Gardner-Webb women’s basketball will bring some buzz to Big South tournament

Alex Simmons said she knew the Gardner-Webb women’s basketball team had the potential of being “very, very good this season.” In fact, the team was predicted as the preseason co-favorite with High Point to win the league this season.

“We just needed a couple of things to happen,” Simmons said. “And they did.”

Simmons is the fifth-year coach of a Runnin’ Bulldogs team that hopes to bring a perfect conference record to Charlotte in about 10 days for the Big South basketball championships at Bojangles Coliseum on March 1-5.

We already know a couple things about this team.

Gardner-Webb is the Big South’s outright regular-season champion, and will be the No. 1 seed. Simmons’ team clinched that berth last week, running its Big South record to 15-0 by winning 68-56 at Winthrop. The team opens tournament play at 11:30 a.m. on March 2 against the winner of the previous day’s 8/9 first-round matchup.

And the Runnin’ Bulldogs will bring a bit of national buzz with them to Charlotte. They’re ranked No. 16 this week in the Collegeinsider.com mid-major national poll. That’s the highest for a Big South team since Liberty peaked at No. 13 eight years ago.

And one more thing – Simmons knows a little about good college basketball teams.

A national champion

After a stellar high school career at national powerhouse Shelbyville (Tennessee), she played under legendary coach Pat Summitt for the Tennessee Volunteers. Simmons was a member of Volunteer teams that won national championships in 2007 and ’08.

With her team at 23-4 overall this season, Simmons’ record at Gardner-Webb is 84-58.

“I really had no predetermined thoughts about this year’s team,” she said. “I knew we would be a very, very good team, if we solved a few things.”

One of those things was at center.

“That had been kind of a rotating door for us,” Simmons said. “We challenged Layken Cox, and she responded.”

Cox, a 6-1 sophomore from Sumter, S.C., saw action last season as a reserve. But she has come into her own, averaging nearly 20 minutes, eight points and five rebounds a game.

“Those are the kind of things we needed to happen,” Simmons said.

The result has been a lot of fun, said Gardner-Webb junior guard Micahla Funderburk, who played her high school ball at Butler High in Matthews.

“We’re working hard, but playing on this team is really enjoyable,” Funderburk said. “We are close. We challenge each other to do better in the next game. We want to keep getting better.”

The building blocks

Of course, there were building blocks on this Gardner-Webb team.

Alasia Smith, a 5-10 junior from Johnson City, Tennessee, was vote this year’s preseason Big South player of the year, and was freshman of the year in the 2020-21 campaign. She is the leading rebounder in Big South play (9.5 per game).

Jhessyka Williams, a 5-10 wing from Augusta, Georgia, leads the Big South in overall scoring (18.1) and rebounding (9.5). It has been 14 years since one player, Liberty’s Megan Frazee, accomplished that feat. Williams, who said in her school bio that she wants to become an FBI agent, capped it all with the program’s first triple-double Jan. 11 against Presbyterian.

And Lauren Bevis, a 5-5 senior guard from High Point, provides the outside threat. She went 7-for-7 on 3-pointers in a Jan. 28 game against High Point. She was 6-of-10 from 3-point range last week against Winthrop, and leads the Big South in free-throw shooting (88.7), 3-point percentage (39.5) and 3-pointers per game (2.9.).

Funderburk said Simmons is a coach who will take a chance on a player.

“I had three ACL injuries,” Funderburk said, referring to her high school career at Butler. “But Coach Alex saw something in me. She saw something that other coaches didn’t see, and she gave me the opportunity.”

Funderburk plays the No. 6 role on the team, averaging nearly 20 minutes a game. She scored 16 points in a December game against East Carolina and 10 last month against UNC Asheville.

“At Butler, I was the shooter,” she said. “But Coach Alex has taught me to play defense. When I come off the bench, I try to bring the energy that’s needed.”

Simmons said she knows her team is the target of everyone else in the Big South.

“It’s funny how that works,” she said. “We got into a game, and a player on another team who hasn’t made a 3 all season hits a couple of them against us. We’ve seen that sort of thing all season.”

She said opponents try to take away her players’ strengths.

“We prepare for those kinds of things,” Williams said. “You have to be prepared, if you want to be a good team.”

The ultimate goal

The ultimate goal, of course, is landing a spot in the NCAA tournament. Despite the Runnin’ Bulldogs’ lofty record, they’ll probably need to win the Big South Conference tournament to get that berth.

Simmons was on campus four years ago and watched the Tim Craft-coached Gardner-Webb men’s team thrill the community with a storybook run into the NCAA tournament.

“I hope we can take the campus by storm,” Simmons said. “I want us to produce that kind of excitement.”

“It’s definitely in our minds,” Simmons said of an NCAA berth. “We remind ourselves every day about that, and about what it takes to get there.”

Simmons knows what it takes to reach postseason play, having done it as a player at Tennessee two decades ago.

“We have to hold each other accountable every day,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how big or small something is … it’s important to do it well.”