By Roscoe Nance


Magical. Miraculous. Improbable.
 
These are just some of the adjectives used to describe the Bethune-Cookman women’s basketball team’s 2018-19 season that ended with the Wildcats winning the conference tournament championship and making their first NCAA Tournament appearance.
 
What better description is there for them posting a 21-11 record with a six-person roster after six of the 13 team members who started the season were lost to knee surgery?
 
Head coach Vanessa Blair-Lewis enters the 2019-20 campaign poised for the Lady Wildcats to repeat last year, but minus a replay of the adversity.
 
“Everybody every year goes in into the season thinking it begins anew,” Blair-Lewis said. “We can’t repeat last season. Last season was a special season in and of itself. I hope to never have to repeat that type of season again. Now, knock on wood, we’re all healthy.”
  
Because the Wildcats are healthy and because of the experience several team members gained a year ago and the depth it created, Blair-Lewis is optimistic the team will be a championship contender once again.
 
That optimism has borne out in a 3-0 record to start the season – including wins over Florida International and Georgia Southern – heading into Thursday’s game against Charleston Southern.
 
“We have a new squad and we have high expectations,” Blair-Lewis said. “The girls got a taste of what the NCAA Tournament experience was like and we want to have that taste again. We want to be greedy.”
 
Ashanti Hunt, a preseason First Team All-MEAC pick; Kiana Williams and Clarisss Jones all return after being shelved last season. They join a recruiting class that Blair-Lewis says is her best ever.
 
“You hate to say injuries are ever good,” Blair-Lewis said. “But it allowed some of these younger players to play and grow a little bit who otherwise wouldn’t have had those roles. Those young kids got experience. Now we’re able to join them with the kids who were able to return after their knee surgeries with experience. That makes our depth a lot deeper and it give us a lot more experience in the rotation. Now with a full complement and the depth we have, it’s going to be problematic for teams.”
 
Blair-Lewis remains at loss when trying to explain last year’s success.
 
“It’s really unheard of,” she said. “I’ve never taken any credit for it. It was the work of God. It’s unexplainable that a roster of 13 was decimated to six. We’re a faith-based school and I’m a faith-based coach. It was really God. I know that the entire time I was being led to charge these girls and let them know that they were enough. That no matter what happened or came against us, that we are enough.
 
“We had a Player of the Year who returned in Angel Golden, and we had a post player in [Chassimmie] Brown, who has graduated who was good for us in the paint, and we had these other young players around them who were able to grow and they really believed in what we told them. At a point, they refused to let their circumstances determine their outcome. That’s what we tried to focus on. The bigger picture is life is hard, and no matter what it throws at you you’ve got to keep getting up every day and keep punching and knocking down the door. That’s what we did every single day in practice.”
 
Those circumstance necessitated that Blair-Lewis alter how she conducted practice. With only six available players, she was forced to spend less time on the court and she avoided pushing her squad as hard as she might have in past, not wanting risk further injuries. The Wildcats did far more visual and mental preparation and film study.
 
“Those are the kinds of things we had to do,” Blair-Lewis said. “We also had to make sure that the players we had were going to rehab, they were getting iced and stayed as healthy as possible. A lot of things changed. At the end of the day, they were resilient. They refused to lose. They refused to be known by their circumstances.”
 
Bethune-Cookman is the preseason pick to finish second in the MEAC this season. But if last season taught Blair-Lewis anything, it’s that things don’t always turn out the way everyone expects. With that in mind, she and her squad are taking dead aim at finishing atop the conference standings.
 
“The key to this season obviously is we want to stay as healthy as possible,” she said. “That’s the key to a lot of people’s seasons. Aside from that is our depth, being able to wear other people down. We have a really deep bench. We have a solid core group of girls who on any given night can score 20 points. I told them this year, playing time won’t be my problem. It will be yours. Last year with six players, I was really pulling out my hair. Now with a full complement of 14 and the depth we have, it’s going to be problematic for opposing teams.”