UTEP women's basketball cranks up with first practice

Buy Photo"First days" in NCAA sports are nominal entities in this era of year-round athletics, but as the calendar reached October and the UTEP women's basketball team had its official first practice, coach Kevin Baker was fired up — even by his happy standards.

"I feel the excitement, just the time of year, October 1st, basketball season has begun," Baker said Monday as a new-look team cranked up. "I couldn't be more excited to get things moving. I'm ready to go get 'em."

The team hasn't really stopped working since last season ended in the second-round of the Conference USA tournament, Monday's practice didn't look much different than last week's "offseason workouts," other than being…