As confetti fell from the ceiling of Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ball State Women’s Basketball’s hopes of winning its first Mid-American Conference Tournament Championship since 2009 were erased. So too were their hopes of reaching the NCAA Tournament.
However, despite falling short of their ultimate goal, Ball State head coach Brady Sallee said he was pleased with the progress he saw in his players this season and the foundation he set for future teams. In his 10th season as head coach of the Cardinals, Sallee initiated a new offensive system, abandoning the labels of “guard,” “forward” and “center” and rather implementing a five-out offense. None of the Cardinals were labeled by position.
“For me, the fun part has been how [the offense] has continued to build this year,” Sallee said. “If it’s possible, I’m even more of an advocate for the way we played and the way we’re going to play than I was this fall.”
Despite the changes, Sallee thinks the Cardinals “bought in” to the system from top to bottom, as well as the culture he was trying to build.
“Whether you’re in athletics or anything else, if you commit to the right things and buy into a culture, you can accomplish incredible things,” Sallee said. “We have a really good concoction of players with high character, good leaders and great teammates. I think it all mixed together where you saw us play at a very high level.”
Before the season began, Sallee said the commitment he received from his players taught him something about coaching.
“When you pour yourself into a group, they’re going to pour it out for you,” Sallee said.
In the MAC preseason coaches poll, Ball State was predicted to finish ninth, but the Cardinals exceeded their projected finish by winning 20 games and finishing fourth in the standings. Sallee said Ball State heard all the noise during the preseason and remembers his players looking around the locker room thinking differently. He said Ball State turned inward to find success.
“This is a storied year that revolves around 20 people’s self-belief,” Sallee said. “Instead of adopting everyone else’s narrative, we chose to write our own story.”
Ball State’s roster fluctuated throughout the offseason and regular season. Three freshmen joined the Cardinals, three seniors graduated, multiple players transferred and players got injured, including redshirt junior Anna Clephane. Sallee said the Cardinals’ ability to adapt and overcome adversity was one of the stories of the season.
“If you can’t handle that, it’s going to bury you,” Sallee said. “I think our team adopted the next-man-up mentality and took it to the next level where it was, ‘I’m not playing instead of you — I’m playing for you.’”
Junior Annie Rauch said the Cardinals emphasized culture and open discussion about their aspirations this season more than she had experienced before.
“I think talking about culture is really important,” Rauch said. “Goals are way easier to reach when you talk about them out loud, and that’s something I’ll take with me.”
During the offseason, Rauch said, the Cardinals improved their relationships with each other off the court, which brought her closer to her teammates. Every week before the season started, she and her teammates would face one another in one-on-one basketball, and it helped her better understand their roles and personalities.
Like Rauch, senior Blake Smith said changing roles and accepting a bench role was initially hard to deal with, averaging 4.9 minutes per game this season after recording 14.9 minutes per game in 2020-21. However, the transition became easy as the season progressed because of the relationships she developed with her teammates.
“It’s the girls — we’re like a sisterhood, like a family who hangs out all the time,” Smith said. “ I can tell we all genuinely care about each other.”
Though the Cardinals’ hopes of an NCAA Tournament bid were over after their championship loss to Buffalo, Ball State was selected for the Women’s National Invitation Tournament and lost 90-73 against Marquette March 16. Sallee said the Cardinals deserved their selection and was excited to continue coaching through the postseason.
“Everyone will say, ‘It’s not the tournament we want,’” Sallee said, “but you have to have a little bit of humility in this situation and understand, even though we felt we deserved to play in the big one, we had our chances, and we’re not ever going to take an opportunity to play in the postseason for granted.”
Contact Kyle Smedley with comments at kyle.smedley@bsu.edu or on Twitter @smedley1932.
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