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Around/About Central Georgia

Catching up with: Susie Gardner

The basketball junkie wasn’t out of basketball for long.

Susie Gardner’s second stint as an assistant at Florida lasted only a year, and Gardner had the rare year off.

She’s baaaaack.

The Evansville women’s program will have a huge MQ – Mercer Quotient - when the season starts this fall.

Gardner officially joined on June 1 the staff of head coach Ben Wierzba, who took over the program in mid-April.

Ironically, it was a return to the city where he lived when Gardner hired him in 2015, part of the spark of Mercer’s best run in women’s basketball, starting with a 24-9 record that first year.

With Wierzba riding shotgun next to Gardner until 2023, Mercer went 166-80 with four NCAA Tournament trips and two WNIT visits.

He left to join the Miami of Ohio women’s staff after the 2022-23 season, and helped the RedHawks go 56-39 in three seasons.

Wierzba and Gardner will try to work some familiar rebuilding magic for a program that went 40-119 under predecessor Robyn Scherr in five seasons.

Gardner resigned in March 2024 as one of the most successful head coaches of any sport in Mercer history.

Within two months, she had returned to where she’d come from, Florida. Gardner was an assistant under Amanda Butler – an assistant on Gardner’s Austin Peay staff from 1997-2001 - when she took over at Mercer in 2010.

Butler was fired in 2017, and took over recently at College of Charleston.

Gardner joined the staff of Kelly Rae Finley less than two months after resigning at Mercer, but she was fired after going 18-15 in her fifth season, again missing the NCAA Tournament.

She spent the 2025-26 out of the game, but watched plenty of ball, including a visit or two to Mercer. Gardner was inducted into the Mercer Hall of Fame in mid-November of 2025, a month after her mother Mary passed away.

In a short chat at a Mercer game last season with The Central Georgia Sports Report, Gardner expressed an interest in being a head coach again.

But rejoining Wierzba in a basketball city much nearer to her hometown of Mt. Juliet, Tenn. is pretty close.

“One thing that I have learned in this profession is if you can go to work every day with people that you respect and love,” Gardner posted last month on Facebook, “you’ve got it made.”

Around/About Georgia

GHSA alters state football/flag football championship schedule

What will Atlanta do with the league’s No. 1 RB, as voted on by execs, coaches, and scouts?

Dream trio of Angel Reese, Rhyne Howard and Washington County’s Allisha Gray among All-Star reserves

Morehouse AD has Division I vision: ‘We’re coming for the big dogs’

Pirates’ Ryan O’Hearn sets club record with 10 RBIs during 3-homer night vs. Braves

Soccer/World Cup/US vs. Belgium

US-Belgium at World Cup is most-watched soccer telecast in US history at 30M viewers, Fox says

UEFA says FIFA’s decision to let Balogun play at World Cup is ‘incomprehensible’

Norway coach rips FIFA for Balogun red card reversal, says it 'hurts' World Cup

Same old story: US men’s soccer team has been stagnant for quarter century

Two US soccer team staff members suspended by FIFA for Belgium World Cup game