IVCC women’s basketball preview: Eagles relaunching program with new coach, 8 players

Last winter, Illinois Valley Community College was unable to field a women’s basketball team due to a lack of numbers.

This season, the program has returned under new leadership as Marc Lowe has taken over as head coach.

“We’re starting from scratch,” Lowe said. “We only have eight players this year, but I think this is a great group. Our basketball IQ has to get better. They work hard in practice, so they will get better.”

The Eagles have two sophomores, Morgan Stone from Ottawa and Reese Cole out of Serena, along with six freshmen in La Salle-Peru graduate Jasmine Garman; Streator alumni Shantell Morton, Charlee Bourell and Marisa Vickers; Esmeralda Avila from Putnam County; and Earlville graduate Nevaeh Sansone, who is expected to join the team after playing volleyball.

“We don’t have have a full squad, so we can’t go 5 on 5 [in practice],” Lowe said. “We have to break it all the way down to the bare fundamentals of everything this year.

“I’m going to try to get some guys or somebody to come in to scrimmage us so we can get real game-like stuff. But we have four games [the first] week. We’ll be going against people, but it’s not in practice. It’s not an ideal situation, because it’s a game situation.”

Garman, Stone and Cole are expected to lead the team offensively.

Garman led the team with 11 points in the Eagles’ 74-19 loss to Lake County to open the season, while Stone added six points. In high school, Cole averaged 4.1 points per game for the Huskers as they placed fourth in Class 1A in 2021-22.

“They’re my big three,” Lowe said. “Jasmine is going to bring scoring. She has a good basketball IQ. Morgan understands the game, and she’ll bring scoring. They’ll provide leadership. Reese works hard. I call her our utility player, because she’ll play a little of both guard and forward for us.”

Defensively, the Eagles will run a lot of zone. Lowe said IVCC tried some man in a scrimmage against Monmouth and “it looked pretty good.”

“We’re going to run some basic stuff until they catch on, and we’ll advance it as they get better,” Lowe said.

Lowe said the Eagles’ goal this year is simply to improve as they look to get the program off the ground.

“Our goals are just to get better every day, play hard every day and get advanced in our basketball IQ from where it is now,” Lowe said. “We want to get better as players, keep our enthusiasm up and keep working hard.”

Looking toward the future, Lowe said he has to focus on recruiting to get more players on the roster in order to build the program back up.

“I think we have to really get out and beat the bushes,” Lowe said. “We fell behind there with recruiting. I got the job late, so we didn’t have as many kids as I thought we would have, but we’ll have a full squad next year.

“You have to start somewhere, so we’re starting. I know everybody’s happy that we have a team this year, so I’m not looking past this year right now.”