The Bates women’s basketball team is going to play with a faster pace this season, and that’s more than fine with senior Nina Davenport.

“I really like it because I like to play really fast,” Davenport said. “I don’t like sitting around, like, ‘OK, what’s next? Am I going to go here, or am I going to go here?’ I just like to run and push it and catch other teams off-guard, because then they can’t set up their defense.”

Davenport was the Bobcats’ top returning scorer (13.0 points per game, which ranked second on the 2016-17 team to Allie Coppola).

Davenport, from Freeport, might be even more important to the Bobcats this year.

“She’s just a super-talented player, but can be pretty inconsistent, and so she’s a key for us in every single game that we play,” Bates coach Alison Montgomery said. “We need her to be good.”

The Bobcats also return last season’s fourth- and fifth-highest scorers in Brunswick’s Elyse Henshaw (6.9 ppg) and sophomore Carly Christofi (5.3).

Along with Coppola’s 13.1 points per game, the Bobcats also have to replace her rebounding. She pulled down 10 boards per game and set the school record for career rebounding.

Making rebounding even more difficult is that the Bobcats don’t have much size this year.

“Obviously, Allie was a great player, so we’re going to miss her,” team captain Lexie Nason said. “But, really, if people just do their job, if people box out and crash the boards hard, I’m not too concerned about it. Size, yes, might help, but I’ve seen a lot of smaller players get rebounds over taller players.”

Bates, which went 8-16 overall and 3-7 in NESCAC play last season, again faces difficult schedule in 2017-18, highlighted by defending national champion Amherst along with Tufts and Bowdoin.

The Bobcats will be trying to build a reputation for themselves and the future of the program by competing with those powerhouses.

“We’re a super-gritty team,” Nason said. “We compete really hard on both ends of the court, so we are trying to form our identity around winning loose balls and battling for rebounds, and any sort of 50-50 chance, we want to be the first team on the floor, diving for those loose balls.”

Bates opens the season Saturday against Castleton in the Tyler Tip-Off Classic in Northampton, Massachusetts.