Despite losing three seniors from last year's squad, NAU women's basketball coach Laurie Kelly thought good times were ahead for her team.

The Lumberjacks welcomed in Amy Patton, the Arizona Gatorade Player of the Year as a junior at Tempe McClintock and a few other promising freshmen joined her.

The Jacks were coming off a 9-21 season and a 6-10 mark in Big Sky Conference play and looked to improve on both records this season.

It never happened.

"I expected to be a better team than we were the year before," Kelly said.

Instead, NAU went 5-24 this past season and missed postseason play for the first time in 15 years. Of the 24 losses, 17 were decided by 10 points or less.

The Daily Sun sports staff breaks down the 2009-10 season and offers a few highlights from a difficult season.

INJURIES AFFECT EVERYONE

A number of Jacks went down during the season, many of whom were expected to contribute significant minutes. Starting freshman guard Tyler Stephens-Jenkins missed about a month with a concussion and played sparingly during the final two games of the season. Katie Pratt and Lauren Hoisington also missed time with concussions while point guard Vickie Toney sat out with ankle and knee injuries. With key contributors down, playing minutes ran high for those left on the court and fatigue set in for various players throughout the season.

OFFSEASON CONDITIONING?

Kelly wanted her players to be relatively fit by the time they begin preseason training in the fall, but found that most of them ignored their coach's recommendation. During their fitness test to start the year, two of the 13 players met the benchmark the coaching staff set.

"It was one of our biggest demises," Kelly said. "I don't think many players came back having worked really hard that summer."

From that point, the team was already behind schedule as the players spent extra time conditioning and less time in the weight room, among other things. Mainly, Kelly had the team running a mile time-trial until everyone met the time mark.

"We spent the entire preseason conditioning until they all made it," Kelly said.

The conditioning mile became an analogy for the season for Kelly. Many of her Jacks would run at the right pace for three out of four laps but would lose the pace somewhere along the way -- much like how they played their basketball games. There were lapses in concentration and motivation.

NON-CONFERENCE OBLIGATIONS KEEP JACKS ON THE ROAD

Part of the Jacks' downturn was playing nine of their 13 non-conference games on the road. The Jacks went 0-9 in those games.

"It was grueling," Kelly said. "It was not great preparation for conference play."

The non-stop road schedule was a result of fulfilling obligations to schools that visited NAU in previous years and required the Jacks to make a return visit.

"We owed a lot of (road) games in a single year, which we try not to do," Kelly said. "We played so many road games early on, our team was really tired."

TIPPING POINT

After going 3-3 in their final six conference games in January, the Jacks went 0-3 during their home stretch in February and failed to win a game the rest of the season.

TOUGHEST LOSS

In their last road game of the season, the Jacks took on division-leading Eastern Washington and took them to the brink, leading by 14 points with just over five minutes to play. The Eagles then went on a 24-3 run, fueled by NAU turnovers, and won 71-64.

"Everything that could go wrong for us did in that final four minutes," Kelly said.

TEAM MVP

Could there be anyone else? If you paid attention to the Jacks at all this season, you'd know that they were kept in games almost single-handedly by Patton. She broke NAU's single-season scoring record and, according to Kelly, is the only guard to lead the league in scoring and rebounding, averaging 18.6 points and 8.6 rebounds per game.

"Amy Patton is going to have a great career," Kelly said. "There was no question that she was going to be an immediate-impact player when we signed her.

"I think she could be so much better. I know the other coaches in the league aren't too excited about the next three years with her."

Patton had several memorable moments in her first year in Flagstaff, but the highlight came in the second conference game of the season, when she hit a buzzer-beater to give the Jacks a 63-62 win on the road against Weber State.

MOST IMPROVED

Vickie Toney, who sat out last year after transferring from Lamar University, had an up-and-down year but established herself as the team's most consistent passer toward the end of the season.

"She was a turnover machine," Kelly said of her point guard in the early part of the season. "She, overall, did a really good job down the stretch."

COACH'S HINDSIGHT

With all of the late-game breakdowns, where the Jacks would see the game pulled from their grasp, Kelly regrets not spending more time practicing those game-breaking moments.

"I wish we had spent more time at end-of-game preparation," Kelly said.

She realized that with the majority of her roster being underclassmen, she and her staff spent more time on the basics than they would have liked.

"We progressed slower than what we would have wanted to," Kelly said. "We did more teaching than we've done in the past."

Jacob May can be reached at jmay@azdailysun.com or 556-2251.