Season Preview: Vaqueros focusing on inside game

You won't see as much full-court pressing and five-woman substitutions from the SBCC women's basketball team this year. What you will see is an emphasis on the inside attack featuring a pair of freshmen in Paige Nealy and Alexis Algeo.

"We're changing up our philosophy," said 11th-year head coach Sandrine Krul. "We'll only press at certain times and we'll pound the ball inside. Paige is a 6-1 left-handed post player and Alexis is 6-foot and also talented. So we want to slow the game down. It's going to be totally different from past years."

Nealy, a freshman from Valencia High, had 13 points and 12 rebounds in a 66-58 season-opening loss at Bakersfield on Nov. 1. Algeo is a freshman from Santa Ynez High.

The Vaqueros will play two games in their SBCC Crossover this weekend, hosting Fullerton on Friday at 7 p.m. and San Diego on Saturday at 5 p.m.

Five players return from last year's 11-15 edition. Darla and Andrea Morales, twin sisters from Pacifica High in Oxnard, played in all 26 games as freshmen. The guards averaged 5.6 and 5.2 points, respectively. The other returners are also guards – Mizhrua Bautista, Victoria Jackson and Sylvia Hoover-Purter of Santa Barbara High.

Andrea Morales had career highs of 19 points and eight rebounds against Bakersfield. Bautista, Jackson and Hoover-Purter will be the captains.

"We're basically a new team and we have lots of learning to do," said Krul, who's guided her team to the Southern Cal Regional in seven of the last nine years. "Our game will be to attack, attack, attack and dish it off inside."

Other top newcomers are Stella Dulay, a 5-6 freshman from Pioneer Valley, and Alyssa Cosio, a 5-10 guard-forward from Santa Barbara High's CIF championship team. Dulay played on the golf team this fall and can play the 3, 4 or 5 position, according to Krul. "Alyssa has the potential to be really good," Krul added.

"We struggled last year after starting 4-1," she noted. "There were certain things I couldn't control and that was very disheartening. The thing we're doing this year is getting back to teaching. You play the game at the Community College level to have a positive experience in college. If you're not having fun and you're not working hard, there's no reason to play because you're not on scholarship. These players are out here because they love to play. And they really get along with each other.

"It's going to be a growth year, with our schedule very tough as always. But that's OK. You don't get better playing terrible teams, you get better by playing the top teams."

The Vaqueros will host their MTXE Tournament for the last time on Nov. 20-22. They'll open vs. Solano on Thursday, Nov. 20 at 8 p.m. MTXE is the team motto and it stands for "Mental Toughness Extra Effort." SBCC's games during the tournament, and all season long, will be live streamed on the Vaquero Broadcasting Network with Ryan Graff on the call.

"The reason we won't have the MTXE Tourney any more is it's too hard to run the tournament," Krul explained. "We only have one gym and the tourney displaces a lot of PE classes. If we had 2 gyms, it wouldn't be a problem. We'll just go somewhere else and play in somebody else's tournament in November."

After the MTXE Tourney, the Vaqueros will be on the road for the next seven weeks. Their first home game of 2015 will be the WSC North opener on Jan. 14 against Moorpark at 7 p.m.