New-look College of Staten Island women’s basketball squad ready to put in the work

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The College of Staten Island women’s basketball program in 2024-25 enjoyed its best season since moving up to NCAA Division II.

The Dolphins went 21-9 last season and lost in the East Coast Conference championship game to Daemen. While clearing that last hurdle this season would bring delight to Dolphin Land, encores are tough in college sports because new people are now wearing those uniforms.

So, even if these Dolphins – with nine new players (two transfers and seven freshmen) on the 12-player roster – don’t match the record of last year, there’s groundwork to be put in place. The process makes the program, and CSI believes it has a strong process.

“Just having the right people in here is the most important thing,” said Nicole Sarcone, now in her eighth season as head coach. “If you have the right people, you put it together the right way and you compete, I think we always will be in contention for a top spot and that’s important.

“Last year was very easy for us as a coaching staff. We still had to teach and it’s still new players playing with each other, but we had a lot of girls that were with us for three, four years, and then the newbies were veterans from other colleges. We had no freshmen. So this is a true 180.”

Sarcone, last year’s Met Basketball Writers D-II coach of the year, will rely on three returnees to spread the gospel – seniors Kyra Rose and Dana Phelan and Dorothy Wiese, a junior who was a 1,000-point scorer at Curtis HS.

Rose and Phelan provide something Sarcone invented a word for: Veteran-ism.

“They have earned major minutes since freshman year,” Sarcone said. “They know what we like; they know what we don’t like; they know what’s acceptable. They know just the habits that we want.

“Dana (9.9 ppg last season and third in the ECC in made threes) has been one of our best defenders for her whole four years here. Kyra (9.5 ppg) has turned into one of our best defenders. For what we look for from them and what they are capable of doing, they should be players that don’t come out of the game.”

The same will probably be true of Wiese once she’s fully recovered from an injury she played through last season. Wiese played in all 30 games last season and provides something a little different – an overall level of scrappiness that befits her family history. Her mom, the former Cindy Guerriero, and her three aunts, Cathy, Clare and Dot were 1,000-point scorers in high school.

“She’s a kid that’s going to run through a wall for you,” Sarcone said. “We have the seniors, but she’s our leader. She’s our voice. She’s our leader by example. She’s a ‘Yes, coach’ kid. She takes charges, she throws her body on the floor, she boards the basketball, she defends. She is communicating, she is the best scrambler on defense.”

Sarcone will need several of those new faces to emerge and take on big roles. Already the coach sees at least three of the true freshmen – Arielle Barnes from Mary Louis Academy in Queens, Giuliana Dito from Notre Dame Academy and Gemma Singer from Medgar Evers Prep in Brooklyn – taking some of the ballhandling responsibilities.

The Dolphins were undersized last year, with conference and all-Met player of the year Jenalyse Alarcon and Alexa Quirolo battling away inside. CSI will have better positional size, particularly thanks to the two transfers – 5-10 Shonyae Edmonds from upstate Sullivan Community College and 5-11 Racky Kane from LIU Brooklyn, both juniors – and freshman Myah McKie from Long Island who is listed at 6-3.

The Dolphins were third in the ECC in threes made and attempted last year. Sarcone sees those numbers going down and the pace of play getting slower – for the moment.

“The way we played last year (lots of pressure, lots of speed, lots of threes) is how I want to play,” Sarcone said. “Some of them benefit a lot more from slowing it down a bit. Maybe us putting them in the right positions to score the basketball, you know, and maybe we’ll get (back to the uptempo game) at some point.”

Sarcone brought it back around to the key word: Patience.

“The standard of how hard we play and how we compete in the small things, I don’t care if you’re a freshman or a grad student, should be there,” she said. “But, (for the freshmen), it’s a speed adjustment; it’s a strength adjustment; it’s an every-day schedule adjustment.

“So, you know, our approach is we might have to go over things more than we had to in the past. Break down more than we had to in the past. But that’s OK, because if we’re investing in the long term, the future of them in this program, it’s what’s got to be done.”

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NOTES: CSI’s Conference Challenge, sponsored by Jimmy Max restaurant, begins Saturday with CSI facing Franklin Pierce at 5 p.m. and Holy Family of Philadelphia opposing St. Michael’s at 7 p.m. Pierce plays Holy Family Sunday at 1. CSI wraps things up at 3 against St. Michael’s. Holy Family is No. 22 in the WBCA’s preseason Division II rankings … Hometownticketing.com is the place to purchase tickets for all CSI men’s and women’s home games.

THE SCHEDULE

NOVEMBER

15 – Franklin Pierce, 5 p.m. (CSI Conf. Challenge)

16 – St. Michael’s, 3 p.m. (CSI Conf. Challenge)

19 – at Goldey-Beacom, 6 p.m.

22 – at East Stroudsburg, 1 p.m.

25 – Bentley, 5 p.m.

29 – Southern Connecticut, 1 p.m.

DECEMBER

3 – Mercy, 5:30 p.m.

6 – at St. Thomas Aquinas, 4 p.m.

10 – at Adelphi, 5:30 p.m.

13 – at U. D of C, 1 p.m.

17 – American Int’l, 5:30 p.m.

20 – at Pace, 1:30 p.m.

JANUARY

2 – Assumption, 1 p.m.

6 – Post Univ., 5:30 p.m.

9 – at D’Youville, 5:30 p.m.

11 – at Daemen, noon

14 – St. Thomas Aquinas, 5:30 p.m.

17 – at Mercy, noon

20 – Caldwell, 5:30 p.m.

24 – at Roberts Wesleyan, 2 p.m.

28 – Queens College, 5:30 p.m.

31—at Molloy, noon

FEBRUARY

6 – D’Youville, 5:30 p.m.

8 – Daemen, 1 p.m.

14 – U. of D of C, 3 p.m.

22 – Roberts Wesleyan, 1 p.m.

25 – at Queens, 7:30 p.m.

28 – Molloy, 1 p.m.