. While the rest of the group's core starters are still going strong, developing depth has been an interesting endeavor. They only had 12 active players for a game at UW-Whitewater on Jan. 8.
And the Blugolds have seen the effects of COVID-19 throughout the league too. Between the men and the women, several games have been canceled already in the past month. Eau Claire dealt with that headache on their trip to Texas, where they had a tournament game called off.
"Between that, injuries, you name it," Blugolds coach Tonja Englund said. "For every team, I think what the coaches are talking about right now is that it's really hard to get in sync with your team and get back to where we all were."
But the Blugolds have taken it in stride. They're ranked 18th in Division III and are tied for second with UW-Stout in the WIAC standings.
Englund credited the team's perseverance for keeping steady amid so many changes.
"I have to give my players a lot of the credit for what they've done the last two years," she said. "For some of our players, two of their four years so far of their college career has been in a pandemic with testing and protocols and isolation, all those things. It's a lot to handle for a college student, and I give them a lot of credit."
As they've worked through absences, Eau Claire's starters have shouldered plenty of minutes. Three of their usual starting five log more than 30 minutes per game.
An increased workload is to be expected, and despite their youth, the Blugolds have rolled with it.
"I think they've done a really good job of helping each other," Englund said. "No question, we've got players who are playing a lot of minutes sometimes just because we have players that are out. But I think when push comes to shove at the end of the year, this is a very, very good team."
The Blugolds want to replicate the form they had in the first half of the season. Eau Claire won 11 of its first 13 games and climbed as high as No. 3 in the rankings before the new year.
As COVID-19 has affected December and January, Eau Claire feels it hasn't been the only team to go through setbacks.
"I think a lot of us felt like in early December when we started to play those two conference games, everybody kind of had a feel for their team," Englund said. "You had your rotation down and you had a good idea of who you were, and then everything just changed over Christmas.
"So I think a lot of the teams right now, as we have people coming back or maybe coming off injuries, what you're really trying to do is get back to where you usually would be right now in mid-January."
UW-Eau Claire men's coach Matt Siverling said his group hasn't faced as many off-court challenges as others, but they've seen the effects regardless.
"Every team's dealing with the pandemic, and every team deals with injuries every year," he said. "It's something that you come to expect. It's just making sure that guys that have to step into some roles that maybe they're not used to are ready for those things."
That's a common message at Zorn Arena: Make the most of what you have.
"I'm hoping that we're going to get back to normal soon," Englund said, "but right now it's shifting all the time, just doing the best you can and making sure your players are doing OK."
