Up until the wins started rolling in, the 2022-23 UTEP women’s basketball team had the profile of a program headed toward rebuilding.
The Miners lost their two top scorers to the transfer portal, then lost their new leading scorer, Maharishi Petree, for the season to a concussion in the second game.
Soon enough a key bench player, Eliana Cabral, was shut down to injury, starting a path that led to UTEP finishing the year with eight healthy players.
That’s an unlikely trailhead for a 20-win season — the Miners entered the year picked eighth out of 11 teams in Conference USA — yet that’s where the Miners ended up after a competitive WNIT loss at Texas Tech that was their 12th setback.