The Case Western Reserve University women's basketball team finished the 2022-23 season with a 15-10 overall record, marking the most wins by the program in a season since the 2018-19 campaign.
The 15 wins matched the third-highest total in the history of the CWRU women's basketball program. Of the team's 10 losses, seven came against squads that were nationally ranked at the time of the game. Included in the team's overall record was a 6-8 mark in University Athletic Association games, good for a fifth-place finish in the conference standings. CWRU was particularly strong at Horsburgh Gymnasium during the year, going 7-3 in home games during the campaign.
CWRU won its first three games of the year and started the season 5-1 overall, marking the team's best start over six games since the 2009-10 season. The Spartans swept a pair of tournaments in November, winning both of its games at both the Lauren Hill Classic and the Nan Nichols Classic with junior forward
Kayla Characklis earning Nan Nichols Tournament Most Valuable Player honors and first-year guard/ forward
Emily Plachta claiming a spot on the all-tournament team. The Spartans went on to finish their non-conference schedule with a 9-2 record, with both losses coming against nationally ranked teams, and the team scored 90 or more points in four of their 11 non-conference games.
Highlights from the Spartans' conference schedule include a pair of wins against Washington University (Mo.), marking the first time in program history that CWRU has swept the Bears in their season series. In the first game at Horsburgh Gymnasium, a 74-64 CWRU win, senior guard/ forward
Isabella Mills scored a career-high 36 points and set a program record and matched a UAA record with 10 made three-point shots, breaking the previous school record of seven (set by Mills in 2021-22 and by former Spartan Mary Herendeen in 2008) and matching the UAA mark set by WashU's Laura Crowley in 2003. CWRU also set a program record with 16 made three-point shots as a team during the game. Later in the season in St. Louis, Mills scored 27 points and collected a career-high 16 rebounds to give the Spartans a 61-57 win, the team's first-ever road victory against the Bears.
CWRU added a home win against Rochester, then ranked 25
th in Division III, besting the Yellowjackets 78-60 on February 10. Mills scored 24 points with 10 rebounds and six assists in the game, while Characklis scored 21 points with nine rebounds. Also during the conference campaign, CWRU swept both games against Brandeis and won its first game against Carnegie Mellon.
In the team's season finale against Carnegie Mellon and playing in the final game of her career, Mills became the 16
th player in program history to reach 1,000 career points and set a program single-season record with 74 three-pointers made, breaking the previous mark of 73 set by Hillary Hellmann during the 2016-17 campaign. Mills finished the season second among all UAA players in points per game (18.0), seventh in rebounds (7.2), eighth in assists (3.1), fourth in steals (2.0), and ninth in blocks (0.8), and went on to earn a spot on the D3hoops.com All-Region Second Team and the All-UAA First Team while being named a finalist for the Jostens Trophy.
Characklis was second among all CWRU players during the year with 11.2 points and 5.6 rebounds per game and claimed a spot on the All-UAA Second Team. Plachta added 8.8 points per game, while junior guard
Sarah Mitchell scored 7.2 points per game with 5.6 rebounds and dished out a team-leading 3.2 assists per game. Other major contributors to the team during the year included junior guard
Margaret Terry (6.0 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 2.7 apg), sophomore guard/ forward
Lucy Vanderbeck (6.0 ppg), junior forward
Preet Gill (5.1 ppg, 3.5 rpg), sophomore guard
Nyah Moore (2.8 ppg), and sophomore forward
Evie Miller (a team-leading 1.2 blocks per game).
As a team, the Spartans averaged 69.4 points per game in 2022-23, the seventh-best average in a single season in program history, while connecting on 211 total three-point shots, the second-most in program history. CWRU finished the year 16
th among Division III teams with 8.4 three-pointers per game, 21
st with a 33.5% mark on three-point attempts, 23
rd with just 13.4 turnovers per game, and 28
th with a 1.06 assist/turnover ratio. CWRU's defense allowed 65.1 points per game during the season.
In addition to their success on the court, Characklis, Gill, Mills, and Mitchell were each named to the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District Team, while nine members of the team – junior forward
Kennedy Boone-Sautter, Characklis, Gill, Miller, Mills, Mitchell, Moore, senior guard
Claire Poulton, and Terry – received UAA Winter All-Academic honors.
Spartan players earned the following awards during the 2022-23 season:
The following were the CWRU team leaders during the 2022-23 season:
