Junior duo leads Mercer women’s team into season

Kahlia Lawrence and Sydni Means.

Sydni Means and Kahlia Lawrence.

Usually where there is one, the other is close by.

And that’s a good thing for the Mercer women’s basketball team.

The Bears and their two junior leaders open their season at 7 p.m. on Friday at Hawkins Arena against Emmanuel College. Mercer is coming off a strong season in 2015-16 as it finished as a co-regular-season champion in the Southern Conference with Chattanooga and earned a trip to the WNIT.

“Some of the folks that came to ‘Sunrise’ were asking them questions about how they felt,” Mercer head coach Susie Gardner said about the team’s recent “Sunrise with Susie” event with fans. “It was interesting for me to hear their response, and I think for the first time since I’ve been here, our players are saying the word ‘championship’ and meaning it versus it just being lip service. Sydni said the word, ‘championship,’ and she had something to back it up with because we were co-champions last year. I think we can talk about that now.

“We don’t overdo it by any stretch, but we know what it feels like, and we know what it tastes like.”

That starts with Lawrence and Means.

Lawrence was the Southern Conference Freshman of the Year in 2014-15, and she certainly backed that up last season. She was named the Southern Conference Player of the Year and was a first-team all-conference selection while averaging 18.0 points and 5.5 rebounds per game. Lawrence added 71 assists, 48 steals and 10 blocked shots.

She reached the 1,000-career point mark in the 2015-16 regular-season finale and has averaged 15.6 points per game in her first two seasons.

“I think my teammates just help me to continue to grow. With such different attitudes, different playing styles, different people completely, they show me there’s so many different things that can be done,” Lawrence said. “They help me grow as a leader, and I’m a follower some times when it comes to them.

“We want to rise to the occasion, and we want to exceed expectations. There’s really not a lot of pressure. It’s just what we know we can do, and we just want to show everybody else that.”

Means led the conference last year in assists (189), assists per game (5.7) and assist-to-turnover margin (2.91). She averaged 9.4 points and 4.0 rebounds per game and also led the conference in steals, while ranking second in steals per game (2.42).

Means was strong in the Southern Conference Tournament as the Bears made it to the championship game. She averaged 16.7 points per game in the three games and was named to the all-tournament team.

“We don’t have to do a lot of learning because we know what we’re doing, but at the same time, we have to make sure that everything we do is efficient, and we’re not cutting corners and just know that even though we have been here before, we don’t know it all,” Means said. “We still need to listen, and I think we’re doing a good job with that so far.

“We try to lead by example, as well as being a vocal leader. Of course, being a point guard, you have to talk on the floor, so bringing the energy off the court onto the court and vice versa, just knowing that leadership is important vocally and by example.”

This story was originally published November 8, 2016 at 3:45 PM with the headline "Junior duo leads Mercer women’s team into season."