AMHERST, N.Y. -- The defending East Coast Conference champions Daemen University women's basketball open up the 2022-23 season on the road at the Redhawks Classic this weekend with a pair of games. The Wildcats will take on Pace on Friday, Nov. 11 in a rematch of the 2022 East Region championship game in the tournament opener, and will then take on Felician on Saturday, Nov. 12. Head coach Jenepher Banker and junior guard Kaytlyn Matz (Johnsburg, Ill.) discussed the team before the season starts.

On what they've seen from the team in preseason practices and exhibition games that they like...
"Their energy, for sure. High energy group, we have a lot of different combinations, a lot of different players that are excited to play together. They play hard and play with a lot of energy," Jenepher Banker said.

"So far this season is different from past seasons, we have a very deep bench. We have a lot of people that can rotate in and out, which allows us to go at people hard and pressure a lot more than we have in the past," Kaytlyn Matz said.

On the depth of the team and their ability to change up the players on the court throughout the game...
"It's great, there's really so many different combinations we can go with that we're actually just trying to figure that out ourselves, like which combination in which section. They're great, they're going out as hard as they can and trusting their teammates to come in and do the same thing, so it's been fun," Banker said.

"It's very encouraging and I think it's exciting for a lot of the players on the team, especially people who are new to the team because it shows them that they have the opportunity to play. Everyone, all the way down to the 15th player on the team, everybody has an important role and is important. It's exciting because we have that energy and the energy on the bench which I'm sure you can see from watching this team, is always ecstatic on this team, which makes it fun," Matz said.

On the dynamic of this team with eight returners and seven newcomers...
"It's just been a fun group to work with. From the returners, really the returners were not our star players. In the last three years we have graduated three All-Americans and Tiara Filbert who is playing basketball overseas right now and could've easily been an All-American as well, so technically if you could have more than one Player of the Year, we've graduated three Players of the Year in the last two years. You know that the returners are excited, and it's new for them, and then we have a great group of new players to mix in with them," Banker said.

"We know what it has been like for those players who built up the program to what it is today, so we're able to carry out the culture that they've created and give that to the new players that have come in and maintain that culture. Same with what I said before, the positivity has always been a key thing for us, so maintaining is the main factor I'd say," Matz said.