Mercer women’s basketball team focusing on finishing

It didn’t take long for last season’s close call to motivate this season’s Mercer women’s basketball team.

The Bears were the Southern Conference co-regular-season champions with Chattanooga and made it to the conference tournament championship game against the Mocs. With about four minutes remaining, it looked as if Mercer was going to pull off a memorable comeback, win the tournament and earn a trip to the NCAA Tournament.

But Chattanooga showed its experience and championship spirit and held off the Bears for the tournament title and yet another NCAA trip for that program.

Mercer hopes to use the lessons learned from that experience to take the next step this season. That begins at 7 p.m. on Friday at Hawkins Arena against Emmanuel College.

“As soon as the buzzer went off, I think the competitiveness inside of all of us just went even higher because we know that we could have done better than we did last year,” junior Kahlia Lawrence said. “That’s what it is this year. That’s our motto this year, to finish, to finish what we started.

“Having that chemistry already formed and just coming in this year, we’ve got a couple of new people, but it’s just going to make our family strong, and I think that chemistry that we had last year is just going to continue to grow, and we’re just going to be an even better team than we were.”

The Bears’ roster didn’t include any seniors last year, and there is only one this season: reserve center Ciarra Edwards, who joined the program as a transfer last season. Lawrence and point guard Sydni Means lead the team as juniors, while sophomores Amanda Thompson, Linnea Rosendal, Rachel Selph and KeKe Calloway were all major contributors last year.

“It’s kind of like last year I had to learn the system, and now I know the system, know the players,” Thompson said. “I think we’re able just really to click a lot better and focus more on the details this year than, say, big picture stuff.”

Those details are key to the Bears’ chances of having another strong season and perhaps surpassing last year. Mercer won 20 games two years ago and 24 last year.

“We did have a good year last year, but at the end of the day, we didn’t win, so we are ready to get back on the court,” Means said. “We’re so ready to play, so we’ve just been working hard getting ready for this season. We realize every day how close we were, and we failed to accomplish our goal, so this year, we hope to not let that opportunity slip from us.”

While the close call is on their minds and does drive the Bears, it’s not something they’re going to continue to focus on. A beginning of a new season offers the chance to move on.

“It stung last year being so close, but it’s not anything that we dwell on,” Mercer head coach Susie Gardner said. “We don’t put posters or scores or all that kind of that stuff in the locker room. I’m kind of more an in-the-moment type coach. I told them I wasn’t going to talk about it anymore. We talked about it over the summer. We talked about it the first meeting that we had, and I said, ‘We’re done. We’re done talking about it. Let’s move forward and talk about the present.’ ”

This story was originally published November 10, 2016 at 7:25 PM with the headline "Mercer women’s basketball team focusing on finishing."