Friday Features: Freshmen building base for Lee women's success
By Maurice Patton
Lee University can’t compete for the Gulf South Conference’s championship in women’s basketball for another year yet, but the Lady Flames aren’t waiting to make their mark in the league.
After ‘claiming’ the GSC regular-season title in its first season of transition from NAIA to NCAA Division II membership, Lee has gotten off to an 8-3 start (5-3 GSC) this time around with a 15-player roster that features nine first-year competitors.
“With this group being a young team, we’re all just trying to figure out what it takes to play college basketball on a daily basis,” 11
th-year Lee coach Marty Rowe said. “Our goal is to win every game we play, in and out of conference. We’ve got seven true freshmen and two redshirts, and we’ve got a lot to play for, future-wise."
“We’re trying to build a base of success that can hopefully carry over the next few years.”
If current performance is any indication, Rowe and the Lady Flames are building that base. Emileigh Swafford and Erin Walsh – who would each rank among the GSC’s top 10 scorers – lead a talented group of youngsters that also includes Shelby Brown, one of the conference’s top rebounders.
“I think we’re getting better every day,” Brown (9.4 ppg, 6.3 rpg) said. “Because there are so many of us, we’re all going through it together. Coach Rowe talks about being mentally tough and physically tough. I think we’ve done better than I had thought we would. The older girls have been great, leading us and challenging us.”
Lee’s top four scorers -- Swafford (16.4 ppg), Walsh (15.6 ppg), Brown and Carrie Cheeks (7.4 ppg) -- are all freshmen.
“I knew we’d come in and play a lot because I knew they’d lost a lot,” Swafford said. “But I didn’t think it would go as well as it has and that we’d play as much as we’ve gotten to play.
“It’s really a lot different than I’m used to, a lot more challenging to score. Girls in college are a lot stronger (than in high school). But the girls on our team are good, and the harder we practice, the better it makes all of us.”
Both Swafford and Walsh played their high school ball within about 90 minutes of the Cleveland, Tenn., school – giving Rowe a bit of a leg up in the recruiting process.
“There are a lot of players in this area that we try to recruit really hard, that know this is a good school and that the program we’ve built, we’re really proud of,” he said. “And we’re not scared to recruit against people. We’ve gotten kids over Ohio Valley Conference, Southern Conference, Conference USA schools, so we’re not just recruiting against other Gulf South schools."
“We’re trying to get somebody that, for whatever reason, the fit is better here. We’re fortunate that we worked hard enough that we could get players like Emileigh and Erin.”
Swafford drew attention with a 23.5-point average in a pair of Tennessee state tournament games as a senior, but Rowe was well aware of her long before that performance.
“She turned heads at state, but we’ve known about her since her eighth-grade year,” he said. “She’d been coming to our camps since her sophomore year."
“We feel good about her and these other freshmen as we continue to build. We told them, ‘You’re going to have an opportunity to play. It’s up to you to make the best of it.’ We have several that have done that so far.”
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