Women’s basketball in Wilmore has always, especially in recent memory, been of worthy note. Just like the men’s team, they’ve benefited from a streak of die-hard consistency and winner’s comfortability that those rotating in and out of the program have grown happily used to.
If you zoom out on this past year and see the team’s 20-11 record, you may not bat an eye in any new direction. But in reality, the 2024-25 women’s basketball season will go down as one of the most singular and tantalizing in the Eagles’ recent history.
After going 3-8 in their first 11 games, appearing to have lost a serious step, a bout with Agnes Scott College was postponed, allowing the unit a prolonged beat to breathe and reflect. Apparently, that was all they needed.
The Eagles would then tear off a 12-game win streak, flipping their record wholesale and redefining what had shaped up around the halfway point to be a disappointing season. It’s a rare phenomenon when everything clicks at once on the hardwood, but it’s one the women’s team managed to achieve this past season.
After their aforementioned poor start, the Eagles would finish the latter half of the season, including tournament play, 17-3. In conference play specifically, they’d tally 14 wins to only two losses, and at home, the squad was a near-perfect 10-1.
The Eagles’ magical run came to an end against Oakland City University in the NCCAA Third-Place game on the heels of their win (and net-cutting) in the Mideast Region Championship over the same school.
In spite of falling short of the big title game, Asbury’s season is an undoubted win in retrospect, and not just as a whole. In addition to a bevy of freshmen and sophomores stepping up to spell their seniors’ loads, like Emily Sizemore, fourth-year Haleigh Releford became the program’s single-season steals record holder in the NCCAA semifinals.
Truly, the team and university have so much to hang their jerseys on now that it’s all said and done. For all who witnessed it, this past year of women’s hoops will go down as one of the wildest, most enduring of all time. A special team with a bunch of special players – hats off to the seniors, especially – who should be celebrated with the best in Asbury Athletics.
Photo courtesy of AU Athletics.
