WBB: Ryan on Pitch Count, Rotations Will Be in Plenty for Cyclones – CycloneFanatic.com

Iowa State women's basketball isn't quite at full strength yet, but fortunately the season doesn't officially begin until Monday.

The Cyclones will play an exhibition game against Central on Wednesday night at Hilton Coliseum (6:30 p.m., no TV) to prepare for a highly anticipated year with both star point guards Emily Ryan and Marquette transfer Kenzie Hare It depends on the pitch.

“She’s on a pitch count — she and Emily Ryan both are,” coach Bill Fennelly said. “It's what the smart people say, 'a return-to-play protocol.'” They'll both play, but they'll be limited. If it was a regular season game, they would still be limited.”

Iowa State will also be without a Massachusetts position Lilly Taulelei, who is rehabilitating an ankle injury.

Players dealing with injuries haven't forced the Cyclones' hands into changing rotations, but with four proven additions, the team has practiced with fairly different looks.

One of these looks comes in the second year Addy Brown played the post, although this is partly due to the absence of Taulelei.

“We are experimenting with it. Because some teams we play against, Audi (Crooks), are going to have a little difficulty defending in space. This is mainly due to the depth we have in the wing. We want to have another option. When we played (Green Bay) on Saturday, both teams agreed that no one would commit a foul, and Audi had four fouls two minutes into the second quarter… That's just another option, especially if (Taulelei) is eliminated is. It just gives us something unique and I think Addy can handle it.”

Fennelly said the Cyclones built their roster knowing Ryan returned as a sophomore Arianna Jackson, and aspiring newcomer Reagan Wilson would be at the point guard position. At the post office it's Crooks and Taulelei.

“The other (spots), we just spin them and try to give them a chance,” Fennelly said. “Everyone has had a lot of opportunities to show what they can do and we've tried to put that into practice… We're just fighting harder than ever before.”

Rotation is Fennelly’s biggest concern right now.

“I think the biggest thing is still figuring out our rotation and figuring out how we're going to manage the point guard position until Emily (Ryan) can come back full time and just continuing to figure out where we can play guys off.” said Fennelly. “The good news is that we have a lot of children who can play. The bad news is that not enough people are stepping up and taking control of the spots, but that's okay. We trained really hard.”

The other part that Iowa State has to figure out or wait for is the team's 3-point shooting.

The Cyclones don't have a single guard on the roster who shot worse than 37% from behind the arc a season ago.

In practice, they haven't had a day where all long-range shots have found the net, but that's not a cause for concern yet and probably won't be the case in some games this season.

“Our numbers weren’t great – you can look at that in different ways,” Fennelly said. “I'm not worried about it, especially because they all have a track record of making recordings. That's nothing – we haven't had one of those days in our scrimmages where we do 50 percent of it. The recordings we are making are good and we will continue to do so. I worry about a lot of things, but that’s not one of them right now.”

With just a few days left in the offseason, there's still a lot to figure out, but that's exactly what Iowa State wanted to find out after the Round of 32 loss to Stanford that ended last season.

The no. 8 Cyclones take the court at Hilton Coliseum for the first time this year on Wednesday.