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Preview: Women's Basketball Welcomes St. Thomas Aquinas for Exhibition Game to Start the Season

Date: November 2, 2022

By: Justin Nicosia

Lauren Park-Lane is hyped that basketball season is finally back at the Hall!

Seton Hall Athletics

For the second consecutive season, the Seton Hall Pirates will kick off their season with an exhibition game against the Division II St. Thomas Aquinas Spartans.

The Pirates are coming off an impressive 24-13 campaign in which they made it all the way to the WNIT Finals. They lost that game to the South Dakota State Jackrabbits.

St. Thomas Aquinas finished 2022 with a 14-15 record and lost in the second round of the East Coast Conference tournament.

While Seton Hall won last season’s contest 107-52, the Pirates lost four players who averaged at least 10 minutes per game: Katie Armstrong (15.2 minutes), Curtessia Dean (11.9 minutes), Andra Espinoza-Hunter (37.6 minutes), and Mya Jackson (32.0 minutes).

They do, however, return two Preseason All-Big East players in Lauren Park-Lane and Sidney Cooks.

Park-Lane, who was a unanimous selection to this year’s preseason team, also was a unanimous selection to last season’s Big East First Team and appeared on the 2023 Nancy Lieberman Award Watch List as one of the nation's top point guards.

The 5-foot-3 senior guard averaged 18.3 points and 7.0 assists per game in 2022, while shooting the ball with extreme efficiency.

Cooks was also selected to last season’s Big East Second Team and averaged 15.9 points and 7.9 rebounds per game last season. She is a 6-foot-4 graduate student who can protect the rim very well as a four or a five.

The Pirates’ other two returning rotational pieces – senior forward Mya Bembry and junior guard Amari Wright – hope to make an impact after combining for 6.3 points and 7.6 rebounds on a combined 40.1 minutes per game last season.

Bembry started 29 games last season and should be the team’s starting power forward. She averaged 6.2 rebounds last season and led the team with 1.8 offensive rebounds per contest.

Wright should see an expanded role this year with the departure of Espinoza-Hunter, and although she only had a small number of shot attempts last season (26 total field goals), she shot at a 61.5% clip and went 21-29 (72.4%) from the charity stripe.

Seton Hall also welcomes seven newcomers – six transfers and one freshman.

Shailyn Pickett, the freshman, won Connecticut’s Gatorade Player of the Year award two seasons ago.

As for the transfers, the Pirates have four that should be immediate rotational pieces.

Alexia Allesch returns to South Orange after a brief stint at Appalachian State, where she averaged 13.5 points and 9.7 rebounds. Xavier transfer Kae Satterfield averaged 11.0 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 2.5 assists a year ago. Former Penn State Nittany Lion Shay Hagans was seventh in the Big Ten last year with 1.7 steals. Virginia Tech transfer Azana Baines averaged six rebounds last season.

The other two transfers: Auburn’s Jala Jordan and Boston College’s Allie Palmieri, made little impact at their previous schools, so it will be interesting to see how they do at Seton Hall.

As for the Spartans, they return three of their four leading scorers from last season – senior guard Alexa Huertas (12.7 points per game), sophomore guard Sarah Ericson (10.4 points per game), and sophomore forward Erin Leary (8.0 points per game).

Junior guard Julia Reggio (4.7 points per game), junior forward Angelique Holguin (5.1 points per game), and Karol Jaruseviciute (3.8 points per game) are the other returning Spartans who averaged at least 10 minutes per game.

While the Spartans do have the luxury of a high level of roster continuity from last year, there is still a huge talent disparity between them and the Pirates, as they are a division lower in the NCAA.

WSOU’s coverage will begin Thursday at 6:45 p.m. with Mike Federico and Jackson Shank in the studio and Brian Henderson and Bobby Steiner on the call.

Justin Nicosia can be reached at justin.nicosia@student.shu.edu.

Posted in: Previews, Sports, Women's Basketball

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