From limited minutes, to leading minutes

Third-year forward Mayé Touré helps Rams to historic start

Mayé Touré leads the offense in a breakout season for URI. PHOTO CREDIT: gorhody.com

Junior forward, Mayé Touré, has led URI’s women’s basketball team to a great start to their season winning 17 of their first 20 games.

Touré’s breakout season has been the catalyst for another winning season for Tammi Riess’s team. Touré leads the team in points, rebounds, blocks, and minutes. She’s not far off from averaging a double double and has had eight in just twenty games. 

Against George Mason, Touré continued her assault on opposing players in the paint finishing the contest with 11 points, 11 rebounds and three ferocious blocks before she fouled out with a minute to go. This type of performance has become the new norm for Touré as through 20 games she averages 13.9 points, 8.2 boards, as well as about one steal and block per game. 

The 3rd year forward has become the face of this year’s Rhody squad that hopes to build upon last year’s record breaking success. Although Touré was a part of last year’s squad, she only saw the court in 14 of  29 contests averaging nine minutes in those games. After struggling to see consistent playing time, she’s become one of the best players in the whole conference this season, winning player of the week back on Jan. 9th.

So what has been the key to this new found success on the court? According to Associate Head Coach Adeniyi Amadou, it’s her new found confidence that developed over the summer playing for France’s U20 national team. Coach Amadou had a lot to say about Touré’s experience with the French national team.

“That was an invaluable experience for her, in terms of confidence, experience and just getting some game flow,” Amadou said. “She’s somebody who keeps herself in tremendous shape, she’s always ready, and because she has a process that she trusts and embraces.”

That process that coach Amadou speaks about is very important to Touré, who spent most of her first two years on the bench waiting for her opportunity to come. While waiting for that opportunity to come along might be difficult for some, that wasn’t the case for Touré, who had upperclassmen to look up to. 

It was fellow French teammates Emmanuelle Tahane and Marie-Paule Foppossi who led by example and encouraged Touré to stick with it even when she wasn’t playing as much as she wanted to. The resilience those two instilled in Touré is now paying off in big ways for her and the Rams. 

“For example Manue and M.P., everything I’m doing right now is because I was watching them and right now I’m trying to do the same thing for the younger ones.” Touré said.

According to her coaches learning those leadership skills from her older teammates was an essential part of the transition between this year’s team and last year’s. Last season Rhody set a program record with 22 wins however, only one starter returned from last year’s squad. This meant that players who didn’t have a lot of playing experience were going to have to step up not just on the court, but off the court as well. 

When Coach Amadou was asked about that transition and Touré’s impact he seemed to be very happy for her and excited. 

“First of all she’s been a bridge between the old team and the new team,” Amadou says, “She’s been a leader in the sense that she’s had to lead herself, learn to embrace that new position and role.” Amadou said “She’s made the transition for some of the young kids and newcomers much easier because she’s a tremendous communicator and leads by example.”

Coach Amadou is one of the best post player developers in the entire nation and has done great things for many other women’s basketball programs around the country, such as Dayton, Syracuse, and Kentucky. Coach Amadou has found success everywhere he’s been including, multiple NCAA tournament appearances with Kentucky, multiple A-10 titles with Dayton, and helping Syracuse to 25 win season as the assistant director of basketball operations.

Touré was recruited to URI with the expectations that she would be a shooting power forward and stretch the court. However, due to some injuries she’s played at center for most of the seasons and now she is in the top five in the A-10 conference for rebounds. This immediate dominance in the paint comes as a surprise even to Touré herself.

“I was really optimistic about it,”Touré said. “The rebounding was one of my goals, but dominating in the paint, I thought it was gonna take time and I was gonna have to adjust a lot but when the season started I was really aggressive, so I switched my goals.” 

While there is still plenty of basketball left to play, this URI team has played nothing other than winning basketball. A team that lost over 80% of its production from last year has played like an experienced squad that’s been together for years and it’s thanks to Touré that this transition has been so smooth. Although Mayé Touré still has plenty of time left at URI, she has already bloomed into a superstar and has shown that the sky’s the limit for her and the rest of this team.