Saint Mary’s forward Edie Clarke, a sophomore from Melbourne, Australia, understands outside expectations for the Gaels this season were fairly modest. That perception was confirmed when West Coast Conference head coaches voted her team seventh in the league’s preseason poll.

Clarke is unconcerned. “I definitely believed this season was going to be different from what other people expected from us,” she said. “In the summer we were all working together and it was such a different feeling from last year’s team. 

“I don’t think anybody else could see that except for the people in the gym at the time. The energy was just so different. We had lots of different players coming in, such a different vibe in the gym. And a better one as well.”

There is a lot of season ahead on the calendar, but the early returns support Clarke’s optimism. The Gaels are 5-0 for the first time in 10 years and with a victory Thursday at Cal, they will have their best start since the 2013-14 campaign.

The Gaels have a believer in Charlie Creme, women’s basketball bracketologist for ESPN. Creme, in his current NCAA Tournament field projections, makes Saint Mary’s — not Gonzaga or Portland or Oregon State — his surprising choice as the conference’s automatic qualifier. He is projecting the Gaels as a No. 13 seed.

Third-year head coach Jeff Cammon is aware that the schedule brings not only Cal but challenging games against Oregon and USC over the next two weeks. North Texas, which won its first three games by an average margin of nearly 54 points, also looms. So Cammon is careful not to get ahead of himself. He also likes what he’s seen so far.

“To be able to win some basketball games and not play close to the level we can play at is pretty encouraging,” Cammon said. “We haven’t shot the ball nearly as well as I think we can shoot it. We’re still trying to find a rhythm offensively, people trying to carve out their roles. Defensively, we’re pretty good right now.”

Actually, they’ve been dynamite on defense. The Gaels are tied for third nationally, allowing just 45.0 points per game. They haven’t surrendered more than 50 points to any of their first five opponents. 

Among West Coast Conference teams, the Gaels rank second in field-goal percentage defense (.332), second in 3-point defense (.235), second in turnovers forced per game (21.4) and second in steals (12.2). They have at least 11 steals in every game.

“Defense is such a big part of our game. And Coach Jeff really places such a big emphasis on it,” Clarke said. “All the team really loves how the energy originates from the defense and loves getting the other team wound up and how that sort of translates into offense, too.”

Cammon, 45, mixes his defenses, often utilizing a 1-3-1 zone but he also sometimes throws a full-court man press at opponents. 

“Our approach is to dictate and keep teams off balance by mixing up defenses and applying pressure with angles or presence on the ball,” he explained. “Trying to keep teams thinking.”

The tip of the defensive spear in the 1-3-1 alignment is Clarke, who is 6-foot-4 and has a wingspan to go with it. She already has 21 steals this season, most of any player in the conference. 

Cammon calls her a difference-maker, the catalyst for what the Gaels are trying to do on defense. 

“You can play her anywhere. She’s getting a lot of it at the top of our 1-3-1 and the top of our matchup,” Cammon said. “She’s so long. She has a natural gift of anticipation. She’s super smart, she reads the game very well. It makes our defense so much better.”

Clarke comes from the same high school in Australia that spawned former Gaels great and fifth-year NBA center Jock Landale. Late to the sport, Clarke declined to call herself a terrific defensive player in high school. 

“Coming here I’ve definitely developed into a more active defensive player,” she said. “Back home I was kind of standing in one spot and putting my arms up.”

Cammon saw more potential than that in Clarke, but acknowledged she has a quality that wasn’t immediately evident. “She’s really tough but unassuming,” he said. “She tricked me. She’s a sweetheart, but she has a fiery, competitive edge to her.”

Clarke, who is averaging a team-best 9.8 points along with 4.6 rebounds and 4.2 steals, is far from the whole show with the Gaels. In fact, Cammon’s rotation includes 12 players logging at least eight minutes per game. In their 51-41 road victory over UC Riverside last week, the Gaels had no one score more than nine points but got at least one point from 12 different players.

More importantly, that depth allowed them to squeeze 23 turnovers out of Riverside while limiting the hosts to 2-for-22 shooting from the 3-point arc. “We play so hard on the defensive end, we have to be deep,” Cammon said. “It’s such an advantage to have that depth.”

But is a 12-player rotation sustainable over the long haul? “Probably not,” he admitted. “We do want balanced scoring, but we definitely need to have some people in double digits. We need consistent, reliable threats on a night-to-night basis. We’re still trying to figure that out.”

Besides Clarke, junior guard Addi Wedin (9.0 points) and sophomore guard Mauriana Hashemian-Orr (7.8) are the team’s only players producing more than five points per game. So far, that equation is working. “It may be a unique year,” Cammon said. “If they keep proving they can be reliable and we continue to do this and it’s effective . . .”

Cammon is allowing his players to more or less dictate who gets playing time. It’s a merit system based on practice and game performance. “Everything is earned,” Clarke said. “If you’re putting in the work, doing what coach says, then you get rewarded with that court time.”

Thursday’s 11:30 a.m. tipoff at Cal’s Haas Pavilion begins what Cammon calls a “murderer’s row” on the Gaels’ preseason schedule. He’s excited about the game, and not only because it’s a reunion with Cal head coach Charmin Smith, a close friend since their two seasons together as assistants in Berkeley under Lindsay Gottlieb. 

“It’s all part of the plan. We want to get better,” Cammon said of the difficult  stretch ahead. “Our league is tough.” Oregon State is 4-0 and Cammon isn’t fooled by Gonzaga and Portland each losing two games early.

“They’re younger,” he said. “They’ll be good, just because they have good tradition. We want to prepare. We want to play the best and prepare ourselves for conference and the postseason.”