Uwgb Women’s Basketball and the Homecoming Test: Jenna Guyer Returns as Green Bay Meets Minnesota
On Friday night in Eastern Time (ET), uwgb women’s basketball walks into Williams Arena carrying more than a 25-8 record and a Horizon League title. For senior Jenna Guyer, it is a return to Minnesota—her first game back since leaving high school—and what she describes as her last chance to earn a first NCAA tournament victory.
What does Uwgb Women’s Basketball bring into the Minnesota matchup?
Green Bay arrives as the No. 13 seed and Horizon League champion, facing Minnesota, the No. 4 seed, in a first-round game scheduled for Friday, March 20, at Williams Arena. Minnesota enters at 22-8 and fourth in the Big Ten, returning to the NCAA tournament for the first time in six years under coach Dawn Plitzuweit.
Plitzuweit framed the matchup as a meeting of teams that recognize themselves in each other. “They’re a very familiar team, in a lot of ways, to us, ” she said, listing toughness, defense, physicality, discipline, ball security, and sharing the ball. In the numbers shared ahead of the game, Minnesota ranks fourth nationally in assists-to-turnover ratio (1. 51), with Green Bay 13th (1. 34). Minnesota is 30th in scoring defense (57. 9), while Green Bay is 47th (58. 6). Minnesota has five players averaging 10 or more points; Green Bay has three averaging 11 or more.
Green Bay’s ability to withstand high-major opponents has also been tested in nonconference play. The Phoenix played Wisconsin, Kansas State, NC State, Richmond and Washington; they beat Kansas State and kept margins tight in several losses, including losses to Washington by five and Wisconsin by four.
Who is Jenna Guyer, and why does her return matter?
Guyer is at the center of this game’s human pull. A 6-foot-2 senior center/forward, she leads Green Bay in points (15. 1), rebounds (6. 3) and blocks (0. 8). She was named Horizon League Player of the Year and the tournament’s Most Valuable Player as the Phoenix won both the regular-season and tournament titles.
Her return to Minnesota carries personal stakes as well as competitive ones. “When I saw we might play Minnesota, it was like, ‘Oh, that would be really cool to be able to come home, play in front of a lot of my family and friends and my hometown, ’ ” Guyer said. “To end my last postseason run here is a cool little chance. ”
Asked whether she wanted to play for Minnesota coming out of high school, Guyer responded with a smile: “I’m not sure I was recruited by [Minnesota], but that’s all right. ” Now, on the NCAA tournament stage, she is the most decorated Minnesotan on a Green Bay roster that also includes other Minnesota-born players. Among them are Ellie Buzzelle of Rogers, who plays 18. 9 minutes per game off the bench; Sophie Lahti of Pine City, who has not appeared this season; and Maren Westin of Becker, who has played 10. 3 minutes per game in 12 contests.
How did the “Green Bay Way” shape both benches?
The throughline between the teams runs directly through coaching relationships and a shared vocabulary. Plitzuweit, a 53-year-old from West Bend, Wisconsin, credits what she calls the “Green Bay Way” as a lasting influence. She first worked as an assistant coach under Kevin Borseth at the program formally known as the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, and her career intersected with his repeatedly: she played for him at Michigan Tech in the early 1990s and coached under him at Michigan Tech (1995-98), Green Bay (1998-02) and Michigan (2007-12).
Borseth’s presence also hangs over the Green Bay sideline. Kayla Karius—who replaced Borseth after his retirement in 2024—has her own history with him, and Plitzuweit said, “Kevin’s fingerprints are all over what we do in a lot of different ways. ” Plitzuweit added that Borseth “really influenced me not only as a player, a coach, but as a person at a very, very high level, ” and said she still sees that mentality embedded in how Green Bay operates.
Karius, meanwhile, has a direct connection to Plitzuweit as well. After Plitzuweit left for West Virginia following the 2021-22 season, Karius became her replacement at South Dakota; she had previously served as an assistant coach there from 2016 to 2018, overlapping with Plitzuweit’s first three seasons at the school. In 2016, when Plitzuweit took the South Dakota head coaching job, she hired Karius as a young assistant, and they spent two seasons together.
Now, Karius has turned that lineage into immediate results at Green Bay. It took her 30 games to win her first 25, noted as the second-fastest start by a coach in Horizon League history. “There are a lot of the same philosophies in these two programs, ” Karius said.
What should fans watch for on Friday night (ET)?
This game presents as a stylistic mirror. Both teams are described by Plitzuweit as disciplined, physical, and careful with the ball—traits that often decide tournament games when possessions tighten and the margin for error shrinks. Minnesota’s broader scoring balance is reflected in five players in double figures, while Green Bay’s production is more top-heavy at the top, led by Guyer.
The setting also matters. Guyer called it a chance to play in front of family and friends, and for a veteran roster, the emotional charge of a “homecoming” can either sharpen focus or complicate it. For uwgb women’s basketball, the challenge is to turn that pull into poise—one clean pass, one defended possession, one settled possession at a time—against a Minnesota team that has prided itself on ball control and structure.
Image caption (alt text): uwgb women’s basketball senior Jenna Guyer warms up at Williams Arena ahead of the NCAA tournament first-round game against Minnesota.
