Don’t call it a rebuild
Wright State comes into the 2024-2025 season fresh off the first Horizon League Championship appearance for coach Kari Hoffman and a fourth-place performance in the league. With graduate student Alexis Hutchison and Layne Ferrell leading the charge into the semi-finals, they were quashed by the HLWBB machine that is Cleveland State. All in all, last season was a fantastic performance from the three-year head coach of the Raiders, who received an extension to go along with breaking new ground in her tenure.
Hoffman now has to rebuild 60 of her 70 points from last season as all five starters either transferred, such as Rachel Loobie to Long Beach and Kacee Baumhower to Horizon opponent Milwaukee, or graduated. To that end, the Raiders have a few new fresh faces to help with the push to maintain status near the top of the league. However, unlike last year, Hoffman decided to go for transfers from other institutions that needed to find new homes and had a few years left to give.
Hoffman set her sights on Appalachian State, who recently lost their head coach, and acquired Mackenzie Drout and Lexi Bugajski from the squad, both younger players with some minutes of experience from the bench. Abbie Riddle from Bowling Green and Olivia Brown from Akron also saw some action in their first years from their bench before transferring to Wright State. To solidify the frontcourt, Amaya Staton from Merrimack and Chloe Chard Peloquin from Canisius were brought in to rebuild the core. Freshmen additions Anna Azzara, Elle Bruschuk, and Florrie Cotterill round out the nine new faces that now don the green and gold.
“I really, really like our team this year as far as their chemistry, our court chemistry is excellent right now” Hoffman replied when asked about the team chemistry over the summer. “I think this group is really eager, there’s a lot of younger bodies out there. I think that was a focus of ours in the portal was to try to find younger transfers that could be here a few years, whereas last year we took a lot of graduate transfers.”
The youthful rebuild has two objectives; try and maintain consistency in the squad as rebuilds cost valuable time and effort season to season when it comes to chemistry, and address the defensive inefficiencies from last season. With the new transfers, Wright State is looking to make a splash as an all-around threat, though they’ll need to make use of their non-conference schedule to solidify the team chemistry with all of the fresh faces.
“We wanted to find teams that we can compete with, Bellarmine and Evansville on the road, and then getting a couple of competitive and challenging home games,” Hoffman remarked about the non-conference schedule. “And then the trip to Wisconsin we were working on early and we’re happy with how that worked out, we have three players from the state as well as myself, it’ll be the first time I’ve been to the Kohl Center since I played in high school.”
With the season nearly upon us, who will be donning the green and gold (and pink and grey and white and black…) for Wright State this season?
Projected Starting Lineup
G Lauren Scott – Scott is the only remaining member of the squad who has received starter role minutes during last season’s campaign. A diligent worker and threat all around the floor, Scott will look to take the lead as one of the remaining home-grown talents from the beginning of Hoffman’s time with the Raiders. The key for Scott will be progression – she’s already been hitting three pointers at a higher percentage than the rest of the team last season, while being able to prove that she can lead the offense. Keeping up her consistent progression in scoring would mean she can elevate this team to a higher level.
G Claire Henson – Fun fact about Claire Henson, she’s one of eight siblings and all of them have names starting with C! One of the high rebounding guards while on the court for the Raiders, Henson saw about 12 minutes of action coming off the bench and averaged around 3 PPG and 2 RPG while doing so. This season, Henson may be due to step into a bigger role for the Raiders.
“I think Claire is poised and ready, she’s having a really good pre-season this year,” Hoffman complimented.
G Makiya Miller – Ready to return to the green and gold following an injury, Miller was an All-Freshman Team recipient in her first year. Miller provides a punch in the paint that gives the Raiders some versatility in the attacking angle. During her sophomore year her time on the floor dwindled in favor of the transfers until injuries put them out for the remainder of the season. With the injury healed, Hoffman will look to use one of their main returners with NCAA minutes as much as possible.
G Rylee Sagester – There is a wide variety of picks for the final guard spot in an offense that loves to shoot from the outside, but the one that I foresee getting the nod is Rylee Sagester, the redshirt freshman who set an Ohio record for career three pointers. In Hoffman’s offense, three pointers have been the bread and butter which puts Sagester in the spotlight. If they can put on repeat performances from their high school days, Sagester should have no problem thriving in Hoffman’s system.
F Amaya Staton – The Merrimack transfer and lone graduate student on the team will look to solidify the rim for a squad that had their forward core last year rocked by injury. Hoffman has praised Staton’s efforts in practice on defense, especially at the rim, and should help lock down the post in Wright State’s traditional man-to-man defense. Staton averaged 11 PPG at Merrimack and was at Cleveland State before transferring to the MAAC.
Key Reserves
F Chloe Chard Peloquin – After transferring from Canisius following an injury season, Chard Peloquin has impressed in the early workouts with the team. Prior to the injury, she saw the court half the time at Canisius and averaged around 4 PPG as a freshman. Should she stay healthy, Peloquin could see significant minutes in the Raiders forward slot and can provide a rebound touch that the Raiders were sorely missing last season.
F Lexi Bugajski – During her freshman season at App State, Bugajski saw limited playing time and recorded her first collegiate points during the conference season. During high school, she was ranked as one of the top players in Wisconsin and earned consistent honors. As a power forward who isn’t afraid to shoot the three, there’s room on this offense to make some noise.
G Ellie Magestro-Kennedy – Redshirt season is now over for Magestro-Kennedy, which means she can now provide this offense with the skills showed in Wisconsin. As with Sagester, we’ll need to see how Magestro-Kennedy slots into the offense of the Raiders, but we should be able to see their skills this season.
G Macie Taylor – Joining the court primarily off the bench in her first appearances following the redshirt season, Taylor has been working hard in the offseason to develop her skills. Hoffman praised their effort in interviews, tabbing them as the most improved over the offseason.
G Abbie Riddle – After seeing some minutes with Bowling Green, Riddle took a redshirt season following an injury before a major game at South Carolina. Riddle’s last game with the Falcons was against Wright State, and so after the guard entered the transfer portal Hoffman pounced on the opportunity. As a previous All-Ohio First Team selection, Riddle hasn’t yet had the opportunity to show what she’s capable of at the collegiate level.
G Olivia Brown – Brown has been seeing reps as the point guard for the squad in the offseason and could be a key player off the bench. An Akron transfer like Layne Ferrell last season, Brown only saw action in ten games with the Zips.
Freshmen – Anna Azzara earned First Team honors in Pennsylvania’s 6A circuit while averaging 16 PPG as a point guard, Elle Bruschuk earned honors as a 6’ guard in 4A Illinois basketball, and Florrie Cotterill was scouted from England while they were playing at Itchen College. All fine additions to the Raiders that we may or may not see during the season depending on how the rest of the lineup shakes out.
Injury
G Mackenzie Drout – App State transfer Mackenzie Drout has the most experience out of all the new guards in the green and gold, clocking in 171 minutes and 3 PPG in her freshman season along with an impressive career high 12 points at Marquette. Unfortunately, Drout tore her ACL prior to the season according to Dayton Daily News, so she’ll be on the sideline for the season.
Outlook
With a non-conference schedule filled with similar level competition all going through rebuilding aspects, the outlook for the conference really depends on how well the Raiders do in those early matchups. Should the Raiders land a winning record overall against their competition and come out of the early season with a good rhythm, especially in the frontcourt, they have the potential to wrangle one of the top spots in the conference.
Wright State is a high ceiling, low floor kind of squad. There is a lot of unearthed talent in the squad that has yet to see reasonable minutes on the floor, but in contrast to the rebuilding years, this year’s talent has been around and forms a culture and foundation to build upon.
Edit: Amaya Staton came from Merrimack College, not Mercyhurst as previously reported.
