Womenscollegehoops.com Tabs 2003-04 Thundering Herd As A Breakout Team

7/17/2003

Before the talented Marshall women's basketball team even hits campus for the 2003-04 campaign, one prominent website has the Thundering Herd having a break-out season this winter.

Womenscollegehoops.com, a well-known source for college women's basketball news, answered fifty questions that fans and coaches had for the upcoming season. The Thundering Herd was mentioned, along with Florida State, Southern California, and UCLA, as answers to the question, "Who are some of the teams that Womenscollegehoops.com views as maybe having break-out years in 2003-2004?" No other MAC teams were mentioned in the survey.

Herd honorees are not new to the website. Guard Ida Dotson was named to the site's all-underrated team after the 2001-02 season, while MAC All-Freshman team member Sikeetha Shepard-Hall was named to the All-Freshman team.

The 2003-04 rendition of the Thundering Herd returns six letterwinners and many talented newcomers. The last two Marshall recruiting classes have been ranked in the top fifty by the All-Star Girls report.

Third-year head coach Royce Chadwick loves the acknowledgement from the website, but he thinks the label might have come too late.

"I'm flattered that people in the basketball community would give us this label," Chadwick said. "But, I think we had our breakout in February or March last year, when we beat two of the best teams in the Mid-American Conference in Kent State and Ball State. I think we became a formidable force around the league late in the 2003 season.

"As for this season, we will be talented, but very young," Chadwick continued. "However, we're excited for this fall because we'll finally get some of these recruits on the floor."