Susie Gardner looks ahead to key summer for Mercer women’s basketball
The Mercer women’s basketball program had one of its best seasons in its history in 2015-16, and next year looks bright, as well.
Mercer shared the Southern Conference regular-season title with conference powerhouse Chattanooga and played a thrilling title game against the Mocs in the conference tournament, coming up just short. The Bears head into next season with most of their roster intact, including conference player of the year Kahlia Lawrence, point guard Syndi Means, who earned a spot on the conference’s all-tournament team, and a strong rising sophomore class.
Head coach Susie Gardner sat down recently and talked about her team, this summer and what’s coming next.
Q: How big of a summer is this for this team and this program as you try to take the next step?
A: Since the freshmen kind of know what to expect, the sophomores have been through this a couple of summers now, I think the freshmen will make great strides because when they came in here last year, they had no idea what preseason was going to feel like, what college basketball was going to feel like. Now they know exactly what they need to work on. We’ve kind of given them a road map as to what they need to improve upon. The sophomores, that will now be juniors, had a taste of almost getting to the NCAA Tournament, and they’ll probably work a little extra hard, knowing that we were almost there. I think it will be a productive summer. They’ll obviously come back to us for summer school, and we’ll have them for half the summer. But I’m sure they’ll work hard right now.
Q: You liked this group last year, and you said that several times during the season. How do you push them to the next step as a coaching staff?
A: Obviously, we were four minutes away from the NCAA Tournament, so it’s not going to be very hard to bring that up. I’ll probably say that 20 times. But last year, our mantra was “Win the moment” because we didn’t really set any goals. We had no idea what goals should be set, and I think we won the moment. Now, our mantra’s going to be “Finish.” Just flat out “Finish.” We need to finish the drill. We need to finish the game. Now, we finished a lot of games, but we didn’t finish in the championship game, so I think we’re going to be a little bit more mature and a little bit more hungry now that we’ve almost gotten there, so I don’t think it will be very hard to motivate them at all because they are very intrinsically motivated, as well.
Q: This group, like you said, seems to be motivated. Do you think that game in the championship game in the Southern Conference tournament is something you’ll have to bring up or will you show it to them this summer or talk about it all or just move on?
A: I hadn’t decided what I’m going to do with that game. I mean, they know. They’re smart enough; they’re smart enough folks to know. We do talk about Chattanooga dominating our conference, but we’ve got some really good teams in this league. Samford was very, very close, as well. Furman is always very good. We have two new coaches coming into the league, so who knows what’s going to happen at Wofford and UNC Greensboro. We’re not going to put too much emphasis on other teams. I like to keep it in house and try to continue to get certain players better. We talk about Kahlia. I use her as an example. We talk about Kahlia all the time, freshman of the year, player of the year. Kahlia can still get better, and how exciting is that to know that Kahlia can still get better? I’m excited. I mean, unless something unforeseen happens, we should have just as much fun, if not more fun, next year.
Q: You talk about the conference. Is it about what you thought it would be when you joined the Southern Conference?
A: All I really knew about the conference was Chattanooga had dominated, and we had never played them. We had always played Furman, and I know that Jackie (Carson) does a great job up there, and we always have competitive games. I know Mike (Morris) at Samford has a very unique style and does a great job. I didn’t know what to expect from some of the other schools that we hadn’t seen as much, but I think it’s a great league. I think we have awesome coaches, outstanding class coaches, people who know what they’re doing. I don’t know if I really had any expectations for it, but I’m really, really pleased with us being in the Southern Conference.
Q: What about the new players? What do they bring? We’ve kind of talked about that a little bit this summer. What do they bring to the team when they get here and join this group?
A: Well, that’s to be determined. India (Blakely) is a point guard. Hopefully, we’ve got India and we’ve got, obviously, Sydni (Means) and we’ve got Callie (Hackett), who came off an injury, so hopefully Callie’s sophomore year will be a little bit more productive than her freshman year. But coming off an ACL, I thought she did really, really good things for us. Hopefully Syndi won’t have to play as many minutes as she did last year, and hopefully India will … I’m not sure. I’ve seen her in a high school setting. What is she going to bring to the college setting? And then we have Germani (Abram) coming in as a post player, a 6-2 post player, which we were a little small this year. When Rachel (Selph) got into foul trouble, we went really small with Amanda (Thompson) and Alex (Williams) in the post, about 5-10, 5-11. Germani being 6-2 will at least give us some size. We’re not going to expect a ton out of her from the offensive side, but at least rebound and play defense. So we filled some positions that we felt we needed depth in, and we got that done.
Q: And now you’ve had this staff together. It was a whole new staff last year. Now your staff has been together for a year now. Do you do anything different with the staff? Do you see any changes as far as how you guys do anything? Or do you just keep doing what you’re doing because it worked last year?
A: Last May, a year ago May, was just awful for me. This May has been amazing. I had to cancel vacation last year. This year, I actually get to go. Because all I was doing was interviewing people. And that’s a great question because I’m having them do self evaluations. I came in here, and I put them in places that I thought they’d be successful, and I think for the most part, we were. But there may be areas that somebody would say, “Hey, I think I would do a better job here.” And we’re just going to talk about it. I’m not a dictator when it comes to my coaches. I try not to be. I try to let them feel comfortable in their roles, and I think that they have a better feel for me. They have a better feel for our players now. And our players, it’s important, our players need to have a good feel for them, and I think that happened, so I don’t see me tweaking a whole lot of things. What we did last year works, so let’s just keep this thing rolling.
Q: Does it still feel kind of surprising with a new staff, so many new players and the year you had? Maybe not surprising, but, I don’t even know what the word is for it. But after all the changes and everything that happened last year, the year you guys had has to be very, very rewarding.
A: Rewarding is an excellent word. As I said, it’s just been an amazing accomplishment. We had our very first banquet. We never had a banquet until this year, something to celebrate. I don’t think I think about it as much until someone just random in the community sees me somewhere. I was in Publix last night, and the guy that bags my groceries came up to me and made a special effort to walk and find me and said, “Man you did a great job this year with such a young team.” It doesn’t hit me until someone brings it to my attention because I’m in the middle of it every single day. But I think people from the outside looking in maybe think it’s more incredible, for the lack of a better word, than what I felt because this is a special group. We’re sitting here waiting for the grades to come in right now, and these grades are coming in with great grades, as well, so I feel like the culture of this program is where I wanted it to be. Now, it took a little longer than I anticipated, but it’s where I wanted it, where I envisioned it to be when I came here six years ago.
Q: It has to be rewarding, as well, to see the program continue to grow as you move forward with everything that’s coming up.
A: It’s exciting. I’ve been at a lot of different places, have played in different conferences, coached in different conferences, whatever. You always envision what you think you want your program to look like. It starts at the absolute top with president (Bill) Underwood believing in me and believing in women’s basketball and wanting women’s basketball to be successful. And then all the people around us that help us. It’s not just me, it’s our staff, our trainers, our strength coach, it’s (deputy athletics director for academic affairs/senior woman administrator) Sybil (Blalock), it’s (athletics director) Jim Cole, everybody really, really wants us to be successful, and that’s helpful every single day, as well.
This story was originally published May 19, 2016 at 3:29 PM with the headline "Susie Gardner looks ahead to key summer for Mercer women’s basketball."