KALAMAZOO, Mich. -- It's the end of a recent early-preseason workout and Western Michigan University first-year women's basketball head coach Kate Achter winds it up with her players forming a circle at center court.

The players are there to talk…but not about themselves and their own assessment of how practice went.

''We talk at the end of every practice, but everyone has to say something positive about a teammate,'' Achter said. ''We do that because I want them to leave practice on a high note, even if the practice ends poorly. The mad scientist in me is I'm forcing them to talk to each other and forcing them to think about basketball.''

And as regular season practice begins this week, there is a lot to do before the Broncos open the season at Appalachian State on Nov. 3. "The first week of practice is about building consistently good habits,'' Achter said. "We will be doing multiple days in a row of basketball, talking to them about setting goals and what are we doing to not only prepare for Appalachian State, but the Mid-American Conference. I'm about the big picture, about giving them confidence and pushing them through the difficult times.''

With a non-conference schedule which includes Michigan State, Indiana and Ohio State, then a start-of-MAC schedule of Massachusetts (17-15 overall, 11-7 Atlantic 10, but moves to the MAC starting this season), Buffalo (30-7, 13-5 MAC) and Toledo (24-9, 13-5), well, those will be difficult times. "We want our team chemistry to be hard work together,'' the head coach said.

When the women's basketball team members want to see the success which hard work and working together brings, they can simply look around in their classes and talk to fellow student-athletes…like the national championship hockey players, or the MAC championship volleyball players or MAC championship women's soccer players or the Missouri Valley Championship men's soccer players.

"I don't know if anyone else has brought this up, but it's about feeling like a champion,'' Acter said. "Do you know what this looks like on a daily basis? We want to get there, too.''

For Achter and her staff, it's been getting to know the players throughout the summer workouts, and recently, the four-hours-a-week the NCAA allows for practice before this week. "We brought in new players (seven of them), but really every player in the program is new to us,'' Achter said. ''They all start on the same level, so they have had eight weeks in the summer and the pre-practice time to establish themselves, and we can find out who the leaders are. I have really good pieces in which to start and we have to figure out how to assemble them and recruit.''

The circle at the end of practice is a good start.

"After a recent practice, it was brought up that our practice guys do the hard job of mainly defending and do it well,'' Achter said."Our post players showed brilliant flashes at times and are getting better and better. It's about giving a shout out to someone who might not get a lot of shout outs.''