After concluding its exhibition season with an 88-33 victory over UW-Platteville Sunday, the Wisconsin women's basketball team is ready to tip off the regular season.

"It feels nice to come into the regular season 2-0 in exhibitions," head coach Lisa Stone said. "Two state schools and some opportunities for us to get some people some playing time and show improvement from week to week as well as preparing now for the regular season. The intensity will surely rise a bit as we have a lot of games in a short amount of time, but we're healthy right now, our young players are gaining some maturation, if you will, and we're working on finding combinations. I'm very pleased where we're at, at this present moment."

Wisconsin opens the season this weekend with a game Friday versus Houston and Sunday versus Cleveland State.

Still room for improvement: While the Badgers won both of their exhibition games by a large margin, Coach Stone was quick to say that her team was far from perfect heading into the regular season.

As coaches always point out that the little things still need to improve, so did Stone.

"We need to do a much better job boxing out, rebounding is huge," Stone said. "In our exhibition games we were able to just athletically jump up and get the ball. We need to make contact, in particularly with some of these non-conference teams that we play, that will just jump right over our back. We need to make contact, be more physical, continue to apply better ball pressure, lessen touches inside, better decisions offensively — I think in transition we get a little careless at times. Again that's early, those are things that we can fix, but overall I'm pleased."

Wisconsin to continue playing state schools in exhibitions: This was the first season that Wisconsin hosted other state schools in the exhibition season and Coach Stone said she will continue to play opponents from the WIAC conference, the same conference where she built UW-Eau Claire into one of the top Division III programs in the nation during the late-'90s.

"I think it's great for the state to have them experience the Kohl Center and be in this venue," Stone said. "Obviously we want to find out where we're at in the present moment — competitiveness, etc. People can question and not question, I'm a big believer in the WIAC; I always have been and I'm an advocate for the conference. If we can help them and they can help us then it's a great experience for everybody."

Next season, the Badgers will be playing UW-Stevens Point in an exhibition game.

Rotation not yet set in 'Stone': It seems as though the starting lineup is in place with Jolene Anderson, Janese Banks and Ashley Josephson on the perimeter and Kjersten Bakke and Annie Nelson in the post, but as far as the rest of the lineup Stone says she is not ready to establish a rotation just yet.

Based off of the exhibition showings, however, it seems as though sophomore forward Danielle Ward has earned herself a certain spot off the bench.

"[Ward's] fun to watch," Stone said. "Some of the things that this young girl can do are amazing. She has slowed her wheels down inside and letting the game come to her, but she can run and catch. She's solidified herself in the rotation without a question."

Sophomore guard Akiya Alexander, too, helped secure herself some minutes off the bench with her preseason performance.

"[Alexander's] play was really, really solid," Stone said. "She's composed as a point guard and to give us another dimension that again will boil down to the question of consistency. Can Akiya and Danielle bring that every day?"