Lady Buffs look toward next season with strong young core

CANYON, Texas (KFDA) - The Lady Buffs’ basketball season may have ended last week, but the future looks bright for WT.

The Lady Buffs finished this season 21-11 with six players that tallied over 150 points on the season: Karley Motschenbacher, Lauren Taylor, Nyalam Thabach, Azia Himeur, Hollie Stalder and Kyla Kane.

Of those six, only Taylor is projected to leave the team, and Motschenbacher, Himeur, Stalder and Kane are all either freshmen or sophomores.

Untimely injuries led to many of the younger players seeing an increase in playing time, and, as always, more experience leads to more development.

“When you’re a freshman and you step into that first college practice, or those first college workouts, you’re battling with kids who could be All-Americans in college or kids who are All-Conference,” Assistant Coach Mikaehla Connor said. “Something that we continue to tell Kyla, Hollie, Bree and all of those girls, is ‘You’re going up against Karley Motschenbacher, who is the best on-ball defender we’ve seen, so if you can get by her, that’s really setting you up to be very successful in the coming years.’”

Kane and Stalder, mentioned by Coach Connor, scored 187 and 230 points this season, respectively. Freshmen players Bree Brattain and Mattie Boyd each redshirted their first season. Boyd, a former Canadian High School star player, can’t wait to finally take the court next season.

“This whole season is just practice, practice, practice, but you never got to show it or experiment with it,” Boyd said. “All of us just have this natural drive to us that makes us want to work hard in every aspect of our game.”

This season may have ended earlier than the Lady Buffs would have preferred, but only one year removed from an Elite Eight appearance, the future is bright in Canyon.

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