Photo by John Schreiber, The Daily Campus. Katy Cobb will be one of five seniors the Mustangs will have leading this year’s team. Joining Cobb are Brittany Barker, Janielle Dodds, Katie Gross and Sharee Sheperd.

The SMU women’s basketball team announced its 2007-08 schedule on Thursday. The non-conference schedule includes tough, local competition.

The Mustangs dive into the season against Texas A&M at Moody on Nov. 9. Last season, the Aggies finished as the No. 13 team in the nation.

SMU will stay local playing its next eight games in Texas, against opponents including TCU, North Texas and UT-Arlington. The Mustangs will then head to New York to play Hofstra and Manhattan before returning to Texas for their final two non-conference games at Texas Tech and UT-San Antonio.

In a prepared statement head coach Rhonda Rompola said, “The non-conference part of our schedule has a lot of quality opponents, which will prepare us well for the tough teams we face each week in Conference USA.”

The Mustangs will get into the C-USA schedule on the road at Tulsa before starting the home schedule against UCF.

The longest road trip the Mustangs will have during the conference schedule is two games, while SMU will enjoy one three-game home stand.

SMU will play the C-USA tournament champions East Carolina in mid-January on the road, and regular season champions, Tulane at home on Feb. 2 will finish the season there on March 1.

There are high hopes for the Mustangs this season as every player returns from last year’s roster, including senior guard Katie Gross who sat out last season because of an injury.