Good Luck To Women's Basketball!!!

When driving home from Asheville yesterday after our women’s basketball team suffered a tremendously heartbreaking loss to Liberty, I thought about a conversation I had with Fletcher Arritt, a very good friend of mine. Fletcher is the head basketball coach at Fork Union Military Academy. He has produced great teams over the years and is one of the great teachers in the game of basketball. I was watching his team practice several years ago and we had a conversation about the highs and lows of sports. He said something to me that I have never forgotten. Coach Arritt picked a ball up from the court in Fork Union’s gym and said “nothing will humble you like this ball.” Until one has lived what our women lived yesterday you will never know how true those words are.

In 1997 I was coaching at SMU. We played a great Utah team in the Western Athletic Conference semi-finals. Utah was nationally ranked and had Andre Miller, Hanno Mottola, Michael Doleac, and Keith Van Horn. All four of these guys had good careers in the NBA. We had a great game plan and we played Utah off of their feet. With 0.3 seconds left in the game the Ponies were up by one point and Utah had the ball out of bounds under their basket. Game is won right? Andre Miller throws the inbound pass to the rim, Van Horn tips it in, and Utah wins.

Those memories raced through my mind when Liberty made the last basket to win Sunday. Our ladies played their hearts out, left everything on the floor, and did everything they were supposed to do to win the game. Unfortunately, we came up on the short end.

This has been a special team all year. Led by seniors Kelli Darden and Corrie Fertitta, the Highlanders won a school record 23 games. We played great defense and played with tremendous intensity all year. The future is so bright for this team and I am very confident this team is going to be fantastic again next season.

The good news is we have an opportunity to play again. The Highlanders play at in-state rival JMU in the WNIT first round, Thursday, March 20th. The team is looking forward to getting on the court and having an opportunity to make a lot of noise in this tournament.

We are really proud of this team and we wish them the best. Please join us in Harrisonburg Thursday to support Radford and as always wear RED.

Go Highlanders!