SEASON PREVIEW: Georgia Southern Women's Basketball Looking For More Moments In 2025-26
11/2/2025 11:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Head Coach Hana Haden and the Eagles had several highs last year, but are building towards making more of those this season
STATESBORO - Georgia Southern head women's basketball coach Hana Haden and the Eagles accomplished a lot in her first season at the helm of the program.
A 4-0 start, several key wins and a late-season surge that saw the Eagles win seven of their last 11 games, including two in the Sun Belt Conference tournament, made waves for a coach making her debut in NCAA Division I. But Coach Haden and Georgia Southern are looking for more of those in 2025-26 and the Eagles feel like they have built a squad that will be up to the task.
Unlike her first season in Statesboro, when Coach Haden and the Eagles had just one returner and had to bring in 14 players, there's some continuity with this season's squad. Four returners are back for 2025-26, and two of the newcomers are players that played for Coach Haden at Georgia Southwestern two seasons ago.
Still, that means like a lot of other schools across the nation, the coaching staff had to hit the transfer portal, and Coach Haden had particular goals when recruiting the portal in the offseason.
"Number one, we wanted people that wanted to be a part of the culture that we wanted to build," Coach Haden said. "We want it to be a sisterhood and we wanted people who are really excited to be at Georgia Southern specifically, so that's the one intangible we were looking for. On the court, we wanted to be able to space the floor better, to bring in players that can help us stretch the floor and shoot the ball. We were also looking for versatility and athleticism defensively, so that we can use our press more this season."
The upshod of that is that this season's Eagles will look quite a bit different from the team that won 16 games a season ago. Fans can expect to see a team that will be tenacious defensively and more up tempo offensively.
"This year, we look drastically different offensively," Coach Haden said. "You're going to see a lot of five-out alignments. You'll see us play a lot with four guards and really spread the floor. You're going to see a lot more threes being shot, we want to shoot 30 threes a game, and we want to make 10 threes a game - that's something we are actively hunting. Defensively, you're going to see us press every possession. At a dead ball or after a make, you're going to see us in one of our presses. You'll also see us being a lot more disruptive. We want to keep the other team neutral and force tough twos. And we want to do a better job defending the three-point line. Another huge difference is that we had two people last year, contribute 80% of the rebounding, but this year it's going to have to be rebounding by committee."
In looking at the returners, the Eagles have a pair of players back for their sixth years of college basketball in McKenna Eddings (6-0, G, Williamsburg, Va.) and Shanti Simmons (5-9, G, Eatonton, Ga.). Both have scored more than 1,000 points in their collegiate careers and had immediate impacts on Georgia Southern last year, with Eddings averaging 8.2 points, 3.3 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game, while Simmons joined the team in January and shot 53% from the field, averaging 7.0 points per contest.
Also returning for the Eagles are junior Liv Fuller (5-10, F, Clearwater, Fla.)and sophomore guard/forward Jamiria Jones.
The two newcomers who join Georgia Southern from Coach Haden's previous stop at Georgia Southwestern State are graduate student Destiny Garrett (5-4, G, Bessemer, Ala.) and junior Statesboro native Armani Cooke (5-9, G, Statesboro, Ga.). Garrett was an NCAA Division II All-American point guard who is the all-time assist leader in Georgia Southwestern State history.
The Eagles then welcome in seven other transfers from the portal and two high school freshmen to complete the 2025-26 roster.
In the backcourt, All-MEAC selection at NC Central, Kyla Bryant (5-7, G, Salisbury, N.C.) joins St. Francis (Pa.) transfer Destini Ward (5-8, G, Baltimore, Md.) and Paris (Texas) JC three-point threat Nevaeh Brown (5-10, G, Columbia, Md.) in providing a lot of scoring punch to the Eagles' lineup.
A pair of Presbyterian transfers in the frontcourt - Kishyah Anderson (5-10, G/F, Phoenix, Ariz.) and Laney Scoggins (5-11, F, Leland, N.C.) team with Wingate transfer Lia Anderson (6-1, F, LaPlace, La.) and Yavapai (Ariz.) JC product Courtenay Lee (6-4, C, Mesa, Ariz.) to give the Eagles size in the post while also looking to contribute offensively.
Finally, the Eagles add a pair of Georgia high school standouts to the mix in Kayla Cleaveland (6-0, F, Woodstock, Ga.) and McKayla Hosley (6-0, F, Columbus, Ga.) coming to Statesboro for their debut collegiate campaigns.
Throughout summer workouts and the preseason, Coach Haden has been impressed with her team's connectivity and willingness to put in the work, both on and off the court.
"I've liked their togetherness and their character," Coach Haden said. "I'm big on how you do anything is how you do everything. We're up over 300 hours of community service since postseason last year. And none of it has been forced, it's not like we've been pulling teeth to get them out there. And that approach speaks to everything they're doing - academically they're doing everything they need to do in the classroom, they love going out and doing community service, they love working camps and they love playing basketball. Specific to on the court, I've seen that when we have an off day, these kids are in the gym. They're very self-motivated. They love to play and are constantly looking for ways to get better. They're enjoyable to be around, and it's always a great indicator of your culture if your team enjoys being around each other."
Last year, even though the team won seven of its last 11 games, Coach Haden though it took too long for the team to get to the point of finding itself and its identity. It's a cliche' that you always want to be playing your best basketball at the end of the year, but there's nothing that says you can't start that stretch of 'best basketball' earlier.
"I think the big lessons from last year are that you have to establish the culture and the identity early," Coach Haden said. "You can't be doing that going into conference play. Last year we stubbed our toe, losing a lot of close conference games early, and we attributed that to a lot of different categories - our lack of three-point shooting, our inability to defend the three, our turnovers and our poor free throw shooting. Those are areas that we've focused on this preseason, where we just want to close the gap. In looking at a lot of those close games last year, it came down to those categories. We were trying to find out who we were a lot of last year. We weren't able to keep Leah Johnson on the floor until that final stretch, for example, when we were able to play through her successfully. So we've really worked to establish that defensive identity. We ask the team all the time, "Who are we? What is our identity?" and they will tell you "We're a defensive team." "Why do we care about it so much?" " Because defense travels, defense doesn't have a bad shooting night." While we do know that we will have to generate more points from beyond the arc this year, which is something that we want to do, we want to be able to hang our hats on the defensive end. We want to be able to take people out of what they want to do."
The beginning of the season is a tough one for the Eagles to establish that identity as they host Central Michigan in the MAC/SBC Challenge to start the season on November 3, then play at Florida State, host No. 5 LSU in a highly-anticipated matchup at the Jack and Ruth Ann Hill Convocation Center and finally travel to Missouri State, who won a regular season conference championship a year ago.
"This is a really tough stretch these first four games, but coming out of these games, we really need to know who we are," Coach Haden said. "We're playing the likes of LSU, so we need to compete and we need to be tough. We need to find a way to rebound the ball. We have gotten the chance to see that in some of our scrimmages where we've been outmatched size wise. I'm much more concerned with our mentality than how we play in that stretch."
Ultimately, the opportunity is there for the Eagles to take another step forward in a highly competitive Sun Belt Conference. Picking up big wins and taking momentum into the league's tournament at the end of the year. And Coach Haden is just looking for more moments like those from her group this season.
"I don't get hung up on them picking us 10th [in the Sun Belt]," Coach Haden said. "I know that had a lot to do with last year. But I think that in April, we'll look back on the year and see that this team had a great experience and enjoyed playing together all year. We had moments last year, but we have to have more moments. Like the App State win and our success in the tournament. The moments that are rewarding and fulfilling where you can say 'this is why we do what we do.' If we feel like that, those results will take care of themselves."
