The Mustangs are young. The early portion of the schedule is brutal. The hope, coach Dan Waldeck said before the 2017-18 women’s basketball slate was released Tuesday, is that the process will produce a battle-tested bunch.

“Being such a young team, I knew I needed to throw them to the fire,” he said. “The biggest thing we need to get is experience. We can practice all we want, which is needed, but we need game experience to prepare for conference. That’s kind of why we did it that way.”

The Mustangs open the season with exhibition games against NCAA Division 2 power Cal Baptist and Division 1 Cal State Northridge in late October.

Then, Master’s will go the way of the Northwest, where it will face one test after another.

Beginning on Nov. 1, the Mustangs play exhibitions against NCAA Division 1 schools Washington State and Eastern Washington as part of a string of five games in seven days.

Later that month, Master’s plays five games in nine days.

“We play a variety of teams in small spaces of time,” Waldeck said. “It’s going to really challenge our ability to adjust on the fly. … It’s as close to a national tournament setting as we can get.”

Lately, that’s been the program’s default setting. The Mustangs have advanced to the NAIA national tournament five years in a row. They’ve made the second round in each of the last two seasons.

This year’s run, however, will come without All-Americans Megan Lindsley and Bianca Cubello, both of whom graduated.

What remains, then, is a talented, capable group now forced into the spotlight. Waldeck, for one, believes they’re ready.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of surprises in the conference with how good some of my freshmen-turned-sophomores are,” he said.

The young team will face challenges throughout the year, though. The Mustangs must navigate a Golden State Athletic Conference that features perennial powers Vanguard and Westmont. Arizona Christian also returns a talented group.

Master’s, as it turns out, closes the regular season with three road games, two of them against aforementioned Westmont and Vanguard.

“It’s extremely difficult,” Waldeck said. “We have a bunch of home games in November and January, and we need to try to take care of business in those games.

“It’s going to be tough coming down the stretch, but it’s a good thing because it will really prepare us to play tough games on the road (in the postseason).”

Reinforcements in the form of the Throns sisters (freshmen Rebekah and Hannah) should help, too.

Freshman Anika Neuman, a 6-foot-1 forward, is another newcomer Waldeck expects to “make an impact right away.”

Master’s opens its season with an exhibition at home against Cal Baptist on Oct. 26. Game time is 5 p.m.

Click/tap [here] for the full 2017-2018 schedule.