Scott Ballard knows his Winona State University women's basketball team doesn't stack up against the University of Minnesota.

The Gophers are bigger. They are more athletic. They are stronger. They have more pure basketball skills.

So be it.

Ballard and the Warriors open their season with an exhibition game against Minnesota at 7 p.m. today at Williams Arena. Regardless of the outcome, tonight's game will go into the record book as the first basketball game ever played on the new floor at Williams Arena.

Ballard would like to remember it for a few other reasons. Good reasons.

"It is a fun environment. There will be 4,000 or 5,000 people there," Ballard said. "I told our group today (Tuesday) that hopefully this kind of atmosphere will prepare us for something big at the end of the year."

The Warriors are coming off something big. Winona State posted the most wins (24) in school history a year ago and earned the program's first NCAA Division II national tournament berth.

WSU won its first tournament game over Colorado State University-Pueblo, then lost an overtime contest to Fort Lewis, Colo.

The Gophers, however, will be a far bigger challenge for a team with eight new players, six of them freshmen.

"It doesn't feel so good if it's a beat down," Ballard said. "But it makes you better. There will be teams in our league (NSIC) that will have similar speed kids at some of the guard spots or a couple of big kids inside.

"Nobody in our league has as much depth and all those things at the same time (like Minnesota)."

WSU played Minnesota three years ago and has its very own Gopher connection in assistant coach Shannon Schonrock, who played for Minnesota from 2002-2006. That connection, plus WSU's rising reputation, helped land the Warriors at the home of a Big Ten school.

WSU will continue its Big Ten connection next season, too, as it will play the University of Wisconsin at the Kohl Center in Madison on Nov. 4, 2010.

"It is a challenge. We want to have tidbits of success here and there," Ballard said. "We want to see how many possessions we are able to get what we are looking for. How many possessions we are able to hold our own and compete on the boards.

"We don't want to be real sloppy and let it turn into a layup drill for them."

WSU has two returning starters in the lineup tonight. Senior forward Ana Wurtz was the team's leading scorer a year ago at 16.5 points per game. She hit an incredible 92 of 209 (44 percent) of her 3-point shots.

Junior Natalie Gigler (11.9 ppg, 4.4 rpg) started a year ago, while sophomore Michelle McDonald (5.3 ppg, 3.2 rpg) averaged 15 minutes a game as a freshman.

Sophomore Afton Glander and freshman Katie Wolff round out the starting lineup.