FAYETTEVILLE -- Louisiana-Monroe is 13 years removed from its last winning season and went 7-23 last season, but Arkansas women's basketball Coach Mike Neighbors wants his team to put zero stock in that tonight when it tips its season off against the Warhawks.
Arkansas will face a new-look ULM squad ripe with transfer talent brought in by first-year Coach Missy Bilderback at 7 p.m. at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville.
The Warhawks added eight players from the NCAA transfer portal in the offseason. Three of those additions were starters at the Power 5 level last season.
"Anybody that's looking at what they did last year, you're doing it wrong," Neighbors said. "It's a different team. It's a different coach. It's everything."
There is some familiarity for the Razorbacks with the wave of Warhawk newcomers. Last season Arkansas faced four of ULM's eight transfer portal additions.
Sania Wells and Jakayla Johnson were at Auburn, Daisha "Nunu" Bradford was at Clemson and Kyjai Miles was at Central Arkansas. All four started against the Razorbacks last year. Arkansas was 3-0 in those games.
Neighbors compared ULM to the Arkansas men's basketball team, having a fresh look of new faces from the portal.
"They look like Coach [Eric Musselman's] team," Neighbors said. "There's a bunch of people that have played at a real high level for a bunch of teams and scored and played.
"It's going to be a team that when they roll out there, it's going to have an SEC look. Now, they're going to be new. It's going to be their first game with [Bilderback], but I can assure you they'll play hard and there will be SEC caliber athletes on the floor."
Bilderback came to the Warhawks after eight seasons coaching Jones (Miss.) College. She led Jones College to seven consecutive National Junior College Athletic Association Tournaments and had a 198-33 record there.
The school has been a pipeline for the Razorbacks in recent history. Arkansas sophomore Carly Keats played for Bilderback at Jones College last season. Former Razorback sharpshooter Alexis Tolefree played two seasons there before transferring to Arkansas to finish her career in 2018-20.
"From [recruiting Keats and Tolefree], we developed a mutual respect," Neighbors said. "And obviously the style of play fits. They play a lot like we do, and she and I share very similar ways about doing practices and a lot of our systems are the same -- a lot of our philosophies about not turning it over and taking good open shots.
"We've talked numerous times, not about recruiting, just about basketball stuff. When she got the [ULM] job and we knew that they were on the schedule, it was exciting. I like to play against people I have respect for, and we've got a lot of respect for her. ... Taking that job going down there, you know she will get that thing going in a hurry."
Arkansas assistant coach Pauline Love also played at Jones College, but it's a different stop that formed a connection to the Warhawks' staff. ULM assistant Lauren Pittman played alongside Love at Southern Miss from 2007-10.
Pittman coached at Jones College under Bilderback the past four seasons and was key to bringing Keats to Arkansas.
"If she had a kid at Jones, she would say, 'Hey, P, we've got this kid that you need to come watch,' " Love said. "That's what happened with Keats. She said, 'Hey, she's going to be under the radar, nobody really knows her, but she's an Arkansas-caliber kid.' "
The Warhawks are still waiting to hear word from the NCAA if 6-5 center Emma Merriweather, the Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year in 2022-23, will be granted an additional year of eligibility. Merriweather led ULM in scoring (10.1 points per game), rebounding (10.6 per game) and blocked shots (91, a program single-season record) last year.
If granted a waiver, it would be her fifth season to play. She began in 2017-18 at Long Beach State, redshirted a year at Texas Tech, transferred to Kansas for two seasons and was with the Warhawks last year.
Neighbors said his team will prepare as if Merriweather is going to play.
"I can promise you this, it's not the team that we scheduled to open the season with when we scheduled it a year and a half ago," Neighbors said. "They didn't win very many games last year. This team may be picked low, but they won't finish low."