Recap The Court

Jacob Smith

It’s been no secret what the McMaster Marauders women’s basketball team have wanted to do going into games. They put up the most threes out of any team in the OUA and last year they were third in percentage. You know going into a game against the Marauders that they were going to let it fly, and your job was to take away everything else so that was the only thing they could beat you with.

Now the Marauders lose a massive piece of what else they had in their arsenal, and questions raise around how they’ll get around that.

McMaster holds onto Jenna Button, Amy Stinson, Cassie Joli-Coeur and much of the 2022 cast, but they lose one of the faces of the OUA and one of the most dominant players you’ll probably see in a long time, Sarah Gates. I don’t have to sit here and tell you what Sarah did for the Marauders, if you have watched any OUA women’s basketball over the years, you know everything Sarah brings in both her style and her resilience.

We saw last season that when the threes weren’t dropping, there were three outlets the Marauders went for. They used screens to get Jenna Button a lane to the rim, Ariane Soriano backdoor cut to the hoop, or most often they gave the ball to Gates and let her work her magic. As the season evolved we saw more and more Cassie Joli-Coeur short baseline jumpers, but every game we could always count on Gates bailing them out of rough shooting stretches.

This year the Marauders have to replace the 20 to 30-point double-doubles that Gates would often give them. There’s two players above all else that can fill the inside scoring and rebounding gaps that are there from the departure of Gates, and that’s Amy Stinson and Cassie Joli-Coeur.

We saw last season how Cassie can utilize the jumper, and paired with Amy Stinson’s defence and tenacity around the rim, that’s a duo that can help the Marauders get some of the rebounding back and be a place for the Marauders offence to go when the threes aren’t hitting.

Amy Stinson has impressed me since game one with her defence and her footwork around the rim. She averaged 6.9 points and 3.3 rebounds playing just under 15 minutes a game during the 2022 season and with the need for more offence inside the paint this season, she has a large opportunity to take a step forward and be one of the focal points of the offence.

The Marauders will still most likely let the three fly with the guards they have on the perimeter, but the cushion of the paint presence Sarah Gates gave them helped get over a lot of close games. How the Marauders will fill that is without a doubt the most pressing question going into the 2023 season, and whether it’s Amy, Cassie or someone else, i’m curious to see how it plays out for the OUA West division winning Marauders.