Cal modeling after the Golden State Valkyries in Year 2 in the ACC

The opportunity to open the season in France is one that the Golden Bears clearly earned last season when they finished with 25 wins for the first time in 12 years, and went 12-6 (fifth place) in their first season in the ACC, returning to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018.

Cal isn’t exactly starting over, but, as has become increasingly common across the country, the roster has churned significantly in the last six months. Smith, who signed a new contract at the end of last season, is replacing four starters from last year’s squad, returning only junior wing Lulu Twidale to the lineup. She has brought in three impact transfers and a freshman class of four players, including one of the top guard prospects in the nation.

Mjracle Sheppard comes to Berkeley from LSU, where she averaged 3.9 points a game for the Tigers.
Sakima Walker is a 6’5 graduate transfer who came off the bench on South Carolina’s undefeated national championship team. And Naya Ojukwu, a sophomore forward, played last season at Morgan State, averaging 17.1 points and 9.0 rebounds.

Freshman point guard Aliyaha “Puff” Morris arrives as a three-time California state champion in high school.

The Bears are picked to finish 12th in the ACC in the conference’s preseason poll.

Smith talked to The IX Basketball about remaking her roster, taking inspiration from the Golden State Valkyries and the second season in the ACC.

The IX Basketball, a 24/7/365 women’s basketball newsroom powered by The Next

The IX Basketball: A basketball newsroom brought to you by The IX Sports. 24/7/365 women’s basketball coverage, written, edited and photographed by our young, diverse staff and dedicated to breaking news, analysis, historical deep dives and projections about the game we love.

Q: Let’s start here, coach. How’s your team?

Smith: Good. We just scrimmaged Santa Clara, so we got to see some things that we can do well, and some areas where we need to be better. Lots of work to do.

Q. How is it integrating a lot of new players?

Smith: It’s good. I mean, it’s kind of become the norm. I think we had more new players last year, I don’t know. But we have new people in key positions. We lost four starters due to graduation, so we are trying to find people that are coming in not just to be on the team, but to fill significant roles. That’s what we’re doing this year. And I think we’re doing well. Like I said, we have work to do, but we’re on the right track.

Q. What do you like about this group? How are they coming together?

Smith: I like how coachable they are. It’s a good group. They want to do well. They want to do the right things. They are a selfless group. I don’t have any personalities that I’m trying to manage in terms of how they show up and compete. So that’s good in this day and age. They’re wanting to work for their roles and work to help us win games. I like our defensive potential. I think we can be better defensively. I think we’ve got to embrace that a little bit more and really establish that as an identity. And I think we are very versatile offensively, in that we can go inside with Kima [Walker], and we have offensive weapons from the perimeter with Lu [Twidale] and Gisella [Maul], and then, you know, we’ve got some people who can get downhill and get to the basket as well. So just trying to put all of those pieces together.

Q. Is Lulu accepting the leadership role as a veteran on this team?

Smith: Yeah, I think she did that last year. She was a captain as a sophomore, and she’s looking to expand on that role and really expand her game. I think that’s the big thing. I think people would have probably labeled her as a shooter last year, and she really committed this summer to being a three-level scorer and doing a lot more offensively, and helping us get the ball to Kima and getting the ball inside. And, you know, being a playmaker for us more so than just a shooter.

Want even more women’s sports in your inbox?

Subscribe now to The IX Sports and receive our daily women’s sports newsletter covering soccer, tennis, basketball, golf, hockey and gymnastics from our incredible team of writers. That includes Basketball Wednesday from founder and editor Howard Megdal.

Readers of The IX Basketball now save 50% on their subscription to The IX.

Q. How do you do things differently now, when you just have such roster churn year after year, and if this is the new norm, then what do you have to do differently?

Smith: Well, I used to be against summer access because I was like, ‘Why? They don’t need to hear my voice all year.’ They need a break, and they need to be motivated to get better on their own, without coaches, you know, hounding them.

And now you definitely have to take advantage of the summer access. So we don’t just start talking about things in September, we’re talking about it in June. It’s really important because we do have essentially four people in our starting lineup who didn’t start last year, and three or four weren’t even on the team. So yeah, we need that time to gel, and I think the summer really allows for that. And then your culture, your chemistry, is going to make up for a lot of it as well, right? And the fact that we’re not dealing with other headaches aside from what we’re running and who needs to get the ball. That makes it easier for us to get where we need to be.

Q: You were around them a lot this summer with the Valkyries. You saw them pick good people who they knew were going to work hard, who were going to quickly buy into the culture. Is that a model in any way for you to handle a situation where you’re looking at new players every season?

Smith: I think the Valkyries are definitely a source of motivation, inspiration, and all of the above. Watching them have the epic season that they had without a single superstar on their roster, and developing people into superstars the way that they did, I definitely see potential for us to take pages out of that book, 100 percent. Because we are also getting people who haven’t had an opportunity somewhere, and for some of them, it’s even here at Cal.

Gisella Maul has not had opportunity at Cal, she did not play a ton last year as she was working to get healthy and strong, and she’s going to have a lot of opportunity this year. Sakima Walker and Mjracle Sheppard, are they our Kayla Thorntons and Veronica Burtons of the world? Right? They’re going to have opportunity here. And we poured into them, and we’re giving them confidence and saying, ‘Hey, we need you to help us win.’ And then we have a rookie in Puff Morris and, you know, Isis Johnson-Musah and Taylor Barnes, like, ‘This is your team. Don’t wait, take advantage of it right now. We need you to step up. There’s no A’ja Wilson or Sarah Strong that you’re worried about playing behind. It’s your show.’ So I do think there are some parallels there, and I would be extremely happy if we could replicate even just a piece of what the Valkyries put on display in their inaugural season.

Q. The Valkyries were obviously a new team entirely, but the identity was established really quickly, and then the players played to their identity. Is that feasible at a college level?

Smith: Yeah, I think we’re trying to do some of that and that we’re like, ‘Look, we need to be better defensively. We know what is needed in order to win ACC games, right?’ And there’s some of it where, you know, we’ve got some people who are unproven. And I know the Valkyries have that, but I think they had a better sense of what Tiffany Hayes could do. Or Thornton can do that. But with Puff coming from high school, there are some unknowns, you know what I mean? So, trying to give those players the confidence, like, ‘Hey, Puff, you’re my point guard. Go do it,’ and then know that these are areas where she’s going to need some help. These are areas where we’ve got to support her.

“Becoming Caitlin Clark” is out now!

Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.

Buy it now!

Q. How is Puff, and what kind of player do you think she is going to be?

Smith: She’s great. She’s extremely coachable and extremely competitive. And I love having those two things in a point guard. So when she makes a mistake, I can pull her over and say, ‘This is what we need you to do in this situation.’ And then rarely does she make the same mistake twice. And that’s huge for a freshman. When I speak about her competitiveness, she’s not going to back down from anyone. She’s not afraid to play [Notre Dame’s] Hannah Hidalgo and Mikayla Blakes [from Vanderbilt]. She really wants to help keep Cal on the map and make us even more relevant. That’s why she chose us over schools that may have, you know, been higher profile schools, because she wants to help us, and I think she has the talent and the mindset to do so.

Q. What do you know about playing in the ACC that you didn’t know yet? This time last year?

Smith: I didn’t realize how heavy a guard-oriented league it was. Teams are very reliant on guard play. The whole league has really good guard play, and it’s not the same physicality or big bodies that some of the other conferences have, like the SEC or the Big Ten. We’re not seeing a Lauren Betts (UCLA) or a Reagan Beers (Oklahoma). We’re seeing Hannah Hidalgo and those types of dynamic guards. I know Ta’Niya Latson left Florida State, but there are more guards who’ve come into our conference, and you’ve got to be ready to guard the perimeter. North Carolina State, one of the best teams in the league, starts five players who are perimeter-oriented and shoot threes, right? So we’re working on our versatility defensively so that we can be ready to keep people in front and protect our paint. It’s much more athletic than the Pac-12, so we’ve got to be ready for a higher level of athleticism. The group last year, we did a good job of adjusting, but I think we can be even better with the athleticism that we’ve brought in. I think we’ve got an athletic group that can compete well.

Q. Now you can recruit to that.

Smith: This is what I’ve got to recruit to, exactly. The ACC has helped us. When you look at our freshmen class, they’re all outside of California, except for Puff, and that was really hard for us prior to being in the ACC. So getting Grace McCallop from Kansas City, getting Isis from Michigan, right? Like we couldn’t do that before. We didn’t have as much luck with those kids before being in the ACC, so I’m excited about it, and I like the opportunities that are being presented to us.

Q. Are there any adaptations you all are making in the second year in terms of travel and just handling the ACC schedule?

Smith: We tweaked some things throughout the year last year, just in terms of, do we practice before we leave? Do we practice once we get there? Those types of things. And we’ve continued to work with sleep specialists to really hone in on where we can gain an advantage with our travel itinerary. But I’m not of the mindset that travel is something that we have to do. It’s what we want to do, because we want to be in the ACC. We don’t want to be anywhere else. So let’s not complain. Let’s do what we’re supposed to do: hydrate, sleep, eat when we’re supposed to eat, and we’ll be fine. I’ve told everyone that the trip last season, in which we had the worst travel — we were delayed 10 hours, didn’t get in until about 3 a.m. on the day of the game — it was the only time that we won the Thursday game when traveling. So it ain’t about the travel. It’s like, show up and be ready to play. But we will maximize any advantage that we can gain by doing things the right way.