By GREG FALLON
gfallon@muncie.gannett.com

MUNCIE — Ask senior guard Audrey McDonald how things have gone in the first few weeks of practice for the Ball State women’s basketball team and she pauses and smiles.

“It’s been a transition,” she says.

With last year’s record-breaking, national news-making season in the review mirror, the Cardinals will open their season at 7 p.m. today at Michigan. And they’ll do it without the player who filled the point guard position the last two years, Kiley Jarrett, and without a former Mid-American Conference Defensive Player of the Year, Porchia Green.

“Obviously (the transition) is not as big as last year with a whole new coaching staff,” McDonald points out. “This year has been better in that respect, but we’re still getting used to each other and trying to feel each other out a little better.”

And that begins with the floor general.

The Cardinals will turn to junior college transfer and Southside graduate, Ty’Ronda Benning this season at point guard. And right behind her in that rotation is freshman Shanee’ Jackson.

Players and coaches say those two at point guard will likely result in Ball State playing a faster-paced game than it did one year ago.

It’s a suggestion perhaps difficult to believe for anyone who watched the Cardinals last season during their 26-9 campaign in which they won the MAC West Division, MAC Tournament and shocked women’s college basketball by ousting two-time defending national champion Tennessee in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

“I’m going to say it’s going to be faster, I honestly am,” McDonald says of this year’s offensive pace. “These new girls are fast. They love to run. Our post players are in a lot better shape. They are getting up and down the floor a lot faster. I think it’s going to be a lot faster pace than last year.”

In addition to the quicker pace, Benning, a transfer from Lincoln Trail College, and Jackson, who comes to BSU from Hilliard Darby High School in Hilliard, Ohio, will also modify how the Cardinals score. Both are penetrating guards — an approach preseason All-MAC selection Emily Maggert is looking forward to.

“With (guards) penetrating, that’s going to require (defensive) help from the post, which is going to draw people off of me,” Maggert says. “It’s going to draw guards in, too, so Audrey will be able to shoot the 3 more. It’s going to be different.”

Maggert and McDonald, along with fellow returner Danielle Gratton, will be the players Ball State turns to in the early going for leadership on the court, second-year coach Kelly Packard says. In addition to the tentativeness that naturally comes with learning a new system, Packard says neither Benning nor Jackson are the vocal leaders she expects from her point guard, a trait Jarrett provided the Cardinals.

“Right now, I’m just trying to get them to say a set loud enough so all five of us know what we’re doing. Then we’ll go from there,” Packard says.

On the positive side, as penetrating guards, both players are likely to create more opportunities for Ball State on the offensive end.

“Neither of them is bashful about getting into the paint,” Packard says. “They can get deeper into the paint than Kiley could and still pass back out or stop and pop. Kiley was sometimes really limited with her size.

“They are not going to have to be told to shoot, that’s for sure. And I’m OK with that. Right now they aren’t taking too many catch-and-shoots with the 3, but they are creating, moving north and south with their penetration.”

On the defensive end of the court, the Cardinals will surely miss Green, who to fans was known for her ability to slash and score but around the league was known as an impossible defender to work against. Packard said it will be Jackson that BSU will turn to as its lockdown defender this season.

“I wouldn’t want to have to bring the ball up the floor against her. I wouldn’t want to have to make a post-entry pass against her,” says Packard, who notes the freshman still has work to do.

“I just need her to carry what she may start with in the first six defensive possessions to carry that to 10. Right now, that’s what I’m preaching to her — to get deeper with that consistency, because it’s really good.”

In all, there is plenty of transitioning going on for Ball State. And players and coaches expect it to continue far beyond tonight’s game against Michigan before the team settles into its own identity this season.

But against a Big Ten foe — the same one BSU opened its 2006-07 season with a 62-58 road win against — Ball State will learn rather quickly where it stands.

“It’s not going to be an easy first game,” Maggert says. “But it’s a good game to see where we are and see what we need to work on, what we need to get better at.”

Contact sports editor Greg Fallon at 213-5876.