JMU’s best ever?
Meredith Alexis is rewriting the record books
By Brian Hansen,sports editor
Posted on February 15, 2007

Meredith Alexis has done it all for JMU’s women’s basketball team.

All-time conference leader in rebounds, check. All-time leader in double-doubles, well she’s more than doubled the previous record. More starts than any other player in Dukes’ basketball, check. All-time leading scorer, that one should come tonight.

So what is the only thing JMU’s senior center wishes she could do more of?

“The only thing she ever asks me is if she can shoot a three,” JMU coach Kenny Brooks said. “Usually I have to tell her no, not because she can’t make them, but because we need her inside rebounding.”

Even without the 3-point shots, Alexis enters tonight’s game against George Mason just 10 points shy of Holly Rilinger’s (1992-97) record of 1,607 career points as a Duke.

Alexis, who is leading the Dukes in both scoring and rebounding this season with 18.5 points per game and 11.7 rebounds a game, knew this team could be special but didn’t really know how great she would be.

“I didn’t know the records would come like they are for me, but I knew I would be a part of something special,” Alexis said. “To be on a Top-25 (Associated Press) team and doing all of this, you couldn’t ask for a better senior year.”

Part of what makes the records so special for Alexis and the Dukes is that they aren’t doing this as a Colonial Athletic Association basement dweller. They are doing this as the top contender to end Old Dominion’s run of 15-straight CAA championships.

Since their freshman year, when Brooks made the bold move to start playing four freshmen, (Alexis, guards Lesley Dickinson and Andrea Benvenuto, and forward Shirley McCall) large minutes, everything for both the team and Alexis, as an individual has been building to this season.

“I haven’t had an opportunity to let it sink in because I want to enjoy the present,” the Dukes’ fifth-year head coach said. “When I sit down when it’s all over with and read all of her records, I’ll probably need a bookmark cause I’ll have to stop reading for a while.”

With the school rebounding record already demolished, and the scoring record expected to fall tonight, Alexis is beginning to make a strong case to be considered the best player JMU women’s basketball has ever had.

“I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about that,” Alexis said. “None of this has really sunk in yet.”

Said Brooks: “[When we signed her] I knew we had something special, I just had no idea that it was going to be the best player ever to play at JMU. She is what JMU basketball is.”

That’s high praise from her coach, with former players like Rilinger, Sarah Schreib (1992-97) and Shanna Price (1999-03) in the school’s history.

“We had alumni come back this weekend, and a lot of alumni that were in attendance were very special players, in the hall of fame, and I told them all ‘If you had a rebounding record, it’s gone,’” Brooks said. “And if you had a scoring record, it’s probably gone too.”

Though, the falling of those stats only seems fitting as the Dukes sit at 22-2 overall and 13-0 in conference and are poised to make this season a special one overall.