“We kinda came into the season feeling really good about the depth of our team,” head coach Suzy Merchant said. “It’s not often you have a bench that you can go to and you don’t lose anything. I feel like this group is really committed to that and I think we’re pretty deep”

Redshirt senior guard lead the team with a total of 17 points going 6-7 for field goals and 3-3 for free throws. The Spartan bench pulled in with a total of 55 points scored. 

For sophomore guard Taryn McCutcheon, she feels there is always something to improve on for every game even with today’s major scoring gap.

“Everyday we challenge ourselves to be better at defense,” McCutcheon said. “Defensively one-on-one. Today, we really focused a lot on that in our man-to-man defense and hopefully we’ll continue to improve.”

Freshman forward Sidney Cooks, who scored ten points in the scrimmage, was proud of her new teammates and their contribution for the game.

One thing she believes that the team can work on is saving their energy during a score gap during the exhibition. 

“I feel like with games like this it’s kinda hard to stay with so much energy when it’s a blowout like that,” Cooks said. “Just keeping our energy up, staying positive the whole time and just pushing cause we got tough teams coming up.”

As a new freshman, this is her first game playing as a Spartan and is looking forward for many more games to come her way.

She cannot wait to get study the film as the season goes on to help improve her skills along the way.

“I’m very excited about it,” Cooks said. “I can’t wait to watch film and figure out little moves I can work on to make my game better. It was just really exciting for me and I finally got to step out on the floor.”

Going into her second season as a Spartan, McCutcheon feels this season the team has stepped up. 

There is one major thing that she hopes the team can achieve. 

“A Big Ten Championship hopefully,” McCutcheon said. “We’re a really competitive team and we’re really balanced team. Defensively this year I feel like we stepped it up a ton and I’m really excited about that.”

The Spartans will kick-off the home opener on Saturday at 4 p.m. at Breslin against Robert Morris University. 

Cooks cannot wait for everyone to come out and watch. McCutcheon believes they can build off their defensive skills and dominate the game. 

“Going into this next game, we’re going to build off of that and seeing how much we can dominate from every position,” McCutcheon said. “That really boost our confidence going into the next game. We’re hopefully going to build on that.”