Photo By Aaron Brewer
A look at Boxer Women’s Basketball ahead of preseason play
Bags are packed, and boarding passes are at the ready for Boxer Women’s Basketball. This weekend, they’ll catch a flight to Southern California to open their season in the Golden State. This team will face many challenges this season, rostering a large number of freshmen and sophomores, led by a brand-new head coach, Alex Brown.
6-foot forward Karnia Franco is the sole starter returning to the lineup, leaving seniors Brookelyn Burke, Alynn Crooms, and Victoria Prochazka to fill the abandoned holes, alongside the varsity’s team of eight freshmen and four sophomores. In short, it will be an uphill battle for Boxer basketball, but it’s a battle Coach Brown is ready to take head-on. He says a big thing for him is showing consistent improvement, especially throughout the season, a goal he believes the young Boxers are more than capable of.
“I feel most strongly about the energy and effort we put into improving consistently. I want us to focus most on the process we take to improve. The goal is to build a culture based on player development where we are always growing both individually and collectively,” he says. Touching on the keys to success for the new team, he adds, “It is a long season, so there is a lot of time for improvement throughout the year, and the successful programs do a great job of continuous improvement.”
Coming off three successful years serving as the assistant coach at George Fox University, Coach Brown joins Pacific University. Helping turn the Bruins from a 6-17 team in 2023 to a 20-7 team in 2024, he hopes to bring the same thing to Pacific, and stick with his current coaching philosophies.
“Over my years of coaching, I’ve come to believe in teaching players how to play rather than teaching them to memorize set plays. I like to provide a loose structure for players to operate collectively that also allows room for them to play to their individual strengths,” states Brown. A particular coaching style that should work well within the current team dynamic, especially with the younger players. He also reflects on some of his focus when developing such a new team. Talking about the importance of teaching the game and making sure everyone can be familiar with the concepts and techniques he wants them to execute.
“All of our players have different backgrounds and experiences within basketball and I’ve learned that it is best not to assume they know when introducing vocabulary or concepts for the first time,” Brown expressed. “It is also important to be patient with players as everyone learns at a different pace. I value open communication and the idea that I want to know if anything they don’t understand so I can help them.”
The women have a lot of opportunities to grow in this tough preseason, before even getting to conference play in early December. Hoping to achieve a winning season, despite pre-season polls ranking them in the bottom 3.
But with an optimistic coach in Brown, I think that goal is more in reach than others might expect, “I’m most excited to watch the team grow both on and off the court. Our season is long and it’s fun to watch how much players change from the beginning to the end. I love seeing players step up in big moments of games, emerge in leadership roles, and grow more confident as the season progresses.”
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