Junior guard Klarissa Bell said the team is more of a cohesive unit after going through all the injuries.

“It’s nice to know what people’s moves are a little bit more,” Bell said. “That whole week of experience, it’s only going to help us and make us stronger, so it’s nice.”

With two wins in their exhibition games, she said they must use the important tools they took away from the in-game experiences.

“More than anything we took our defense from it,” Bell said. “Also offensively, we learned that we need to settle down a little bit.

“Especially this next game is going to be fast paced, so I feel like our offense is going to be fast paced to match their intensity, but we need to play our own speed.”

Since they haven’t played since last Sunday, senior forward Courtney Schiffauer said the team really is relying on each other going into the season.

“We have our mistakes here and there and knowing we’re pretty much all we’ve got right now,” Schiffauer said. “We’re getting our energy back. We’re playing together more and we had a good week of practice.”

She said the team has been working hard to get ready to take on UT-Arlington.

“We’ve been working hard going over their plays,” she said. “We know they’re a very athletic team, but I think we are in condition for that and we can handle it.”

As a senior captain, Schiffauer said she is going to remember every moment from the last year of her MSU career.

“I love this team,” she said. “It’s kind of bittersweet knowing this is the first(game) of the last (year), so that’s hard to take, but I’m just trying to enjoy it while it’s here.”

With the loss of sophomore center Madison Williams for the year with a torn ACL, sophomore Jasmine Hines said she will need to step up if this team is to succeed, and that she has been working on more than just basketball skills this offseason.

“It was really up and down last year, so coming into this year, I really just wanted to come to play, because last year when I messed up I would get all down on myself,” Hines said. “This year I want to be more confident.”

Despite all the negatives that have surrounded this team at the beginning of the year, Hines said the success of this team is all about the attitude.

“If we just come to play and bring a lot of energy we will do good,” “We’ve had a lot of time to put stuff in and just go over our plays and keep fresh with that.”

Bell and the Spartans are looking forward to officially get the season underway, but know they can’t look past UT-Arlington.

“We’re really excited. They’re a fast group, so they’re going to push our motors a little bit.