The Azusa Pacific women’s basketball program picked up three recruits for the 2012-13 season. One of those three has a familiar name, a name that is known from Azusa Pacific, Westmont, Biola, and the rest of the original Golden State Athletic Conference. The name is Hardeman, and the recruit, Kelly, is the niece of the team’s current head coach T.J. Hardeman.

Basketball and family have been intertwined in the Hardeman household for years. As we found out during the Cougars’ championship run in 2011, family is at the core of the Azusa Pacific women’s basketball program. Hardeman (T.J.) had all four of his children play collegiate basketball. His daughter Katie has multiple records at Westmont. His other daughter Heidi played at Biola, where she met her husband, Dan Ploog , who has been an assistant for T.J. at Azusa Pacific since he took over the once irrelevant program and turned it into the power it is today. His two brothers, Todd and Tom, work at Faith Academy in the Philippines where Hardeman went to school as a child and where Kelly was a three-sport athlete. Now with the newest edition to the Cougar family already being a member of the Hardeman family, it begs the question: where did they all come from?

Read more on The Cougar Countdown: Day 30…

Nothing is certain but death and taxes… and for the past two decades, 20-win seasons from Azusa Pacific men’s basketball.

Since 1993, the Cougars are one of just three four-year collegiate men’s basketball programs to post 20 consecutive 20-win seasons. The only others are Georgetown (Ky.) and Oklahoma Baptist, which both compete in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). Azusa Pacific, however, is putting its streak of 20-win seasons on the line on a bigger stage — literally.

The average arena seating capacity for games during Azusa Pacific’s 2012-13 season more than doubles the average capacity of the Golden State Athletic Conference gyms it played in a year ago. With its transition to the NCAA Division II’s Pacific West Conference for the 2012-13 season, the Cougars’ home arena – the Felix Event Center – goes from easily being the largest facility in the GSAC to the fifth-biggest in its new league. The average capacity of GSAC gyms in 2012 was 1,935, while the average gym capacity of the 14-member PacWest Conference seats over 1,000 more people (2,996 average).

Read more on The Cougar Countdown: Day 25…

While the first-ever Pacific West basketball championship tournament may not feature the Cougars (ineligible for postseason play), Azusa Pacific will still play a huge role in the conference’s inaugural postseason tournament in March of 2013. The Felix Event Center, home to the Cougars’ men’s and women’s basketball teams, has been selected to host the six-team event, with the winner of the men’s and women’s tournament receiving an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

The PacWest has seen its membership spike from nine schools at the end of the 2011 athletics season to 14 in 2012, making it the largest NCAA Division II conference in the West Region, but has not previously held a tournament to determine its automatic qualifier for the NCAA championships. Last year Dixie State won the regular season crown to receive the PacWest’s automatic bid before falling to Seattle Pacific in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

Read more on The Cougar Countdown: Day 9…