There are only two months on the calendar that I listen to the Andy Williams’ classic, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, December and March. The reasons are obvious. Christmas is in December, and the college basketball postseason is in March. Well, we’ve reached the college basketball postseason in NCAA Division II and this year, the Union Bulldogs and Lady Bulldogs have both qualified for the Gulf South Conference Tournament. On the women’s side, the number one seed Lady Bulldogs (26-2, 18-2 GSC) will have their work cut out for them in the postseason. Here are the teams and players that present the biggest threat to the reigning, defending GSC champions.
#NR/17 West Florida Argonauts (23-4, 17-3)
The case could be made that there is no team in Division II playing better than West Florida right now. The Argos haven’t lost since January 10 and have defeated opponents by a margin of 19 points during their 13-game winning streak. They average 72.5 points per game as a team (second in the GSC) while only allowing 59.2 points per game (fifth in the GSC). Furthermore, this team out-rebounds opponents by 11.7 rebounds per game. That is the third-best in all of Division II. Union, on the other hand, is ninth in the GSC in rebounds per game and last in the GSC in offensive rebounds per game.
UWF also boasts two of the best players in the conference in Halee Nieman and Toni Brewer. Union knocked off West Florida 81-62 all the way back on December 1, but I’ll venture to say that the West Florida team Union saw then is much different than what they are now.
PLAYERS TO WATCH: Nieman and Brewer
Well, yeah. As I mentioned, Nieman and Brewer have consistently been the go-to players for this Argos team. Nieman is the GSC’s leading scorer at 17.9 points per game. Who’s in second? Her teammate Brewer at 17.7. Brewer also averages just under 11 rebounds per game, which is good for 18th in Division II. These two are forces to be reckoned with down low and present a scary matchup for Union, who doesn’t have a ton of post depth and doesn’t rebound the ball extremely well.
Lee Lady Flames (22-6, 16-4)
Some teams just have your number. Lee has had Union’s number this season. Lee is the “two” in Union’s 26-2 record. The Lady Flames swept Union in the regular season for the first time since the 2013-2014 season. The heartbreaker for the Lady Bulldogs is that both games were winnable. The first meeting in Jackson was a 56-51 loss where Union was 3-20 from three and missed nine free-throws (8-17). The second meeting featured Becca Cheeks, a post player for Lee who had only made three threes on the season, banking in a clutch three as the shot clock expired with under a minute to play in the fourth quarter to give the Lady Flames a six-point lead. The three by Cheeks matched Union’s total as a team for the entire game.
A lot of Union’s shooting woes from three in those two games can be attributed to the fact that the Lady Flames are one of the best defensive teams in the conference. Lee has held opponents to 26.7% shooting from downtown (ninth in D2) while also holding opponents to 53.6 points per game (10th in D2).
The old adage in basketball is that it is “hard to beat a good team three times in a row.” If you read my GSC Tournament preview from last year, you know that I mentioned the same adage, but this time the roles are reversed. Lee could very well do what Union did to them last year: beat them three times in a row. If these two long-time rivals and long-time coaching friends in Mark Campbell and Marty Rowe match up again, you will not want to miss it.
PLAYERS TO WATCH: Abby Bertram, Lindsey Roddy
Choosing key players to watch for Lee honestly felt like picking names from a hat. Lee, a team that lost many key pieces from last year’s team that won the program’s first-ever NCAA Tournament game, has multiple weapons (i.e. Haley Schubert, Becca Cheeks, Kayla Tillie) that can go off on any given night. However, Bertram and Roddy have taken a huge step up this season for the Lady Flames. Bertram, Lee’s leading scorer at 14.2 points per game, is an athletic guard who can score from anywhere. While she hasn’t played her best games against Union this season (15 points in two games), she is still one of the best guards in the GSC.
As for Roddy, her stats don’t jump off the page at you (8.3 points per game, shooting 35 percent from the field), but the experienced junior guard is coming off of two of her best games this season. She scored 19 points and pulled down nine rebounds against the Lady Bulldogs in Cleveland and followed it up with another 19-point performance at West Georgia (as an aside, does anyone else find it weird that there are two teams from two different Clevelands in the GSC, but none of them are from Ohio? No? Just me? Ok.).
Overall, while anybody can have a great game for Lee, these are the two players that present the most trouble for Union.
Delta State Lady Statesmen (18-9, 13-7)
The Lady Statesmen are my wildcard pick for this year’s tournament. Sure, they’ve had some bad losses (at Christian Brothers and at West Georgia, even the overtime win at Shorter can count as a bad loss), but they’ve also had some quality wins over West Florida and Lee. Not only that, they beat those two teams by double figures and held them to an average of 44 points in the victories. Delta State also played Union extremely close twice this season. Long story short, don’t sleep on this Delta State team in the playoffs.
PLAYERS TO WATCH: Nia Johnson and Quantesha Patterson
The junior duo of Johnson and Patterson have been very, very good this season. Johnson the team’s leading scorer at 14.8 points per game, is playing her best basketball right now. She is averaging over 19 points per game over her last nine games and is coming off of a season-high 28 points against Mississippi College.
Patterson, the team’s second-leading scorer (11.1 points per game) and rebounder (7.2 rebounds per game), has given Union fits in the two matchups this season, scoring a combined 33 points while shooting 52 percent (14-27) from the field and pulling in 22 rebounds.
With these teams in the field, it will not be an easy path for Union to repeat as GSC Champions. The road will start Tuesday, March 5 at home against West Alabama (11-17, 8-12) in the GSC Quarterfinal game. Tipoff is set for 5:30 at the Fred DeLay Gymnasium.
