The players made a 90-minute appearance at the March of Dimes’ “March for Babies” in Troy, and then returned to the Auburn Hills practice facility for a short practice before heading to the airport for a flight to Las Vegas, where the Shock will partake in a three-team scrimmage Monday.

Entering the second week of camp, Laimbeer is expecting more from his players than conditioning; he wants to see “more execution and offensive play structures.” He’s upping the ante just as the team prepares for its first action against outside competition.

“[I’m] looking to see conditioning of our players, execution of what they’ve been taught in the first week and - they’re all rookies, except for a couple of them - to see how the rookies can play against someone else besides our self in the gym,” he said.

The Shock have been frequent participants in the Las Vegas scrimmage, which has been hosted by the Sacramento Monarchs for several years. This time the Houston Comets will join the Monarchs and Shock at the exhibition, which counts as a preseason game. Though the trip involves a long flight for a brief stay - the team will return Tuesday - Laimbeer sees value in the scrimmage format. Score is kept but teams rotate opponents after each quarter, giving the rookies a lot of different looks.

“This is our third year going out there,” Laimbeer said. “[It] works well because you get to play a lot of quarters and against two different teams.”

The Shock will send a 10-player contingent to Las Vegas, including every player in camp besides All-Star forward Cheryl Ford, who continues to rehabilitate her surgically repaired left knee.

On Saturday, the Shock cut three rookies from their training camp roster - 5-foot-10 forward Chakhia Cole from West Virginia, 6-foot guard Fantasia Goodwin from Syracuse and West Bloomfield native Samantha Mahoney, a 5-foot-10 guard from Kentucky. The Shock roster now stands at 15 players. All WNBA training camp rosters had to be trimmed to 15 by Tuesday.

Unless the Shock release a player to sign someone else, Laimbeer does not anticipate any more immediate changes. “We’ll probably keep these (players) for a couple weeks,” he said. WNBA teams must finalize their regular-season rosters - between 11 and 13 players - by May 16, the day before the season opener.