Arkansas coach Mike Neighbors is breaking in a roster full of new faces.
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Much like their counterparts on the men’s side, the Arkansas women’s basketball team will have quite the new look when the season begins November 15 against Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
Senior guard Amber Ramirez is the only senior on the roster. She’s one of two starters back for coach Mike Neighbors. Junior guard Makayla Daniels is the other. They were two of the four double-digit scorers for Arkansas last year. Chelsea Dungee and Destiny Slocum, the other two, are now in the WNBA.
In their stead come Sasha Goforth, Jersey Wolfenbarger, Maryam Dauda and Samara Spencer. The last three are freshmen. The first three are all Arkansas natives. They’re all McDonald’s All-Americans, too.
“I don’t know what the end of this picture looks like with this team yet, but we have unique pieces,” Neighbors said. “We have unique pieces that I’ve never had all under the same roof or on the same team at the same time.”
Goforth is likely to take the biggest early jump as a newcomer. She transferred from Oregon State where she was an All-PAC 12 Freshman. The Fayetteville High grade gives Arkansas a third player who averaged in double figures last year.
Wolfenbarger and Stephens are guaranteed to play, too. Stephens will apprentice under Daniels, to whom Neighbors compared her. Wolfenbarger is a unicorn. She’s 6-foot-6, but listed as a guard.
In time, the scoring and leadership Dungee and Slocum brought will sort itself out, Neighbors said.
“New challenges for them as players to get it together and build it into a cohesive puzzle that we all know what it can and should look like,” he said. “We’re going to have some work to do on role development and shot distribution and playing time but that’s what is fun about this.”
