Harrison, Del Rosario look to keep Lightning on top

Last season, all Lehman women’s basketball coach Eric Harrison managed to accomplish was becoming the City University of New York Athletic Conference’s (CUNYAC) all-time wins leader in women’s basketball, lead the Lightning to the CUNYAC regular season crown, capture the CUNYAC Tournament championship, earn a trip to the NCAA Tournament and unleash a 5-5 basketball dynamo named Amely Del Rosario on an unsuspecting CUNYAC.

No pressure, but what does Harrison have in store for an encore this season?

“We’re looking forward to trying to defend our titles,” Harrison said. “It will be a little harder this year. We had four seniors last year that we could depend on day in and day out. Now we have one proven player who has been in our system but everyone else is new.”

Yes, there was a boatload of talent that walked out the door as the quartet of Jennifer Navarro, Karrin Walker, Amani Lightbourne and Yarmese Jones left the program due to graduation last spring. But that one “proven player” Harrison alluded to is Del Rosario and the superlative senior guard has brought some rather lofty comparison from Harrison regarding her game and what she means to the Lightning program.

“I feel like we have Steph Curry on our team,” Harrison said, referencing the Golden State Warriors star. “We have that type of player on our team where every night Amely’s the type of player that gives you the opportunity to win. When she’s on her game she is the best so hopefully she’ll be able to be more of a veteran this year now that she is a senior. She’s a poised veteran who has played three years of college basketball and we’ll be depending on her a lot to keep the ship stable. No matter what team we play, we feel we have the best player on the floor with Amely.”

So far this season, the diminutive Del Rosario has picked up where she left off last year. In the Lightning’s season-opening victory over Ferrum College in the Kean College Classic Tournament, she poured in 41 points in a 78-70 win. She followed that performance up with a 27-point effort in Lehman’s loss to Kean in the title game of the tournament last weekend.

Clearly Del Rosario is prepared to be a force in the CUNYAC this season and it’s her mission to help transform this edition of the Lightning into the championship-caliber team Lehman trotted out night in and night out last season.

“Last year me, Jennifer, Amani, Karrin and Yani, we all came out and when we were on that floor we knew this was going to be our year,” Del Rosario said. “So coming into this year the feeling is the same. We now have Krystal and Lynda and we have Shakia so it’s going to be a great team.”

Krystal is Krystal Pearson, a Bronx native who previously played Division I basketball before arriving at Lehman. She’ll be joined by Lynda Fields and Shakia Artist as key newcomers as Lehman looks to defend its’ CUNYAC crown.

“We lost a lot of points. We probably lost 70 percent of our offense but we’ve done a lot of replacing,” Harrison said of his reinforcements. “We’re excited about Krystal Pearson. A power forward who came from Truman High School, where she was All-City, and she also played Division I ball at Towson University. We’re excited about her. She’s definitely a first-tier player. We expect her to be somebody that will be a dominant player and be able to help in our inside and outside game. And Lynda Fields, who also went to Truman, she is also going to start for us. They are both new here but they both bring a world of experience. So we’re excited about both of them being in the mix. We’re excited to see how they are going to come out and play. We think they are going to get it but there is that fear of the unknown. But I think we’re ready and we’re getting ready to make a little statement.”

That statement the Lightning want to make comes after the conference coaches picked Lehman to finish fourth in the CUNYAC Preseason Poll. It was a perceived slight that didn’t sit well with Harrison and the Lightning.

“We take it more as a lack of respect from our conference coaches. No one in our conference ever wants to give Lehman the respect it deserves,” said Harrison, now in his 19th season as Lehman’s head coach. “We look at it as it’s only a poll but we also take it that the coaches in the CUNY really don’t respect what we’re doing up here. I can understand that we lost four players to graduation but when you return hands down the best player in the conference and coming off a title, we feel it is a little bit of disrespect to us. Amely and I talk about it, but the new players don’t really get it. So we want to kind of make a statement to teams coming out that we’re going to show you we’re still for real even though we lost for seniors.”

So are the additions of Pearson, Fields and Artist – coupled with the CUNYAC’s top player in Del Rosario – enough of a collection of talent for Lehman to defend its title this season?  Harrison thinks so, even if it might take a little while for all the new parts to get comfortable with each other.

“It’s going to take time for this team to gel because they really haven’t played together much yet, but the talent is here so that if they gel quickly, even if we gel by February, we’re going to be a tough out in the playoffs,” Harrison said. “With the addition of Krystal Pearson, with Amely we feel we have the two most talented players in the conference on our team. By February we’re going to be a different team. It’s going to take us a couple of games to gel but we’re hoping by February we’re all clicking.”

And Rosario, the lone senior on the team, just might have another chance to enjoy the magic the Lightning felt last March when Lehman returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in almost a decade.

“I still think about last season,” Del Rosario said. “I thought about all the work we put in, coming in at six in the morning to go running, for no reason at times. There were times when we’d look at coach and say, ‘Why are we running?’ But after we won the championship we saw that that’s what we needed. That was our kick in the butt and it was all worth it and I’m hoping to get there again.”