Coming off a year where the team finished 13th in the American Athletic Conference, Wichita State women’s basketball coach Terry Nooner said he was looking for players with “chips on their shoulders” and “a lot of internal work ethic” in his recruiting class.
Nooner signed four juniors from community and junior colleges over the offseason: guards Kyleigh Ortiz, Princess Anderson and Jasmine Peaks, and forward Maimouna Sissoko. He said those players embody the type of mindset he was scouting.
“You talk like a kid named Princess Anderson, who in junior college, nationally, she led the country in scoring for two years, and she was highly efficient and wasn’t highly recruited,” Nooner said. “And so you get a certain kind of chip on your shoulder for that.”
Achieving the D1 goal
All four players were scouted by assistant coach Antwain Scales, who heads the recruitment of junior college players. Prior to joining the Wichita State coaching staff in April 2023, Scales was a head coach at Garden City Community College.
Ortiz played against Scales’ Garden City team while at Coffeyville Community College. She said that familiarity helped build their trust in the recruiting process.
“He (Scales) brought me in here, and I knew it was going to be a good fit for me,” Ortiz said.
Peaks played high school and junior college basketball in Florida. She arrived on Wichita State’s radar because her head coach at Indian River State College knew Scales.
“I just think that what made me want to come here is the family,” Peaks said. “They’re very family-oriented, and what you see is what you get. And they’ve been the same as they were when they first talked to me.”
For many junior college players, including Peaks, playing Division I basketball is a dream of theirs.
”It’s (playing Division I) always been one of my goals,” Peaks said. “So JUCO was just a different route I had to take … I just had to do something different to get here.”
Jumping a level
One of the biggest differences between Junior College and Division I is the speed and size of the athletes. Sissoko, who stands 6 feet 3 inches tall, said she’s been managing the jump in competition with more hard work.
“The level is really high; you will see a lot of your size, but (in) JUCO you will probably be playing with a kid from high school,” Sissoko said. “But here, you have four-year (experienced) players.”
The players have greater access to health, nutrition and training programs at Wichita State than when they were at the junior college level. All four players said they’ve been getting in the gym more to work on their strength and conditioning.
“The level of play is different,” Anderson said. “The tempo is fast, and we (are) busy doing basketball throughout the week, which is conditioning, doing weights, etc.”
New contributions
Anderson scored 26.7 points per game last year at Pratt Community College, first among all National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) players. She attempted over 21 field goals per game, which will likely decrease while at Wichita State.
“She (Anderson) got a whole lot more freedom (at Pratt) than probably we give her, and that’s something that I’m still kind of trying to work through as we (are) trying to fit her in,” Nooner said.
Anderson was confident she could contribute at a high level to Wichita State’s offense.
“It’s going to be a challenge, but at the same time, I’m going to get buckets,” she said.
Sissoko set the Cloud County Community College single-season record for rebounds last year. Nooner was confident she could make an impact on the boards for Wichita State.
“She’s (Sissoko) an athletic, strong, aggressive kid,” Nooner said. “I mean, she looks like all the top post players in our conference, and how physical she is.”
Nooner keeps a picture of a sold-out Charles Koch Arena crowd in his office as a “motivational factor” of what Wichita State basketball can be when the team plays well. He hopes this year, the former JUCO players will play an important part in that.
“We’ve just got to win,” Nooner said. “We’ve got to play hard. We got to, you know, provide a style of play that people really want to see. And I think that’s what you’ll see this year.”
