By FORRESTER PACK/Murphy News Service

Excitement surrounding the return of University of Minnesota women’s basketball guard Rachel Banham, improvement of the rest of last season’s squad and a crop of new players were the key takeaways last week during a question-and answer session with the media at Williams Arena.

Nut head coach Marlene Stollings spent plenty of time talking about former players, expressing excitement about Gophers alumni who are playing in the WNBA — some in the WNBA finals under way this week.

“It makes us very proud as a program, seeing former Gophers Lindsay Whalen and Shae Kelley,” Stollings said, of the two members of the Minnesota Lynx. “It’s pretty neat to be able to tweet and talk about it, and have people from all over the country recognize we have two Gophers playing in the finals.”

The Lynx are playing in their fourth WNBA Finals in five years, with an important Game 3 coming up at 7 p.m. Friday at Indiana. The best-of-five series is tied 1-1, after the Lynx beat the Fever 77-71 in Target Center Tuesday night. Another former Gopher player, Amanda Zahui B., also made the playoffs this season as a member of the Tulsa Shock.

“We want players that want to play after college,” Stollings said. “We encourage that, we recruit that. We know they are going to get an outstanding degree when they finish playing here. We seek out players that want to play at that next level.”

Reporter Forrester Pack is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota