Franklin key in Lions' success in 2024

Mar. 7—The Missouri Southern State University women's basketball team clinched its third straight 20-win regular season this year by finishing 20-8.

The Lions won 24 in the regular season last year and 22 the year before. The 2022-23 season ended with 29 wins and a trip to the Central Region championship.

Coming into the 2023-24 campaign, everyone knew it was going to take the Lions some learning and growing as a team after losing team leader Lacy Stokes, starting center Madi Stokes and graduating key players such as Layne Skiles and Amaya Johns.

Now the Lions are in the MIAA conference tournament and will look to repeat as tournament champions as that journey begins at noon Friday in Kansas City against Pittsburg State University (21-7) inside the Municipal Auditorium.

A big part of replacing the interior play lost in Madi Stokes has been in the hands of redshirt freshman Ryan Franklin. Franklin was named the MIAA Freshman of the Year earlier this week. She was recognized for her 11.6 points per game, 5.8 rebounds, 1.4 blocks and near 53% field goal percentage.

Her shooting percentage was good for second-best in the conference behind junior Karenna Gerber of Pittsburg State. She also ranked fourth in blocks and 18th in scoring.

"It means a lot, but I couldn't have done it without my coaches and teammates," Franklin said. "It's all because of the great team that I'm on and being able to play with everybody on the court and doing what I can to make an impact on the team."

She also said it has been a challenge in her first season playing in a competitive MIAA conference.

"It's obviously a big adjustment. I got to watch and work out with the girls last year but obviously playing college basketball is pretty different and at this level," Franklin said.

Franklin earned the award spending most of the season coming off the bench outside of four starts early in the year. She's scored in double figures 17 times and scored a career high 23 in 25 minutes played on Jan. 24 against Northeastern State University.

Franklin began her career with a double-double in her first two games, grabbing 13 rebounds in each. She got her third career double-double in points and rebounds on Dec. 7. The first-year player has four total this year.

"As hard as she worked her redshirt year, I knew she was going to be good," MSSU head coach Ronnie Ressel said. "She's got a great touch around the basket and can score. ... We thought she could be a freshman-of-the-year candidate because we were going to use her a lot."

Ressel said he has seen growth in his young player by seeing her learn how hard she has to play at all time at the college level.

"It's a great conference. Everybody's good here. That's the thing. There is no bad team," Franklin said. "Playing against such great competition every single time, really big post players ... didn't really play against that in high school."

Franklin talked about her IQ growing the most as she's learned how to play with this group of women.

Ressel's thought process early in the year to move Franklin to a bench role was to hopefully attack a worn out starter on the opposing team five minutes or so into the game. He also liked the idea of her matching up with a big on the opponent's bench and winning that matchup.

"We thought we had the advantage with that, and she did a good job of taking advantage of those situations," Ressel said.

Coach talked about his decision to redshirt Franklin falling back on the inability to get her many minutes. With Stokes playing the five spot and Johns getting play as a stretch-four it would have been hard to get Franklin into the game. Ressel said he didn't want to "waste a year" by playing Franklin in 20 games and only 100 minutes saying "that wouldn't have been beneficial to her."

The Lions are focusing on improving their defensive effort as postseason play begins this weekend. Franklin will be a big part of that interior defense as a strong defender against talented post players in the conference.

Ressel says his team is "more than capable" of winning this tournament and that it requires three really good games to do it. He believes better execution can help his team in close games like the Lions have lost recently.

MSSU has lost four of the last six games heading into Friday's contest.