Susie Gardner is enjoying this season with Mercer women's basketball team

Susie Gardner smiles a lot when she discusses this year's Mercer women's basketball team.

The Bears have a young roster, but this group has done just about everything its head coach has asked it to do. The result has been a strong season that has the Bears in position to battle for the Southern Conference regular-season title with five games left to play. That begins Saturday when Mercer hosts Samford in a first-place showdown at Hawkins Arena.

Riding a four-game winning streak, the Bears are 18-6 overall and 8-1 in conference play. The Bulldogs are also 8-1 in the conference, and they are 16-8 overall. Mercer beat Samford last month in Birmingham on a 3-point buzzer-beater from Kahlia Lawrence.

"We're not talking about No. 1 vs. No. 1 at all," Gardner said. "We're excited to play a really good basketball team that we escaped, to be quite honest we escaped with a victory from their place. Samford is a great team. We're the only team that's beaten them, so I'm sure they're anxious to play us again."

Gardner hasn't had many anxious moments with this year's team, which has won 12 of its past 13 games. But it is facing probably its toughest stretch of the season in the next week, facing the conference's other top three teams. After Saturday, the Bears head to East Tennessee State (6-3 in the conference) on Thursday and then Chattanooga (7-2) on Feb. 20. The Bears' only conference loss came last month to East Tennessee State a couple of days after they ended Chattanooga's 52-game conference winning streak.

Still, Mercer has gotten better throughout this season. The Bears' first three conference wins came by a total of 15 points; while their past five have come by 98 (an average 19.6 per game).

"I'm having a great time, shoot. It's been the best year at Mercer that I've had," Gardner said. "It's really flown by. These kids have been awesome to coach. Practice is fun. Postgames are fun. Just to watch them grow, I knew that I would be spending a lot of time with this team, whether it be one year, two year, three year. Did I expect us to be in this position in year one? No. But, at the same time, we still have five games to play against very, very good teams.

"We've just got Samford coming up, and we'll see what happens."

Gardner is having fun, and her players are, too. With a roster that includes seven freshmen, six sophomores and a junior college transfer, Mercer quickly came together as a cohesive unit.

"It's been really awesome," freshman center and former Dodge County standout Rachel Selph said. "We have just surprised ourselves with how great it has been. We have just come together and have a lot of chemistry, and it's just been really fun on the court."

This story was originally published February 12, 2016 at 4:48 PM with the headline "Susie Gardner is enjoying this season with Mercer women's basketball team ."