Odessa College women’s basketball coach Franqua Bedell has been to the mountaintop.
He wants to get back.
And he wants to do it leading the Lady Wranglers.
“It’s one of the reasons I came here,” he said prior to the team’s final practice Wednesday before heading to Lubbock for the Region 5 Tournament at Wolfforth Frenship.
“I know what it’s like to win the national title and I want this program to experience that again.”
The Lady Wranglers, the No. 3 second from the West, will face McLennan Community College, the No. 2 seed from the North, at 5 p.m. Thursday.
Bedell, in his third season with Odessa College, was the head coach at Tallahassee Community College when he led the Eagles to the 2018 NJCAA Division I Women’s National Tournament.
Playing on five consecutive nights, Tallahassee won the program’s first national championship and Bedell was the NJCAA Division I Women’s National Coach of the Year.
Bedell and the Eagles were the victims of a numbers game the following season, failing to receive an at-large bid despite being ranked No. 3 in the country.
That ended his time in the eastern Florida Panhandle as Bedell made his way to Missouri State University for a season before moving to the Permian Basin.
He arrived in the summer of 2020 to take over a program in moth balls for a season due to dwindling numbers, the COVID-19 pandemic and longtime coach Ara Baten leaving to take charge of the women’s program at South Plains College.
Before the hiatus, the Lady Wranglers had made four consecutive trips to the national tournament, along with a string of 12 straight seasons qualifying for the regional tournament.
The game against McLennan, however, will be Odessa College’s first postseason action since Baten left after the 2020 season.
“I look at this as a huge step for the program,” Bedell said. “We struggled last season and didn’t make the tournament.
“I think that once you make the regional tournament, you should expect to make it every year. The same thing goes for the national tournament; once you get there, you know what it takes and the program expects to be successful.”
Odessa College won the national title in 2007, a year after finishing as the national runner-up.
Bedell understands that for the Lady Wranglers to make the 2o23 national tournament, they likely are going to have to win the Region 5 tourney.
Standing in the way, initially, is a team that defeated Odessa College, 64-54, on Nov. 21 in a tournament game in Waco.
That was one of the lowest offensive outputs of the season for the Lady Wranglers and Bedell feels his squad is ready to make it more competitive this time around.
“We were in it until the final five minutes and then we couldn’t buy a bucket,” Bedell said. “They made some plays and that was the difference.
“McLennan is a very good team, a very methodical team that likes to slow things down and run half-court offense. We are going to have to find some way to speed them up and get them playing the way we like to play.”
A victory against McLennan likely would set up the third meeting this season with Baten and South Plains College, the Western Junior College Athletic Conference regular-season champ.
The teams split the conference matchups this season, both winning at home.
Bedell isn’t focused on what could be, instead concentrating on the Highlassies.
“We have to be ready to go,” he said. “It’s one and done from here on out.”
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