PUEBLO, Colo. – In yet another season of Pack hoops, it is this year's Colorado State University Pueblo women's basketball team that looks to make themselves a force to reckon with.

Once again under the leadership of head coach Tommie Johnson, who's in his fifth season at the helm of the Pack, the women of CSU Pueblo are in good hands and are looking to turn a corner after last year's up-and-down season.

After a 2022-23 season that saw the Pack finish 14-15 overall with an 11-11 record in Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference play, this year's team has new potential. Picked to finish third in the Preseason RMAC Coaches' poll, there has been a new respect that can be accredited to the ladies of Pueblo.

Within this upperclassmen-heavy team, many new faces, and some popular returners, will be looked on to make a push this season that can lead the Pack past the first round of the RMAC tournament and potentially bring home a championship and advancing to the NCAA Division II Tournament.

Highlighting the returners that come to aid the Pack again are some Massari favorites that can be attributed to the bulk of the scoring from last season. Of the four returnees, two were everyday players in the duo of junior guards Landri Hudson (Aurora, Colo./University of Wyoming) and Tomia Johnson (Colorado Springs, Colo./Florida Gulf Coast) and in a total of 29 games last season, these two played in all of them with Johnson being the only Pack player to start in every game. Other popular returnees who saw limited action last season due to injuries and personal matters were graduate student guard/forward Romola Dominguez (Denver, Colo./Central Arkansas) and former All-American forward Alisha Davis-Little (Aurora, Colo./University of Northern Colorado).

In the 2022-23 season, Hudson was a top scorer for the Pack as she averaged around 10 points per game and totaled 293 points to finish second on the team. Johnson, who averaged around seven points a game a year ago, comes back to this squad after tallying 81 assists, which was second-best on the team.

Davis-Little, who appeared in only one game last season after she missed for personal reasons, comes back to the Pack looking to return where she left off. After being selected as a WBCA All-America Honorable Mention player during the 2021-22 season, Davis was a force to be reckoned with not only offensively, but also defensively as she averaged nearly three blocks a game. She looks to be one of the leaders on this year's newly invented squad.

Dominguez only saw action in four games last season after an injury took her out for the year, but in her limited action was one of the starters for the Pack. In the 2021-22 season Dominguez was an everyday starter who averaged nine points a game and was a leading three-point shooter for the ThunderWolves.

Returning these two key players to the team is huge and in the words of Coach Johnson, it's a "talent upgrade."

"Alisha is a former all-American and, she can do anything she wants to do out there at this point. She's really trying to get her groove back and Ramola's just a really, really great shooter. I think she ranks fifth all-time in a single season for threes made. But more than anything, it's just a culture piece and a leadership piece that they've been able to provide us with. So, I think it's been really good to have them back in the locker room."

Of the nine other newcomers to join the squad, Coach Johnson has found a good mix of talent levels with five separate upperclassmen joining the team and a mix of four freshmen to even out the court.

Some of the new faces expected to see action this winter include junior guard Yara Garcia, redshirt junior forward Jaida Wolfork (Huber Heights, Ohio/Purdue Fort Wayne), junior guard Shamara Henderson (Denver, Colo./Cowley College), redshirt Junior forward Autumn Watts (Centennial, Colo./McNeese State), and senior forward Teona Pop Stojanova (Skopje, Macedonia/Dodge City CC). Watts is one of the top newcomers in the league after transferring back to home state from Division I McNeese State.

For the underclassmen, we can expect to see freshman guard Anjolene Ramiro (Aurora, Colo./Eaglecrest), freshman guard/forward Brynae Stewart (Colorado Springs, Colo./Pine Creek) and freshman forward Leilani Love (Albuquerque, N.M./Albuquerque).

Besides the Pack's lone exhibition game with the University of Utah on Oct. 18, they have seen no outside competition and have only been left to practice relentlessly since last winter. Coach Johnson has high hopes though and feels his team is prepared for the season ahead.

"So far practice has been going really well. We're getting healthy at the right time now even though the preseason's always a little tough, especially when kids come off the summer of not doing everything. We're expecting to go up here and show well against some teams that have been nationally ranked, that have all played in the national tournament the last couple of years and made it past the first round as well. We want to go and measure ourselves to where we're at from, a physical standpoint."

Looking Ahead at their Opponents:
Entering the 2023 D2CCA Tip-Off Classic this weekend, the Pack find themselves facing off against two proven opponents and will be looking to challenge themselves early this season. As for this weekend, the first of these opponents is the Preseason No. 12 ranked Azusa Pacific Cougars.

Last season, the Cougars, who were tabbed to finish first in the Preseason PacWest Coaches' Poll this season, were a powerhouse team from California. In their 2022-23 campaign, they finished the year with a 26-5 record and fell just short of the NCAA Division II Elite Eight when they fell in the NCAA West Regional semifinal game against Cal State San Marcos. Returning from last year's squad are three of their four leading scorers who all averaged in double-digits. They will be led by senior trio of point guard Paige Uyehara (14.1 points, 4.8 assists), forward TyLee Manuel (13.8 points, 6.1 rebounds) and forward Molly Whitmore (11.1 points, 6.0 rebounds).

As for the more defensive-based team in the Preseason No. 17 ranked Union University Bulldogs, they saw themselves finish a season ago almost on top as well when they went 27-4 and were also closely defeated in the NCAA South Regional semifinals by Eckerd College. In the 2022-23 season, they limited opponents to a 56 points per game on average, while scoring around 75 points a game offensively. Leading their squad once again this season is graduate student guard Shanique Lucas, who a year ago averaged just over 15 points a game and a team-high 25 minutes a game.

The Pack will open the season on Nov. 3 with an 11 a.m. MT game against Azusa Pacific, before facing Union on Nov. 4 at 4 p.m. MT. Lubbock Christian, who the Pack face next weekend at the South Central Region Crossover event hosted by Colorado Christian, is hosting the preseason D2CCA Tip-Off Classic in the Rip Griffin Center on the LCU campus.