Chris Raimondi, Sports Editor
After finishing last season in eighth place with a 6-24 record, Kennesaw State’s women’s basketball team has rebounded dramatically into a 11-4 start to the 2014-15 campaign and will enter Atlantic Sun play with the second best record in the conference.
The Lady Owls are off to their best start to a season since the 2000-01 team, which was before the program was Division I. Junior transfers Karly Frye and Jasmine McAllister have given KSU a much needed offensive boost that helped the team grab victories over Mercer, Georgia Southern, Xavier and Georgia State.
Frye, point guard, is averaging 3.6 assists per game while engineering a Lady Owls’ offense that is scoring nearly 65 points per game. McAllister stands as the tallest player on the team at 6-foot-1 and has established a reputation of a rugged post-player averaging 14.5 points per game, second best on the team, and 11.5 rebounds per game.
The newcomers have allowed senior Kristina Wells to play a more relaxed game, compared to last season in which Wells was forced to shoulder majority of the load on offense. Wells is scoring 12 points while dishing out 3.5 assists and grabbing eight rebounds per game. The preseason All-Conference player has also had help from returning sophomore Deandrea Sawyers who is leading the team in scoring with 15.4 points per game.
The Lady Owls have already been on two separate winning streaks during their non-conference schedule, one of which lasted seven games and featured back-to-back game winning 3-pointers from Frye and Sawyers against Gardner-Webb and Xavier, respectively.
KSU has a home record of 6-1 and a road record of 5-3. Improved road play will be key if the Lady Owls hope to eclipse their A-Sun preseason ranking of finishing seventh out of eight teams.
Florida Gulf Coast University is the only A-Sun team with a better record than KSU at 13-2. The Lady Owls will open conference play against USC Upstate Saturday Jan. 10 before returning to the Convocation Center for the team’s home conference opener against Northern Kentucky Wednesday Jan. 14.
