CLEVELAND, Tenn. — The Brescia University transfers are gone from the Lee University women’s basketball team, and Brescia is gone also as a national-tournament matchup for coach Marty Rowe’s Lady Flames.

Lee opened against Rowe’s former program the last two years in the NAIA Division I tournament in Jackson, Tenn., with a loss in 2007 and a win last year. The fifth-ranked Lady Flames (28-5) begin play in the 2009 tournament at 1:30 p.m. EDT Thursday against Evangel (21-10), a Missouri school from the Heart of America Conference that just moved up from NAIA Division II.

With Jessica Still and Jan Dodson departed, Rowe’s All-American candidates this year are junior post Katie Nelson from Scottsboro, Ala., and sophomore guard Brooke McKinnon from Tellico Plains. The 6-foot-1 Nelson was No. 2 in the Southern States Athletic Conference in scoring with 17.46 points a game, and she was fifth in rebounding (8.12) and second in blocked shots, while McKinnon was fourth in scoring (16.85) and sixth in assists.

While Lee does lose one-year standout Valeriya Musina (13.25 ppg) and solid reserve Lauren Brett for 2009-10, the rest of the team will be joined by an already superlative recruiting class. But the Lady Flames want to make a title run now, and they’re the only team to have beat top-ranked Union University.

“By beating Union we know we can beat anybody there,” Nelson said, “but we lost to a few teams we really shouldn’t have. Hopefully those helped us grow a little bit and we’ll use that to our advantage, too.”

Further good experience, she said, was playing more close games during the regular season than last year and having to win with inside-out balance. Maybe because the Brescia win was such a pressure relief, Rowe suggested, last year’s talented squad lost in round two at Jackson.

“This year we’ve won grind-it-out games like you have to do at the national tournament,” Nelson said. “We’re more experienced at having to pull together in tough situations. I know I feel more confident with my role.”

Musina was the SSAC’s “sixth man” honoree and Lee’s Angela Spann followed McKinnon as freshman of the year, while Kari Jo Harris and Kally Eldridge also have made solid impacts as newcomers and juniors Kayce Addison and Allison Rader are other key contributors.

“Basically, everybody who came back got better, and we’ve really learned how to win together,” Rowe said. “This is one of the most resilient bunches I’ve had, and when we have focus and energy and pay attention to details, we’re a very good team.”

Nelson noted that the Lady Flames burned many of their opponents in her sophomore season with outside shooting.

“We have good shooters this year, but it’s not like last year,” she said. “This year we are going inside more and concentrating more on defense.”

Said Rowe: “Obviously we shoot it well enough. That’s still an important part of what we do. But we have made more of an effort to get it into Katie, and she keeps coming through.”