Heading in to the 2007-08 season, Head Coach Blair Savage-Lansden made some moves to re-energize her young Lady Tiger team. With seven letterwinners returning, the Lady Tigers have a solid core to add seven newcomers to. The challenge for the team will be how the five newcomers come together with the team in the fall semester, and then how well the addition of Florida transfers Jessica Jackson and LaToya Bullard works at the semester break.
GUARDS
Memphis returns four players who have already spent time at the guard spots. Junior Paris Leonard is the most seasoned of all the guards and is the only player on the Memphis roster to have more than one seasons in a Lady Tiger uniform behind her. The 2005-06 Sixth Player of the Year, Leonard drew more attention from league defenses last year, dropping her scoring average from 12.8 points to 7.8 points per game. But the Memphis-area graduate had a strong summer and pre-season and could be poised for a break-out year in 2007-08.
A trio of sophomores joins Leonard in the guard slot, including redshirt sophomore Jessica Hall, who has missed the past two seasons with a trio of injuries, and Hope Davis and Se'erra Fantroy.
Hall is hoping to be fully recovered from a trio of injuries that have cost her two seasons in a Lady Tiger uniform. Following a freshman year (2004-05) that saw her average 4.1 points and helped her earn the Team Defensive MVP honors, Hall suffered a tear in her Achilles. Following her first surgery, she suffered a second, separate tear on the same leg, hampering her rehab and costing her the entire 2005-06 season. She had again worked her way back when she suffered a third tear, this one on the other leg, in pre-season workouts for 2006-07. The challenge for Hall coming into 2007-08 will be getting back in to the flow of the game and to help find her comfort zone in her shot and her physical condition once the season gets rolling.
Sophomore Hope Adams emerged for Memphis last season as a guard, playing in 30 games and starting in 18 contests as a true freshman. Adams, who averaged 3.2 points and 3.1 rebounds per game, gives Memphis some athleticism and a good-rebounding guard, along with some leadership qualities that make her well-liked among her Lady Tiger teammates.
At the point, the Lady Tigers return sophomore Se'erra Fantroy, who played in all 31 games last year, starting 30 of them at the point. A complete college season, and an off-season to recover, should make Fantroy a force right away from the beginning of the year. Platooning with Fantroy at the point to start the year will likely be freshman Alex Winchell. The Atlanta, Ga., native was recruited to Memphis for her fire and competitive drive, and the staff will watch to see how Winchell adapts to the college game and new teammates early in the year. And the coaching staff will quickly have to figure out the point guard playing time as the position gets even deeper at the semester break when LaToya Bullard becomes eligible. Bullard has one semester of college basketball under her belt, and will have trained with the Lady Tigers for two complete semesters before she gets a chance to show her stuff once the fall exams are over.
Among the two and three slots will be Shae Seagraves and Valencia Tucker. Seagraves was touted as a basketball-savy player coming out of Georgetown High School, and the daughter of a college coach, she has a basketball background which may help her find playing time early in the season, even as a true freshman. Tucker was a bonus for the Lady Tigers. The Booker T. Washington graduate has walked on to the team, and is an outstanding athlete and character player who will be making the college adjustment among a very competitive group of guards.
FRONTCOURT
Savage probably has more depth in the frontcourt this year than in any previous team. Returning are Alysse Davis, Aroha Jennings, and Ashley Thornton, and three of the newcomers will figure in to the mix up front for Memphis this year. All three returning players were starters during stretches last year, with Thornton being the one player on the team to start in all 31 games.
Davis is a three-point shooter who stretched defenses and opened up space inside the post players. Her length allowed her to start adding blocked shots to her repertoire during the last two months of the season, and as she developed the ability to put the ball on the floor, she became more of a threat than a stand-and-shoot player.
Midway through the season, Jennings became the team's leading scorer, while Thornton was consistently the team's best rebounder. Once into conference play, Jennings became particularly effective at putting the ball on the floor in order to drive to the bucket. Her ability to finish was an asset, as was her ability to draw the foul and hit the free-throw.
Despite being undersized, Thornton used her work ethic and footwork to work around bigger players inside. She was among the top five rebounders in Conference USA last year, and after going up against post players from ranked teams like Louisville and Georgia, continued to be a dominant force inside on the glass. With more help inside this year, Thornton should have more opportunities to work while facing the basket instead of being forced to play with her back to the board while working against bigger post players.
Some of that help will come early in the year when freshman Shekeira Copeland and Savannah Ellis step in to their respective Lady Tiger uniforms. Copeland should be able to work both facing the basket and with her back to the bucket, while Ellis will probably fit in a more traditional five role early on for Memphis. There is a lot of playing time available for either of the two freshmen to step up early, which would allow Jennings and Thornton to play more at the four spot.
Following the fall semester exams, the Lady Tigers will get even deeper inside when Jessica Jackson becomes eligible. Jackson, who played three semesters at Florida, is the tallest player on the roster at 6-3, and gives Memphis a bigger player to go up against some of the more traditional post players found on other C-USA rosters.
COACHING STAFF
Off the court, Savage has four new people affiliated with the program, two of them in coaching roles.
Jennifer Hoover returns to Memphis after spending four seasons at the University of Virginia as an assistant to legendary coach Debbie Ryan. This is Hoover's second stop in Memphis, where she was an assistant coach under previous head coach Joye Lee-McNelis with Savage in 2002-03.
With the younger post players added to the roster, having a mentor like Hoover should help them develop quicker. A three-time All-ACC honoree at Wake Forest, Hoover (who played under her maiden name of Jenny Mitchell) set the career mark for points (1,728) and rebounds (1,006), and is the only player in Wake Forest history to pass both the 1,000 career point and rebounding marks. Now the Associate Head Coach at Memphis, Hoover will take the frontcourt players under wing, strengthening an area of the team that has been forced to play people out of their natural positions over the past three seasons.
Joining returning assistant coach Emily Owens over the Lady Tiger guards will be former Lady Tiger guard Jennifer Sullivan. Sullivan, who has spent time as an assistant coach at Rhodes College for the past two seasons, was a highly-regarded player who has made the transition in to coaching with her usual energy and enthusiasm. Sullivan gives the players a young assistant coach to look to when trying to navigate the ins-and-outs of being a Lady Tiger basketball player and will oversee the Memphis tape exchange with opponents throughout the season.
With former Director of Basketball Operations Ryan Ivey becoming an Assistant Athletic Director at McNeese State, Savage had a third spot to fill, and tapped John Hoover to handle the team's practice and travel coordination. With a background of coordinating and managing basketball camps in his native Indiana, Hoover will join his wife on staff beginning with the 2007-08 season, also overseeing the student managers for the Lady Tigers.
A new position for the program also meant the addition of a former face for Memphis as Lady Tiger great LaTonya Johnson, the program's first WNBA draftee, joined the staff as an assistant for basketball operations. Johnson, who played seven seasons in the WNBA, will be able to complete her degree at Memphis over the next two seasons, and will give the current players yet another face on the sidelines who knows what it means to don the blue and gray.
THE SCHEDULE
A 17-game home schedule and a pair of SEC opponents and a pair of defending league champs highlight the 2007-08 Lady Tiger schedule. After opening last season with a tough 0-3 swing at the University of Louisville tournament, Memphis will open with six of their first seven games at home in 2007-08.
Memphis will face Tennessee Tech to open the season and will host Southeastern Louisiana for a second straight season in the second non-conference game of the season. The Lady Tigers will then fly to Omaha, Neb., to return a game at Creighton. The game against the Blue Jays, a team that fell one point shy of a conference championship in double overtime last year, will mark the return of sophomore point guard Se'erra Fantroy to her home state for the first time since she donned the blue and gray.
The 23rd Annual Lady Tiger Classic will then mark the first two of five straight home games for the Lady Tigers. Alabama A&M will wrap up the month of November for the Lady Tigers before SEC foe Mississippi State comes in to the Elma Roane Fieldhouse for a December 2nd game. Defending Atlantic Sun champ and 2007 NCAA participant Belmont will be the final home game before a three-game road swing that includes a stop at Arkansas and a two-game stop at the Florida Gulf Coast Tournament. Memphis will open against Loyola-Chicago in the opening game and the consolation and championship games will be played on the second day of the tournament on Dec. 21st before the team breaks for the holidays.
Memphis will close out the non-conference schedule with home games against Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Dec. 28th and a Jan. 4th game with Toledo.
In league play, Memphis will open at UAB, then return home to host Marshall and defending C-USA tournament champion East Carolina. The West split has changed for Memphis in 2007-08. Where Memphis used to split games between Tulsa and UTEP, the split is now between SMU and Tulsa. Memphis will venture to play at Tulane and UTEP, then will return home to host UAB, Houston and Rice before embarking on a three-game road swing that includes stops at Southern Miss, UCF and SMU. In all, Memphis will play five of their nine games in February on the road, returning home after the three-game swing to host Tulsa, then going back out on the road to play at Marshall and East Carolina. The regular season will close out at home with games against Southern Miss and UCF before the league championship tournament Mar. 6-9th at UCF.
