11/01/09

Lions on Exhibit

Costa Mesa, Calif - The Vanguard University women’s basketball program, the reigning GSAC Champion, kicks off the 2009-10 season with a series of exhibition games against five NCAA Division I schools. Topping the list, University of Connecticut, the 2008-09 NCAA Division I Champion, will help stage a November to remember as the Lions play those five exhibitions within a nine-day span (November 1st through the 9th).  Four of those schools are ranked in the top 18 of the 2009-10 Preseason Associated Press Poll, including UCONN and Stanford in the first two spots.  Vanguard is ranked No. 2 in the NAIA Preseason Poll.

The Lions, the 2007-08 NAIA Champions, kick off the spree of exhibitions at 2009 Pac-10 Conference Champion Stanford on Sunday, November 1st, the first of three consecutive playing days. After taking on the 2009-10 Pac-10 Preseason Favorite, VU continues the sweep through the Bay area at University of San Francisco on Monday and finishes with the exhibition at University of California at Berkeley, who placed second in the Pac-10 last season and is predicted to be this year's runner up.  Berkeley is the 18th-ranked team in the AP Poll.

Use the following links to follow the Lions during the Bay area swing.  Being exhibition games, the scores will be posted but neither the results nor the statistics will count toward the 2009-10 cumulatives. 

The Lions leave the Bay area and briefly return to Southern California before traveling to Arizona for an exhibition with Pac-10 third place team Arizona State University on November 5th.  After the match up with the No. 16-ranked Sun Devils, the Lions then fly to Connecticut to face the National Champion Huskies for the first time in program history. The Huskies were 39-0 last season and feature returning senior Maya Moore, the 2009 ESPY Award winner for the "Best Female Collegiate Athlete" and are the unanimous top pick in the 2009-10 AP Poll, as released on October 30th.

The Lions will be leaning heavily on an experience senior class to lead them not only through the difficult preseason, but through the entire journey.  Although the preseason schedule is stacked solidly against the Lions, Vanguard Head Coach Russ Davis, the 2008-09 WBCA/NAIA Coach of the Year, couldn’t pass up the chance to play such elite programs in order to try and lift the Lions to an even higher level of play.

"I think it is a great opportunity to play the top teams in the country at the NCAA Division I level," says Davis. "It’s great for us and great for the NAIA. Connecticut and Stanford might be ranked No. 1 and No.2 in the nation, and it is an honor to play them."