The title defense starts on Monday for the UMass women’s basketball team.

The Minutewomen will open their  2022-23 season against Central Connecticut State University on Monday at 5 p.m. (ESPN-Plus/NESN-Plus) at the Mullins Center. Prior to tip-off, the Minutewomen will celebrate their 2022 Atlantic 10 Conference title by raising a championship banner to the rafters. 

While it will be a celebratory moment for the home team, the Minutewomen are all business this season. They expect that every team they play will bring their best, and they plan to do the same. 

“Expectations are going to go up when you win, but I just keep telling them that we’ve just got to worry about today, win the day today. That’s something that we focused on last year,” UMass head coach Tory Verdi said. “The more days that we can win, the better off we’ll be.” 

On paper, UMass shouldn’t have much of a challenge against CCSU. Last year, the Minutewomen beat them 87-50 in their home opener. UMass returns all of its starters from last season and most of their bench, along with adding transfers like Laila Fair and Piath Gabriel. Sam Breen has continued to accumulate preseason awards, earning a spot on the A-10 preseason All-Conference First Team. Since then, she’s been named to the 2023 Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year Preseason Watch List and the 2023 Jersey Mikes’ Naismith Trophy Women’s Watch List. Both Sydney Taylor (First Team) and Destiney Philoxy (Second Team) also made A-10 Preseason All-Conference teams, and top performers like Ber’Nyah Mayo, Angelique Ngalakulondi and Makennah White are still in the mix for the Minutewomen.

Meanwhile, CCSU has just two of its starters back – seniors Forever Toppin and Dejah Jenkins. Expect Toppin to be one of the top players for the Blue Devils; she was named to the preseason All-NEC Women’s Basketball Team and ranked second in the NEC last year in steals per game (1.9) and sixth in assists per game (3.3). 

More than anything, this opening game will likely be an experimental one. Though UMass did play a scrimmage against Assumption, this will be the first meaningful contest that the Minutewomen play this season. During A-10 Media Day, Verdi said he was still unsure what his starting lineup would look like, or how the new pieces to the team would fit into place. This is a team with significantly more depth than last season, which will likely impact playing time and chemistry across the board. Monday’s game against the Blue Devils finally allows UMass to see how its lineup could roll this season. 

“Going into this, I knew what to expect from my returners. I still gotta get acclimated to the newbies in our program. But a lot of those guys really are still figuring out our systems. I’m looking to be able to depend on them,” Verdi said. “The rotations may be different every single night we take the court, I don’t know. As of right now, they’ll be sharing a lot of minutes…. it’s all gonna depend on the game and on the situation we’re in.” 

It will also be the first time Philoxy steps on the court for a game this season; the fifth-year player was in a boot during the team’s scrimmage at Mullins Madness, though Verdi says she’s been participating in practices and will be ready to go on Monday.

The start of this season might be an unusual one for UMass. The club is simultaneously heavy conference favorites defending a title, but also a new team getting used to each other, with new players and new roles coming into the mix. 

“At the end of the day, it’s going to be a journey. We don’t want to play our best basketball right now. We want to play our best basketball at the end of the year, just like we did last year,” Verdi said. “We may not be perfect right now, even though we may want to be perfect. But it’s still gonna be a little bit of rollercoaster ride… especially with the newbies that we have on our team, and that’s OK. But one thing that we will control, we will control how hard we work.”