HELENA — Carroll College’s women’s basketball team is riding a three-game win streak — and leading that charge is redshirt junior guard Willa Albrecht.
The Frontier Conference named Albrecht its defensive player of the week Monday. But you won’t hear her bragging about the honor.
“Yeah, it’s great. But it’s all team awards to me,” said Albrecht when asked about what the honor means to her. “I was just glad we got the win — just a good team performance that day.”
Carroll head coach Rachelle Sayers compared Albrecht, a Billings West graduate and former Montana Lady Griz, to “a silent assassin.”
“She’s just very calm. You don’t see much expression out of her,” said Sayers. “You don’t know if she’s scored 30 or she’s missed 30 in a row. She just stays pretty even keeled.”
Albrecht’s production last season earned her a preseason all-conference honor for this year. And somehow she’s gotten better this season, leading the Fighting Saints in points, rebounds, steals and blocks as a guard.
“I think we all worked a lot this summer,” said Albrecht. “We were all in the gym. Y’know, five days a week, getting in, doing extra workouts. So, all that just helps improve your confidence. And then playing with confidence, really everything, it just makes everything easier.”
And Albrecht has the full confidence of her head coach, who routinely reminds the 6-foot guard to “be the woman out there.”
“It’s just kind of an inside joke with us,” said Sayers. “She has the ability to be the one out there, to take over a game. She’s the one that everybody’s looking for when we need a score. And for her to just feel like we have that confidence in her, we need her to have that confidence in her and want to be in those positions, want to take over those games.”
Albrecht said she appreciated her coach’s support.
“She’s always just been encouraging me this year to be more aggressive,” said Albrecht. “Kind of embrace my role as more of a scorer for this team. And yeah, it’s great when your coach has that much confidence in you. It makes it a lot easier to have confidence in yourself and just go out there and play without having to think too much about things.”
