HUNTSVILLE | The University of Alabama in Huntsville women's basketball team will open up play in the 2019 Gulf South Conference Women's Basketball Championship presented by VisitSpaceCoast.com on Tuesday as the No. 6 seed, traveling to third-seeded Lee for a 6 p.m. CT contest.
 
UAH – who has guaranteed itself a winning record – enters the game at 14-12, while the Lady Flames carry a 22-6 overall mark into Tuesday.
 
The Chargers surpassed the expectations that were laid out in the preseason poll of the league's head coaches in which the team was picked in a tie for eight, going 12-8 in conference play in the senior year of head coach Andrea Lemmond's first recruiting class.
 
The 12 wins in conference play match the highest by a Lemmond team as does the sixth-place league finish.
 
This year's success comes with one of those seniors leading the way as Baylee Johnson has turned in a terrific finishing year to her career, leading the squad with 16.7 points per game as she has reached double figures in 20 games including nine in which she has scored more than 20. Junior Aryn Sanders is also having a strong campaign, scoring 15.8 points per game and rebounding at a 7.6 per outing clip while totaling six double-doubles.
 
But all of the scoring is not coming from upperclassmen as true freshman Holly Harris ranks third on the team with 11.5 points per game, and she has been particularly strong from long-range, knocking down a team-high 59 3-point shots.
 
That trio helps UAH rank third offensively in the league with 70.2 points per game, and that talented offense will be going up against the top defense in the league in a Lee team that is tops in the conference by allowing just 53.6 points per game.
 
UAH has been able to score against the Lady Flames at a better rate than the rest of Lee's opposition, however, as UAH scored 64 in a loss in Cleveland in January before scoring 71 in a narrow 73-71 overtime setback in Huntsville on Valentine's Day.
 
Johnson was strong in both games, scoring 25 in the road setback before tallying 24 at Spragins Hall.
 
Two players are averaging double figures for the Lady Flames with Abby Bertram's 14.2 points per contest pacing the squad while Haley Schubert scores 11.3 per game. On the glass, Becca Cheeks is atop the ledger for Lee with a 5.8 rebounding average.
 
This will mark the first meeting between the two teams in the conference tournament, and the Chargers will be making their first appearance in the postseason since 2016 and the program's 11th overall.
 
The team has advanced past the quarterfinal round twice, culminating with a runner-up finish in 2012 and a tournament title in 2013.
 
The winner of Tuesday night's game will advance to the conference semifinals which will be held on the campus of Samford University in Homewood, Alabama.