Misti Solmon is the Grizzlies' lone senior. She lead the team in two exhibition games with 17 total rebounds.Grizzlies set to begin campaign at Division I Air Force
November 17, 2009USAFA, Colo.— The Adams State College women’s basketball team will begin their season in earnest Tuesday night when the Grizzlies face Division I Air Force, here at Clune Arena. Tip-off is at 7 p.m.
Fans that cannot make the game can follow it with live statistics through Gametracker on Air Force’s website. Tape-delayed radio coverage will also be available on KSPK-FM (104.1 in Alamosa) and via the internet at www.kspk.com. That coverage will be available at approximately 9 p.m. following the station’s live coverage of the Adams State men’s game against Oklahoma Panhandle State, which begins at 7 p.m. in Alamosa.
Although Tuesday’s contest with the Falcons is the Grizzlies’ true season-opener, they have played a pair of exhibition games against other Mountain West Conference teams falling to Wyoming 72-36 on Nov. 2 and to Colorado State, 84-67 on Nov. 7. Those teams were picked to finish fifth and eighth, respectively, in the Mountain West Conference Preseason Poll.
Junior guard Vera Jo Bustos (Las Vegas, N.M.) scored 27 points in the latter game and averaged a team-best 14.5 points during exhibition play. She was named as the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference’s West Division Player of the Year in 2008-09 and has been tabbed to the 5-player Preseason All-RMAC squad this year.
Bustos, who set ASC’s NCAA Division II era (1992-Present) single-season record for points (502) last year, enters her junior campaign ranked sixth in career points and could move as high as fourth with a solid effort on Tuesday.
Newcomer Paige Ricker (Colorado Springs, Colo.), a Harrison High School graduate who originally played at Division I Northern Colorado, led the team in scoring against Wyoming and poured in 26 points in the two exhibition contests.
The Falcons enter Tuesday’s tilt with a 0-2 record on the young season after the fell to host Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Tennessee Tech at last weekend’s Holiday Inn Islander Tip-Off Classic. Junior guard Raimee Beck played all but four minutes in those two games averaging 18.0 points and 8.0 rebounds per game en-route to all-tournament team honors.
The 5-foot-8 junior from Blackfoot, Idaho led the Falcons in scoring last year as well pouring in 12.9 points per game. She also paced last year’s squad that went 4-26 overall and 0-16 in MWC play, with 72 3-pointers, the third best single-season mark in Air Force history and is already ranked amongst the Falcons’ all-time top 10 in several career categories.
The Falcons, who were a NCAA Division II member through the 1995-96 season, are 11-3 all-time against the Grizzlies and sport an 8-2 home record. The teams have met only twice in regular season play since the Falcons made the jump to the Division I ranks defeating the Grizzlies 61-56 in 2002 and 68-48 in 2008.
The teams also played an exhibition game last fall, which Air Force won 55-40.
Related Item: RMAC Women's Basketball Release #3
