Lady Pacers Gear Up for New Season

The USC Aiken women's basketball team is ranked in the top 25 after a 20 win season.

The Lady Pacers are currently ranked 21. This is the first time the program has been ranked in nearly five years. The team opens the season Nov. 20 at home against Catawba.

The Lady Pacers finished last season 20-9, 11-5 in the Peach Belt Conference, winning eight of their last nine regular season games and advancing to the Peach Belt Conference Tournament semifinals.

Mike Brandt, head coach of the Lady Pacers, says he is ready for this season.

"We are very excited about this year's team. The nucleus we have returning is very solid. We finished strong last year and we were very disappointed that we did not get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

That has been, and will be, a driving motivating factor for us this season."

Brandt went on to say, "Two years ago, we worked hard to get a really good freshman class. The idea was to hopefully have a very good team for their junior and senior seasons. We knew we would be in an outstanding facility and also hosting the Peach Belt Conference Tournament for two consecutive years."

Brandt praised Megan Starnes, Meredith Legg, Satu Leppanen, and Kendra Chandler for their success this season. Starnes averaged 7.3 points last season, Legg averaged 11.3, which is a team high, Leppanen averaged 4.5, and Chandler averaged 6.3.

Brandt also said, "Our chemistry on the team has been an important part of our success both on and off the court. We build our team around no individual player, but rather individual player strengths. I would describe the Lady Pacers as very unselfish, hard-working, team oriented, and well-balanced."

The team is extremely well balanced, and the second half is their strength where last year they scored 1,000 points to the opponent's 931. In the first half they also got off to a hot start, outscoring opponents 886 to 741.

Finally, Brandt said, "The ranking is great for our players, program, and university. It shows that other people out in basketball land respect us for the level of basketball we are at. Our goal, of course, is to use that as motivation and to continue to climb up the rankings. On the other side - it also puts a target on you as your opponents want to take advantage of beating a ranked team. They will bring their best at us each night."

With their schedule, the Lady Pacers will quickly get a test against rival Clayton State , who are ranked 12 out of 25. If they win this game, it could land them at spot ranked in the top ten.