Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Meet the Newcomers: Olivia Bowling
07/15/2015 | 12:00:00 | Women's Basketball
By Tony McDaniel
SIUSalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- The SIU women's basketball team is building a culture accustomed to winning; and with one of its new recruits, the team can do just that.
Incoming 5-foot-9-inch freshman guard Olivia Bowling played her high school hoops at Elizabethtown High School in New Haven, Ky., one of the nation's top-high school varsity basketball programs. Maxpreps.com ranked the school No. 21, and Elizabethtown's 32-3 record for the 2014-15 season earned it the No. 2 ranking in the state of Kentucky.
Under head coach Tim Mudd, Bowling went 113-22 as a Lady Panther. Elizabethtown made the state finals in 2014 but lost to Butler High School 49-38.
"[Mudd] pretty much scheduled all our games to be the best of the best," Bowling said. "Practices were like practices [at SIU]. He would talk to college coaches and ask them what they did in practice, and that's exactly what he would do in practice."
In Bowling's senior season as a Lady Panther, she averaged 5.2 points, 3.8 assists, 3.0 rebounds and 1.7 steals per game.
Bowling received interest from many other schools including Belmont and Morehead State. Bowling chose Southern because the coaching staff is building an MVC powerhouse program.
"They're very energetic in what they do," she said. "They're very generous. I like their work effort. They're very determined to get to the NCAA Tournament."
With Bowling's move to Southern, she finds herself in the unique situation to keep winning. The Salukis are coming off their best season in nearly ten years, and all five starters will return including All-MVC guard Rishonda Napier and last year's assist leader, Cartaesha Macklin.
She can learn from Napier and Macklin to become mentally accustomed to basketball at the Division I level. Bowling, like Napier and Macklin, has experience at every guard spot.
"I'm going to have to watch [Napier] a lot and understand how she plays to understand college basketball," Bowling said. "It's so different from high school basketball."
"Livie is such a tremendous competitor and floor general," head coach Cindy Stein added. "She has the ability to play the point or wing and can score from three or take it to the hoop."
The future is bright for the Salukis with the talent that is already on the roster plus the incoming freshmen. Bowling has an opportunity to help create a tradition of excellence at Southern much like the one her high school can boast.
"I'm privileged to be a part of this," she said. "The coaches picked me to help build their team. They have trust in me that I can work to get to a point where I can help them a lot. It feels good when people put trust in you."
