First Up: Vanguard and UCSD

The Cardinal begins play this season, as they did last year, with exhibition games against Vanguard and UC San Diego.

Although exhibition games "don't count", they're usually very entertaining for Cardinal fans. The players are as eager to start as you are to see them, and you never know what to expect. You may see:

• Outstanding guard play, like Mel's 12 assists with just one turnover against Vanguard last season.
• A barrage of three-pointers, like the team's 15 against Vanguard last season or Lindy's seven against Chico State in 2008.

  Vanguard

Vanguard is a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), which has almost 300 member institutions. Other NAIA members that you may be familiar with are Menlo College in Atherton and Mills College in Oakland.

Vanguard is one of the elite NAIA teams. They've made it to at least the NAIA quarterfinals in the past seven seasons and won the championship title in 2008. Last season, they shared their conference's regular season title and won the conference tournament.

But this season, they've lost four of their top six scorers and five strong seniors. Three other players have serious injuries.

They played their first game of this season last week. The game report describes them as a team with lots of talent but loads of inexperience. They are heading into a "ridiculously difficult" non-conference season — first Cal, then Stanford, then UCLA. Their starters in that first game were:

• #4, 5'4" senior guard Sarah Boyd is the starting point guard for the fourth year. She averaged 8.1 points per game last season. Her assist-to-turnover ratio was a very good 1.87


• #32, 6'0" senior center Molly Pfohl was the top rebounder last season (5.2 rpg) and averaged 8.2 points per game.


• #24, 5'5" sophomore guard Chelsea Alfafara is a transfer from Orange Coast College.


• #1, 5'8" freshman forward Angelica Sahagun is an explosive, very athletic player. She had a double-double in the opener (13 points, 10 rebounds).


• #25, 5'8" junior guard Ariel Castillo is a transfer from Foothill Community College. (no photo available)

Here is Vanguard's roster.

  UC San Diego

No, this isn't Beth Burns' team (San Diego State) or the WCC team you may have seen at Santa Clara (University of San Diego).

It's UC San Diego, a Division II school that plays in the California Collegiate Athletic Association league. They've won the CCAA regular season title for the past four seasons and are picked to finish first again this season.

UCSD has a very young team with seven freshmen and no seniors. Their starters are likely to be these five most experienced players:

• #15, 5'6" junior guard Chelsea Carlisle is one of the two returning starters from last season. She was the top scorer (17.4 ppg), made 42% of her field goal attempts, 32% of her 3-pointers and 81% of her free throws. She also averaged 2.2 steals/game and had a good assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.34


• #25, 6'1" junior center Lauren Freidenberg is the other returning starter. She averaged 5.8 points and 5.1 rebounds per game last season.


• #11, 5'7" junior guard Daisy Feder played 13 minutes per game last season and averaged 5.7 points.


• #5, 5'9" sophomore guard Emily Osga played 11 minutes per game last season and averaged 2.7 points and 2.3 rebounds.


• #24, 5'10" sophomore forward Erin Grady played eight minutes per game last season and averaged 2.0 points.

Here is UCSD's roster.