The LadyKats basketball team is gearing for its first exhibition game against Texas A&M-Kingsville on Saturday at 4 p.m. in the Bernard G. Johnson Coliseum. Head coach Erika Ritter said the team is anxious to see how well the team plays together against an opponent and see if what the team needs to work on.”I want to see how we execute our offenses and our defenses and then go from there to see what we need to work on to improve,” Ritter said. “Since we have only been able to practice against ourselves, we are not quite sure how we fare against competition, so I think we are just anxious to see how we look against another team.”Alice Johnson is the only returning senior for the LadyKats, with four other returning players for the team.The team has five freshmen and the other nine are new, with three junior college transfer student and one is a transfer from Texas A&M, but she is sitting out this year, Ritter said.”Stacy Allen is red-shirted senior and she is coming off an ACL surgery. She went down in our third game of the season last year and she was our leading scorer when she went down, so we are pretty anxious to have her back,” she said.Allen looks the same on the court since her injury and she will not need a knee brace this season, Ritter said.Ritter said she is anxious to put out different lineups to see how well the team plays together.”I think we have a lot of versatility in some players and we will be able to have some different lineups depending on what we want to do,” she said. “If we want a full court press or if we want to have shooters in the game, or if we want to have two post players in the game. We are going to have a lot of versatility, and I am anxious to see that because we have not really been able to show that in practice.”Ritter said it is a little early to tell, but she thinks we can expect to see a lot from senior Alice Johnson, Allen, and sophomore Crystal Jackson. “Jackson was our starting point guard last year as a freshman and she has come a long way. She will have to run this team as a sophomore,” she said.Kelley Kramer who is a transfer from Garden City Community College has a great work ethic, Ritter said.”She can really shoot the three and she knows the game,” she said. “I think those four have probably picked up things the quickest and worked hard so those are the four we are going to count on, not to say that the others are not going to step up because everybody is really working hard.” “We are hoping to get (injuries) out of the way not and not have to deal with them once we start,” she said. “The kids are working hard and they are anxious to play somebody, which we all are this time of the year, so I’m just anxious to see how we look against someone else.”