The UWS Women’s Basketball team took the court for their season opener last night in Ashland, where they faced the Northland College Lumberjills.

The Yellowjacket women return four of their five starters to the floor, in what looks to be a very experienced team coming in this year.

The starters for the Yellowjackets were Seniors Bri Davis (forward, 6 feet) and Hailey Hart (forward, 5 feet 10 inches), Junior Connie Urmanski (guard, 5 feet 5 inches), Sophomore Carly Chell (forward, 5 feet 10 inches), and Freshman Sally Linzmeier (guard, 5 feet 7 inches).

The starters for the Lumberjills were Seniors Ashley Runge (guard, 5 feet 6 inches), Lulu Seelye (point guard, 5 feet 5 inches), and Maria Mackey (guard, 5 feet 9 inches), Junior Sam Stansfield (guard, 5 feet 8 inches), and Sophomore Jessica Jaeckel (forward, 5 feet 11 inches).

Unlike the men’s side of things, both these women’s teams brought a lot of experience to the table. It showed early on as both teams fought and battled hard.

The Yellowjackets implemented a full court press, which is something is fairly uncharacteristic of them and it will be interesting to see if they use that more often this year.

The press killed the Lumberjills, and the Yellowjackets began to surge and put together a significant lead. The quicker pace of the Yellowjackets seemed to burn out the Lumberjills and in turn, the Yellowjackets were able to get a lot of easy layups. The women made crisp pass after crisp pass, and their offense was so fluent that they opened up wide-open shot after shot for each other.

The pressure of the press that the Yellowjackets used caused many turnovers, which led to a series of easy baskets, helping extend the Yellowjacket lead to 43-23 at half.

The Yellowjackets never looked in their rearview mirror as they soared to a 72-46 victory with a dominant performance throughout the entire game.

Linzmeier had a team-high 15 points, to complement her five steals and four rebounds to lead UWS. Urmanski chipped in 14, while Hart added 9.

Freshmen Keely Deadrick and Deandra Vavra added some quality minutes to help with the victorious effort.

Northland was led by Mackey, who put in 18 points and also led the team with six rebounds.

The Yellowjackets outshot the Lumberjills in both 3-point percentage as well as overall field goal percentage. The Yellowjackets shot 62.5 percent from beyond the 3-point line, whereas the Lumberjills only shot 20.8 percent. The overall field goal percentage for UWS was 52.9 percent compared to 26.5 percent for Northland.

The Yellowjacket Women’s Basketball team will be in action again at 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18, in De Pere, Wis. where they will take on Dominican University as part of the Baylake Bank Tip-Off Tournament.