Rider pushing back toward respectability

LAWRENCE -- To understand the turnaround taking place with the Rider women's basketball program, the question to ask the players may not be about how it feels to be winning games more often.

The question to ask them is how do they feel when they lose a game these days.

"I think the losses hurt now," said first-year head coach Lynn Milligan, whose 4-6 team has already doubled last season's win total, and needs just one more to match the last two seasons combined.

Where Rider's rebuilding is at and where it appears to be going can be summed up by a two-game stretch last week. The players were crushed to drop a one-point decision to Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference opponent Niagara, tears of disappointment literally flowing in the locker room afterward. Three days later, in the middle of exam week, they put the distractions aside and came back to win in overtime against an Army squad which won 24 games last season.

"I think that was the worst loss I ever suffered in my whole time playing basketball," senior Janele Henderson, the team's top scorer, said of the loss to Niagara.

"We're competing and we're putting ourselves in a position where we can win. So, of course, losing is going to be tougher this year because we know we can win these games."

The Broncs' improvement is impressive. Having gone 3-25 two seasons ago and 2-28 last season, they have been in all of their games. Each of their losses has been under 10 points.

Milligan, who graduated from Rider in 1992 and has been in college coaching ever since, has the same the blue-collar determination she had as a Broncs player. Her team's style is predicated off playing intense defense, which sets up the offense. She prepares feverishly and doesn't back down from a challenge. If an opponent pushes one of her players, she'll have her player push right back.

"From the outside looking at what's gone on the past couple years, and the struggles that they had," Milligan said, "you wouldn't anticipate them bouncing back as quickly as they do. And I credit my staff a lot for that.

"They're a great bunch of kids that works so hard. And their desire to win right now is at a very high level. Their willingness to learn and do what we say on a daily basis has really been refreshing. It's how you become successful."

It's a group that can learn to become successful together. Hender son, a 5-foot-9 guard from New York, is the team's lone senior, and leading rebounder Shaunice Parker is a junior. The other players in the regular rotation are sophomores (Tammy Meyers, Amanda Sepul veda and Ashley Anderson) and freshmen (Shannon Ferguson and Cintella Spotwood). Stephanie Wisniewski, a 6-1 sophomore who was a starter last season, has played only one game because of a stress fracture, but hopes to return next month. Three high school seniors are signed for next fall.

Henderson, who was the season's first MAAC Player of the Week and takes a 15.4-point average into Rider's game against Rice tonight in Houston, won't reap all of the rewards that appear likely under Milligan, but she takes pride in being the senior leader who helped start the turnaround.

"There's a time and place for everything. I think this is my time and my place," she said. "It would have been different if I had two more years, three more years, but I have one year. So I can just take this one year and run with it."

Focused on the present and future, the Broncs still draw off the past, especially because they can make almost every game a revenge game. The losses didn't hurt so much in the past because they didn't have the success to balance it off with.

Now the Broncs do.

"I think it's more surprising to the fans, and everybody else, be cause they didn't understand what we've been doing for the last six months," Henderson said. "This is not surprising when we've worked hard for the last six months.

"I think mainly (it's about) gaining people's respect. I think when teams come here, they're like, 'Oh, same old Rider.' No, we're not the same old Rider."

Contact assistant sports editor Craig Haley at chaley@njtimes.com.