OSHKOSH, Wis. — Tipping off its season on Friday, the Wisconsin GLO is looking to capitalize off basketball fever in the state of Wisconsin as the Bucks ride a winning streak in the playoffs.
"This is a basketball hotbed right now, the state of Wisconsin," said GLO head coach Dan Carey, who is also an assistant coach at UW-Milwaukee. "I'm born and raised in Milwaukee so I'm personally really, really excited about everything that's happening. This is a phenomenal organization, a phenomenal facility. It's kind of a golden era for basketball both on the men's and on the women's side across the state and also at the high school level. There's such tremendous coaches. Brad, what he's doing at UW-Oshkosh. Just, there's so much good basketball all over the state."
"I hope a lot of young girls come out and watch us play just because the roster that we have, a lot of the girls are so nice and they're willing to go out in the community and help others<" said guard Allie LeClaire, a UW-Green Bay and Notre Dame Academy product. "So I hope that the girls sitting watching us, if they have dreams of playing pro basketball one day, that they can see that it can come true."
The roster includes lots of familiar faces for Wisconsin hoops fans, plucking from the Milwaukee, Fox Valley and Green Bay areas, as well as from UW-Milwaukee and UW-Green Bay.
"I think we're all just really excited," said former Phoenix Mehryn Kraker. "Most of us have played together, we've played against each other, so I think we kind of have like this all-star team feel, and I think it's just going to be really fun to see what we can do together."
"Obviously we're going to play to our strengths to each player and I think that we all bring something different to the team," LeClaire said. "So that's going to be nice to kind of see how we all gel together, and I don't think it's going to be that strict of an offense just because we all come from different backgrounds, different teams."
The GLO plays four exhibition games and eight regular-season games during its summer slate.
