Chicago, Ill. - The Illinois Tech women's basketball team gets their 2024-25 season underway today in Memphis, Tennessee, when they take on Rhodes College at 5:30pm in the Rhodes College Tip-Off Classic.

The Scarlet Hawks will be playing a pair of games in the Tip-Off Classic this weekend, as they will face East Texas Baptist University on Saturday, November 9th at 1:00pm.

Head coach Carissa Sain is looking forward to the opportunity for her team to play actual games so she and the team can get a gauge of where they are at as they begin the season.

"I'm excited, and I think we're ready for this," said Sain. "We need to see ourselves for real against some other opponents and I'm excited to see what we can learn and see what we're made of. It's always a little bit different in games, because you can't elicit all of that competitiveness in practices."

Sain is also excited for her team to be a part of a homecoming of sorts for senior Kaya Jones, who hails from Memphis. 

"We get to take one of our seniors home, and it's just a really neat thing to be able to go back to where a kid grew up, and take the team there and let them play in front of their family. I think they have really been looking forward to this trip since they knew it was happening at the end of last year," Sain said.

One welcome sign for the Scarlet Hawks for the new season is they will have roster depth for the first time in several years. The team has had to play with thin benches the last few seasons as Sain has been building the program. The pandemic slowed the initial recruiting efforts, but this year's squad will have 6 new players and 14 players overall, a net gain of four players over last season.

Besides the added depth the new players bring, Sain also appreciates the mix of positions and skill sets that the newcomers will offer the team.

"They are a really diverse group of players'" said Sain. "They have very unique individual skill sets. Unique not necessarily from a basketball perspective but unique to each other's skills. For example, (among their newcomers) we've got a shooter, and we've got a true post player, and we've got a fast post player, so just different skill sets like that."

Along with the infusion of new talent, the Scarlet Hawks return eight players from last year's squad: three seniors, three juniors, and two sophomores. 

The senior group is led by three-time all-conference guard Julia Bucci. Bucci has been a consistent, top performer for the Scarlet Hawks through her first three seasons, averaging 15.8 points per game to go along with 5.3 rebounds per game and 1.7 steals per game. Bucci also has a career .342 three-point shooting percentage. Last season, Bucci placed third in the Northern Athletic Collgiate Conference in scoring with 15.3 points per game, and was second in the conference in three-point field goals made per game at 2.4. Jones provides additional scoring for the Hawks, averaging 8.4 points per game last season, while shooting a career-best .343 from three-point range. Jones is also one of the team's primary distributors, averaging 2.8 assists per game through her first two seasons played. Allie Sillo has averaged 5.4 points per game over her first three seasons, making 82 three-pointers over that span. Sillo has a .761 career free throw shooting percentage.

The juniors provide a mix of skill sets. Front-court players Chloe Churilla and Grace Goodnough each averaged 6.1 rebounds per game last season, with Churilla averaging 9 points per game and Goodnough 8.2 points per game. Guard Camden Joko led the team in assists per game with 2.9 while averaging 8.5 points per game. Joko has made 86 three-pointers over her first two seasons.

The sophomore group will look to build off of their first-year seasons. Guard Berit Rusing averaged 3.4 points per game and 2.4 rebounds per game, while collecting 22 steals and shooting a team-leading .765 at the free throw line. Guard Abigail Marino averaged 1.9 points per game and 1.2 rebounds per game while averaging 11 minutes per game.

With the mix of returners and newcomers, Sain is looking forward to the team gaining confidence throughout the season.

"The hope is that you can practice and get them into learning environments where they can develop confidence to go out there and perform at a really high level," said Sain. "We saw a big leap in confidence last year. We just didn't have the depth to go with it. And so my hope is that they feel confidence in their numbers(depth), they feel confidence in their abilities to what I'm asking them to do because we believe they all can can do it. I just want them to keep accruing more and more confidence as the season goes on, and hopefully we're playing our best basketball in February, and keep things going in a positive direction."

Sain also appreciates how the newcomers on the team have been welcomed in by the returning players. 

"They just came in and assimilated and they really are a team," Sain said. "They're really a unit. And I think that's a credit to our captains and to our upperclassmen for sure. They're excited just to have more people in the gym with them. So I think that welcoming tone feels really good as a first year player, and it makes you buy into everything a little bit better and a little bit quicker. The team aspect that they have created is is a real positive for this stage in the season."