After covering the Gophers-Wisconsin men’s hockey series on Friday and Saturday, I have a special undercover assignment. I get to drive at dawn to Chicago for the Big Ten women’s basketball media day at the O’Hare Marriott.

It starts at 9 a.m. Pam Borton of the Gophers will be there, along with two of her players, senior guard Emily (no cup-stacking here) Fox and junior center Ashley Ellis-Milan. They fly in on Saturday to be interviewed by the Big Ten Network the first day.

The coaches, and a couple players, from every other Big Ten team will be there too, of course.

One person affiliated with the Gophers expects they could be rated as high as fourth in the coaches’ preseason Big Ten poll.

Who would be ahead of them? Defending conference champion Ohio State with the returning Player of the Year, 6-4 sophomore C Jantel Lavender.  Purdue, which won the Big Ten tournament, and has two players back who were injured.

Maybe Michigan State, with 6-8 junior center Allyssa DeHann. They also get back two hurt starters.

I’ll make the rounds, trying to chat with each of the 11 coaches and some players. Got to ask or talk to any of the players from Minnesota in the conference, too.

Some of the bigger names are 6-3 junior C Jenna Smith at Illinois, from Bloomington Kennedy; 5-7 sophomore G Alyssa Karel at Wisconsin, from Cretin-Derham Hall; 6-3 sophomore C Janessa Wolff at Penn State, from Park Rapids, and 5-9 sophomore guard Alexander Kachine at Iowa, from Benilde-St. Margaret’s.

Should be interesting.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Gophers women's basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.