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| Rolfe |
BURN THE HORSE
I've had a lot of opportunities to watch Asriel Rolfe, Chastity Reed and Shanika Butler play over the past four years. For a pretty good stretch, I saw nearly all of their games.
They provided the best game I've ever covered: The 2010 Sun Belt championship loss to Middle Tennessee.
They provided one of the funniest moments of my career: When they beat Georgia Tech and the Lady Jackets' Coach made a "smart" remark to me as she walked off the podium.Rolfe, Reed and Butler play their final home game at 5:15 tonight at the Jack Stephens Center when they take on North Texas. And props to the Athletic Department for moving their senior ceremony from pregame to halftime of the men's game. Getting to the JSC for a 5:15 start can be tough. And these girls deserve the opportunity to have as many people as possible congratulate them.
Quick quiz: Name the other three members of the freshman class that year?
Rolfe, Reed and Butler entered UALR along with Taisia Jones, Mattilyn MacIntyre and Ikia Starr were the freshmen. Jones and Starr were gone before they became sophomores and MacIntyre left before her junior year.
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| Reed |
I ask because recruiting freshmen can be a crap shoot. Rolfe, Reed and Butler weren't even the mostly highly touted of the six. Rolfe made the biggest impact early because she was the only true point guard on the roster. Reed got some quality minutes off the bench and, at times, showed some flair. Butler barely got off the bench as a freshman.
All three made dramatic improvement from their freshman to sophomore years and have continued to improve ever since.Things haven't always gone as planned. Injuries have slowed them down considerably. But they haven't complained and have played through the pain on many nights.
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| Butler |
This trio has taken UALR to places it could only have dreamed of going less than five years ago. UALR is guaranteed a spot in the WNIT this year if it doesn't win the Sun Belt Tournament for an NCAA berth. That will make four consecutive postseason trips for them.
I'm not sure what the policy for retiring numbers at UALR is (only Derek Fisher's is retired), but there ought to be a place in the rafters for UALR's MV3 to be recognized forever.Congrats to Asriel, Chastity and Shanika.
