The Creighton women’s basketball team will look a lot different in 2025.
The Bluejays added seven new faces, including six freshmen, after graduating several key members last season. As a result, Coach Jim Flanery and his staff have had to take a different approach to the preseason than in the last few years.
“With a younger group like this, and so many new players, you’re back to fundamentals on a little higher level,” Flanery told Hurrdat Sports. “You’re trying to get them to finish possessions in a way that a college player’s going to need to do, that a high school player maybe doesn’t have to do. So you’re kind of preaching that, but there are things popping up in practice, that tell you ‘OK, we need to pivot, we need to emphasize this, and we clearly haven’t been emphasizing this as much.’ So, way more staff meetings that are kind of like, ‘OK, what are the next two steps for this team this week?’, versus what you have had over the last two or three years.”
Flanery compared this preseason to when the Bluejays entered the Big East conference in 2013, and the changes he had to make to prepare his team for the leap.
“I have to take away what maybe has been the template for October practices and September workouts, and be willing to modify and coach a little bit differently,” Flanery said. “I think with this many freshmen, yeah, you’ve got to coach them hard and you’ve got to be critical here and there, but you also have to back off maybe a little bit more than younger Flan would have, because I just think there’s to many of them out there. You look out at a group, in practice, and there’s four freshmen out there.
“You’ve got to, I don’t want to say lower the expectations, but you just have to keep telling yourself baby steps are going to get us there. It’s not going to happen overnight.”
Among the freshman are Neleigh and Norah Gessert, four-star recruits from Millard West who chose to stay home to play for Flanery.
“I grew up watching Creighton basketball and watching Flan coach,” Gessert said. “Watching them growing up, I was like, ‘That would be really cool to be out there one day.’ I love Flan, the whole coaching staff, so getting to be coached by them has been awesome.”
The Gessert twins are both 6-foot, senior Grace Boffeli and freshman Avery Cooper are both 6-foot-1 and sophomore Elizabeth Gentry and freshman Tara Dacic are both 6-foot-2, giving Flanery options with size in the post and on the wings.
“I do feel like our length can help us,” Flanery said. “I think we can be a really good rebounding team, because of our length. I think we can be a good passing team. We’re not a great passing team yet, but I think Kiani (Lockett) has done a really good job of distributing it, but I think our length will enable us to be a good passing team with the way we move off the ball.”
While the stars that led the Jays to so much success during their careers are gone, Flanery isn’t using the team’s youth as an excuse to lower the standard. His plan is to let them know that expectations don’t change at Creighton.
“We can be a really good basketball team,” Flanery said. “People on the outside aren’t going to think that we’re going to be as good, they’re not going to believe that we can be as good, but we need to have a little bit of a chip.”
The 2025 class included three members of the ESPNW Top 100 in the Gesserts (Neleigh 84th, Norah 89th) and point guard Ava Zediker (70th), and with six freshmen on an 11-woman roster, many of them will get a chance to play right away.
“We’re going to see an impact from our freshmen,” Flanery said. “I think a lot of them are going to get to play. It’s not going to be pretty every night from every one of them, but I think you’re going to see a lot of really good glimpses. It’s a talented group.”
Flanery laid out what he thinks the fans will see from his squad during the 2025-26 season.
“I think we’re going to shoot the ball well, and play unselfishly,” Flanery said. “I think you can expect really good ball movement. I think we’ll be a team that hopefully is connected defensively. We’re not going to have the greatest size and the greatest quickness defensively, but hopefully we play well together, really, at both ends, and play with a joy.”
For now, Creighton will continue to prepare for its upcoming exhibition game at the D.J. Sokol Arena against Missouri Western on Oct. 26.
“I hope people give this group a chance, because I think they’re going to be exciting to watch and fun to watch as well,” Flanery said.
