A high-scoring offense led by Erin Thurman returns, but ETSU women’s basketball hopes a group of freshmen will help change last year’s losing ways.
After a 7-21 campaign in which all the wins came in conference, head coach Karen Kemp brought in six new players, four of whom will receive significant minutes out of the gate.
Freshman Summer Jones, a 5-foot-10 wing player, in fact, has the inside track on a starting job in the Lady Bucs first game on Sunday at James Madison.
Much like the Lady Bucs themselves, Jones can put up points, but her question mark is on defense.
“I think we’ll be able to score a lot this year,” Kemp said. “I just hope we’ll be able to keep the opponents from scoring.”
The most highly touted freshman, however, will not start. Ashley Reed, listed at the same 5-4 height as Thurman, her size, and not her skills, is the reason she won’t be in at the opening tap.
“Reed has the ability (to start),” Kemp said. Instead, she’ll play a key role off the bench.
Also providing new depth to the backcourt will be 5-8 Crystal Cochran, who Kemp touts as fundamentally sound and one of the “fastest players on the team.”
Coming in to bolster the front line will be 5-11 Candace Gibson, a player the Lady Bucs hope will provide some much-needed inside force.
“That’s been our weakest area – on the inside,” Kemp said.
With the infusion of new blood, the rallying ability of seniors Thurman and Megan Jackson becomes all the more important.
“We look for (Thurman) to give us that leadership,” Kemp said of the guard, regarded as one of the SoCon’s top shooters and ball-handlers.
“She’s kind of been the backbone for us the last couple of years.”
In the frontcourt, the Lady Bucs will look to Jackson to more consistently provide the kind of results she got in two games in an eight-day span last January, wherein she had 19 points and 10 rebounds against Western Carolina and 19 and nine against Furman.
“She had breakout games,” Kemp said. “I’m hoping to see that more the entire year.”
Beside her in the post will be Lauren Trantham, who was the Lady Bucs leading per-game rebounder last year, and would have led in total boards, as well, had it not been for a case of mononucleosis that limited her to 19 contests.
However, neither projected frontline starter may be jumping center this year.
Instead, Kemp said those duties may go to 5-9 guard Kiya Verdell.
“I’m looking for big things out of Kaya this year,” said Kemp, who is thinking of placing Verdell in the center circle because of her superior vertical leap.
Two years removed from a right knee injury that caused her to miss all of 1999-2000, the coach thinks the junior will play with less hesitation this year. In contrast to last year, when she was worried about her knee, “I think I’m more comfortable playing,” Verdell said.
Another comeback story is that of third senior Leslie Burleson. A key performer on the 1998-99 team that finished second in the Southern Conference, she missed the entire 2000-01 campaign with a knee injury.
Now, despite her continued inability to straighten the leg, “She might find her way back into the starting lineup.”
“She’s just a testament (to hard work),” Thurman said of her returning teammate.
Burleson, along with all the new faces, will not change the identity of the up-tempo Lady Bucs. On the contrary, the increased depth they bring will enable the team to trap and push the ball even harder.
“The one thing that’ll be different from the last couple of years is that we’ll have more depth,” Kemp said.
Despite the added personnel, the Bucs were picked to finish seventh in both the coaches’ and the media’s preseason polls.
Defending SoCon champion Chattanooga is the overwhelming favorite to prevail again. However, Thurman, who went to Chattanooga Red Bank High School, is undeterred.
“I don’t think we’re intimidated by them,” she said.
Verdell apparently would agree.
“We have a team that can win the Southern Conference this year,” she said.

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