Welcome back to the #HLWBB Starting Five, your sporadic offseason rundown of news and fun from around Horizon League women’s basketball.
1. Bros
If it seems like every single one of these posts begins with a starter on the 2024-25 Purdue Fort Wayne Mastodons securing a coaching job, well, that’s not far from the truth. First, back in early June, there was Audra Emmerson, who joined Kate Achter’s staff at Western Michigan. Shortly after that, Maria Marchesano decided that one year with Lauren Ross wasn’t enough and added the sniper to her bench.
Now, it’s Amellia Bromenschenkel’s turn, as the long-time PFW stalwart has been hired as an assistant coach at Northern Iowa.
UNI is consistently one of Division I’s best mid-major programs, thanks largely to head coach Tanya Warren, who will enter her 19th season this fall. To that point, the Panthers have made postseason appearances following 15 of the last 16 completed campaigns, including a trio of NCAA Tournament bids. Last year, UNI collected a home win against Iowa State, which was ranked No. 8 at the time of the contest. Eleven days before that, they thumped Green Bay by 15 in the Kress Center, which obviously takes some doing as well.
This year’s squad will look quite a bit different from that one, as the Panthers’ roster now features six newcomers, and not cornerstones Maya McDermott and Kayba Laube, each of whom logged five full seasons in Cedar Falls. But hey, that’s where coaching comes in, and between Warren, former Cleveland State assistant Katelin Vandevender (Oney), and now Bromenschenkel, the program is in great hands.
In other PFW-adjacent news, former Mastodons player, grad assistant, and director of operations Kendal Muxlow is back as an assistant coach, after spending the 2024-25 season teaching in Indianapolis (I guess they don’t call them “seasons” in the real world though). However, and unfortunately, it does not appear that Shayla Sellers will return, as the program legend has disappeared from the roster.
2. Boom Clap
On June 30th, the WNBA announced a trio of expansion teams, including rebooted franchises for a pair of Horizon League cities, Cleveland and Detroit.
Most people were happy about that news. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham was not.
Cunningham, often referred to as a “star” in media reports despite not being particularly good, offered an explosive soundbite to Yahoo Sports when asked for comment on the expansion news. “You want to listen to your players, like where are they going to want to play,” she began. Then, after extolling the virtues of places like Miami, Nashville, and Kansas City (which were also considered for expansion): “I don’t know how excited people are to be going to Detroit or Cincinnati.”
She meant “Detroit or Cleveland,” of course. Cunningham shoots 32.8 percent from the floor, so you’ll generally take 1-for-2 out of her.
Regardless, the unsolicited blast united the two Rust Belt rivals for perhaps the first time since that trophy of a barge for the formerly-annual Lions-Browns preseason game disappeared. Almost immediately, social media bubbled over with clapbacks, including the official accounts and high-profile residents of both cities (unfortunately, Indianapolis and Indiana caught numerous strays as a result, but Cunningham has only blocked one shot this season, so it would have been foolish to expect otherwise).
Apparently, there is even a billboard on display in Motown.
Within the HL, the response was primarily held down by Cleveland State assistant coach Chenara Wilson, who also happens to be an extremely-proud native of the Vikings’ home city. Wilson dropped at least 11 tweets related to the kerfuffle, including supportive replies to the likes of Ron Harper, Tristan Thompson, and Jemele Hill.
Cleveland’s team won’t begin play until 2028, with Detroit following in 2029, so this story certainly has plenty of time to cool off. However, both cities have repeatedly demonstrated the sort of fierce pride forged by eating comments and jokes from imbeciles for the better part of seven decades, and neither is likely to forget the incident. It’s a bit less certain if Cunningham can hold up her end of things by staying in the league for another three years.
3. Back To Black
It’s probably not accurate to say that Green Bay is on a recruiting heater, because that’s more or less the Phoenix’s default state.
Kayla Karius already has four 2026 commitments on board, all from Wisconsin or the adjacent Upper Peninsula of Michigan (the rest of the Horizon League has six combined), so it seems that she’s already turned her attention to 2027. Exhibit A: Avalyn Albrecht, who committed to GB on Thursday. Albrecht is the first 2027 pledge in the HL, and one of roughly 14 nationally to this point.
“Thank you for believing in me and investing in me since eighth grade,” the rising junior at Poynette (WI) High School said in her announcement. “Your commitment and trust mean so much, and I can’t wait to be part of the Phoenix family.”
The 6-1 power forward is ranked as the seventh-best 2027 prospect in the state by Prep Girls Hoops. Coincidentally, that’s immediately behind Kardyn Peppler, the younger sister of new GB players Kamy and Kallie Peppler.
PGH’s Brady Peterson’s scouting report on Albrecht says that “she’s been a handful around the rim, and with her length and athleticism, she’ll be among the best in the Capitol Conference until she graduates.” She’s been called a double-double phenom in some corners, so between her and recent 2026 addition Kyrin Lile, Green Bay should be in good shape in terms of long and dynamic players who do several things well.
4. Going Back to My Roots
Ask anyone at Green Bay about what’s essentially a self-contained recruiting ecosystem, where the program is seen as aspirational by players in the immediate area (and usually statewide), while the Phoenix return the sentiment by focusing its efforts locally, and they’ll tell you that it wasn’t built overnight. The sort of mutual credibility that results in GB consistently landing talented fits, who also happen to be born-and-raised cheeseheads, is established over years and decades.
Undoubtedly, Robert Morris’ Chandler McCabe understands that, though she’s done a pretty great job of starting something comparable over in Hoop Township.
This year’s Colonials roster will boast seven Western Pennsylvanians, a far cry from just a couple of years ago, when RMU was about as Pittsburgh as a Ravens jersey. What’s impressive is that, unlike a GB lifer like Karius, McCabe is from Orlando and previously hadn’t worked further north than George Mason during her coaching career, so the current reality was fabricated quickly, and pretty much out of thin air.
RMU’s 2026 commit, wing Layla Hale, is from Cincinnati, not Pittsburgh, though she can still be taken as evidence of a regional approach (Cincy, after all, is a #MajorCity). And McCabe seems interested in taking things even further in the backyard of Northern Kentucky and Wright State, as Robert Morris Sports Now reports that two of Hale’s West Clermont High School teammates, Bella Swisshelm and Kennedi Campbell, recently received offers from the Colonials.
Swisshelm (who also has an offer from Jeff Hans and NKU) and Campbell, by the way, are 2029 prospects, high school freshmen. Will McCabe even be at RMU in 2029? Who knows, but if she is, the roots of her program’s network will be well established.
5. Cruel Summer
We’re officially into that weird phase of the summer where very few teams have formally announced their 2025-26 schedules, even though most game contracts have been signed at this point. That latter reality, of course, means that games frequently leak into the open, often thanks to public records requests.
One such inquiry was made of Wisconsin by the D1 WBB Schedules Twitter account, revealing that the Badgers will pay Detroit Mercy $32,500 to visit Madtown on November 23rd, while IU Indy is getting $30,000 to show up on December 21st. Those dollar figures are fairly typical of transactions between the Big Ten and the HL, though guarantees beyond $40,000 do sometimes happen.
As mentioned, a couple schools have made official announcements, including Northern Kentucky (and yes, that whole thing is still weird to me). Another is Toledo, which – as luck would have it – will play Detroit Mercy, the Norse, and Youngstown State in consecutive games between November 16th and November 25th (with a contest against Money Millie’s new UNI squad shortly after that).
Should the Rockets sweep those HL games, I’ll probably have no choice but to include UT in the #HLWBB Power Rankings on December 1st.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the matchups for the MAC-SBC Challenge have also been released. On November 3rd, future Horizon League member Northern Illinois will open the Jacey Brooks era at Southern Miss, while Achter, Emmerson and Western Michigan begin the year at Appalachian State.
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