The 2022-23 season for the University of Rhode Island women’s basketball team was a season of high flying success and record breaking results, only to end up in several shortcomings come the end of March.
On Feb. 25, the team clinched an Atlantic-10 regular season co-championship, the first in program history. However, when the Rams reached the semifinals of the conference tournament, they were upended in a close 59-56 loss to the eventual conference champions, the Saint Louis Billikens.
A few weeks later, Rhode Island reached the Super 16 round of the Women’s National Invitational Tournament where they were defeated by Harvard 74-63. Entering the postseason, Rhode Island knew they were losing fifth-years Emma Squires, Sayawni Lassiter and Madison Hattix-Covington.
However, the departures of three-point specialists Dolly Cairns and Emmi Rinat, along with Anete Adler were more on the shocking end of the spectrum. This left Head Coach Tammi Reiss with a task in which she has plenty of experience and success, recruiting new talent.
Reiss already had three first-year commits coming in after the team announced the signing of a National Letter of Intent from Eva Dechent, a guard from Putnam Valley NY, Kaite Ledden, a guard from Clark NJ, and Sophie Vital, a guard from Chelsea MA.
However, there were still a few vacancies to fill, and Reiss looked to the transfer portal. She brought in two players, Dee Dee Davis from Manhattan College and Teisha Hyman from Syracuse.
Hyman decided to enter the transfer portal after her redshirt third-year season where she did not start the final nine games of the season. Despite this lack of opportunity in the latter half of the year, Hyman still averaged 10.4 points per game and four rebounds with 3.2 assists.
Compare that to the year before when she started seven more games and played 163 more minutes; Her numbers bumped up to 16.2 points per game, good enough for fifth in the Atlantic Coast Conference, along with 6.1 rebounds and 3.9 assists.
Hyman was originally recruited by Reiss while she was an assistant coach at Syracuse University from 2015-2019 before accepting the head coaching position at Rhode Island. Reiss commented on Hyman back in April when her commitment was announced in a statement on gorhody.com.
“Teisha is a dynamic athletic guard that can score at all three levels and has the sweetest mid-range game,” Reiss said. “I had the pleasure of recruiting Teisha to Syracuse but never had the opportunity to coach her.”
The other transfer was Dee Dee Davis, a graduate student from Manhattan College. Davis in 2022-23 had a season that earned her All-MAAC second team honors, recording 15.4 points per game, 7.5 rebounds and 2.9 assists. In 2021-22, Davis dropped 18.7 points per game, a mark that was second in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference in 2021-22, and the sixth most in the last six seasons.
Davis’ basketball past is an interesting one, as she was almost a Ram back in 2018. Davis was recruited by Rhode Island out of Truman High School but had her offer rescinded by the head coach at the time, Daynia La-Force, due to an injury.
“Out of high school I was recruited by URI and this was actually my dream school,” Davis said. “But I ended up losing that offer to injury, I tore my ACL and the coach rescinded the offer unfortunately. Which is fine, it’s a business, it happens.”
David then spoke on the fact that when the Rams reached out again, there was some initial hesitation, but there was an obvious difference – the head coach.
“Five years later I tried my best to make a name for myself and URI reached out again and I thought, ‘oh no these people rejected me, absolutely not’,” Davis said. “But, clearly it’s a different program with what coach Reiss has done, it’s just phenomenal how she has turned this program around so it was a no brainer really.”
Davis also recognized a difference in the way that Reiss and her coaching staff do their recruiting both out of high school and the transfer portal.
“[The coaches] aren’t looking for people who are just good basketball players, they’re looking for people who [fit the culture],” Davis said. “Do these kids fit what we want to build in a program? Do they buy into the culture? And we all do, from the first person on the roster to the very last person.”
A key returner for the Rams, Sophie Phillips had one of the best three point shooting seasons in program history in 2022-23. Phillips’ 40.7% hit rate from beyond the arc finished as the fourth best from a Ram all-time.
With the addition of Davis and Hyman at the guard position, Phillips will more than likely be the first or second woman off the bench. Now in her third-year, Phillips is well accustomed to the system of Tammi Reiss and is well aware of what is expected of her this year.
“Definitely just be more of a leader this year,” Phillips answered when asked what Reiss asked of her for this coming season. “I think I stepped up and helped the team when I needed to last year and did whatever the team needed me to do, which will be the same this year but we lost a lot of leadership so I’m going to try and step into that role.”
Moving from one of those leadership roles and into another was Squires, who joined the coaching staff as a student assistant coach. In 2022-23, Squires averaged 6.3 points per game and shot 42.9% from the field throughout the season. Phillips gave insight on how she thinks Squires will operate as a member of the coaching staff.
“I think [Emma] is going to add a huge impact, obviously we miss her a lot, it’s great to see her still at practice everyday and now as our coach,” Phillips said. “I think she’ll have a huge impact because she has more recent [playing experience], and she knows our style of play, she just played with us last year… so I think she will be a great addition to our coaching staff.”
With new faces and even higher expectations, Rhode Island is looking into their 2023 season with optimism that their last game in March 2024 will be a win rather than a loss. However, their first game comes four months earlier, as the Rams host Sacred Heart University on Nov. 7 at the Ryan Center.