As January comes to a close, Asbury’s women’s basketball team has 15 wins and only six losses, putting them in third place in their conference at the moment. But the real story of their success begins much earlier.
“We started finding success really towards the end of last year, winning eight of our last eleven games, so it really allowed a lot of carryover from last year,” said Chad Mayes, the head coach for women’s basketball.
Mayes is in his second year as head coach of the Lady Eagles, and the program has only gone up since his debut. The women’s basketball team started picking up quite a few wins at the end of last year’s season, and that momentum has carried generously over into their current season.
With nine games left in their regular season (eight are conference games), the women’s team hopes to create an even better record that will place them in the conference tournament.
Many returning players from AU’s team last year have had a large impact on the success and attitude of the team.
“The returners that we have, Autumn Herriford, Sarah King, Kelsey Johnson, Sarah Dennison, Amie Conley, a lot of those girls have just really fueled the beginning of this year,” said Mayes.
However, the returning players aren’t the only thing that has brought the team success; it has also benefited from the addition of several influential freshmen.
“With the addition of Jaclynn Ruble, Zaria Napier, that really just kind of added the spark . . . and with Faith Osborne and Cheyenne Fullwood, they really kind of matured into playing and have really come around,” said Mayes.
The Lady Eagles have elevated their level of play and are looking to take the team to places they’ve never been before.
“Now we have to springboard above,” said Mayes. “We were the hunters and now we’ve kind of become the hunted and that’s a new transition because now when teams come in here they are looking to beat us.”
As they finish up the season, the women’s basketball team hopes to compete in both the conference and national tournament, setting a higher standard for their own level of play. With no current seniors, the AU women’s basketball team will also look to dominate next year as well.
“I tell our ladies that we want to strive to be one of the best,” said Mayes, “and we don’t want to back into anything, we want to face challenges head on. I expect us to go out and make the conference tournament . . . and we’re going to have to earn it because nothing is given to us.”
The Lady Eagles’ next game is a home match at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 1 against Carlow University.