Lauren Lueders honed her basketball skills playing with and against boys while attending Saxony Lutheran High School.

That experience helped Lueders become a highly recruited Division I college prospect and now she's preparing for her fourth consecutive trip to the NCAA women's tournament.

Lueders, a 5-foot-8 senior guard/forward, is a key player for Vanderbilt heading into Sunday's first-round game against DePaul in Cincinnati. The tipoff is set for 11:11 a.m.

Vanderbilt (22-10) is seeded sixth in the Sacramento Regional, while DePaul (21-11) is a No. 11 seed.

"I'm excited," Lueders said during a telephone interview from Nashville, Tenn., where Vanderbilt is located. "Not only am I excited about the tournament, but I'm excited about where we're playing. Cincinnati is a pretty easy drive for my parents.

Vanderbilt guard Lauren Lueders, right, tries to drive past Tennessee forward Alyssia Brewer during their Southeastern Conference tournament game earlier this month. (ERIK LESSER ~ Associated Press)

"They have been road warriors. I think they've missed one home game this year and have been to all the road games."

Lueders, a contributor for the Commodores since her freshman year, is having by far her best season. She broke into the lineup early in the campaign and started all 16 of Vanderbilt's Southeastern Conference games, although she came off the bench for the squad's three SEC tournament contests.

Lueders is averaging career highs of 7.5 points and 3.9 rebounds while playing a career-high 26.3 minutes. She ranks second in the SEC in 3-point shooting at 39.9 percent (55 of 138). In league games, she hit 41.7 percent from beyond the arc (30 of 72) to rank second.

"Senior year, you have a sense of urgency. I think everything just fell into place," said Lueders, whose 20 starts this season matches the total from her previous three collegiate campaigns. "I've always felt comfortable and confident. This year I've just made the most of it."

It didn't take Lueders long to make her mark after cracking the starting lineup this season. She scored what was then a career-high 16 points against East Tennessee State in late December, then bettered that with 18 points against SEC foe Mississippi in early January.

"She is really having a good season," said John Daniel, Lueders' coach at Saxony. "We've been able to make it to quite a few of her games the past four years and it's really great to see her doing so well.

"She's a super person as well as a very good basketball player."

Lueders originally planned to play on a girls basketball team at Saxony when she entered the second-year school as a freshman in 2002.

But the extremely small school, which opened in 2001 with 19 students and had 28 students by 2002, didn't have enough interested players to start a girls program at the time -- it has one now -- so Lueders joined the fledgling boys program.

"When Lauren first committed to come to Saxony, we had hoped to have a girls team. She planned to help start the girls program," Daniel said. "It didn't work out, but she was good enough to compete with the boys."

Daniel started the Saxony boys basketball program in 2002 with a JV team that included then freshman Lueders. The Crusaders became a varsity squad the next year and Lueders was a three-year starter at point guard, averaging about 10 points and six assists as Saxony went 75-24 and won two Mississippi Valley Conference titles.

"Certainly we were playing in the smaller classes, but it was impressive she could compete against the boys and wasn't intimidated by it," Daniel said. "I remember when she had a good game against a good Notre Dame team. I think that really helped her get noticed."

Daniel believes playing on a boys team helped prepare Lueders to compete as a freshman at Vanderbilt, when she made 12 starts and shot 43.2 percent from 3-point range while averaging 3.2 points.

"She would have probably scored 25 points a game in a girls program, but we really preached balance," Daniel said. "I think that really helped her have an impact as a freshman [at Vanderbilt]. She wasn't coming in as a star, like most of the other players. She knew how to play in the flow of a team."

Lueders, who despite not playing girls basketball in high school made first-team girls all-state as a senior and was a finalist for Miss Show-Me Basketball, said playing against boys definitely aided her development.

"I always say first of all it made me tough. I can say I'm a tough player," Lueders said. "And I got a quick release playing against guys because I had to.

"I think it made me a really confident person in general. Every time I stepped on the floor I had to be confident or the other team would have eaten me up. I fit real well into coach Daniel's system and the guys I played with were great. I've stayed friends with a lot of them."

But Lueders didn't solely compete against boys before going to Vanderbilt. She played summers with a top girls AAU team in St. Louis, which also was an adjustment.

"Something that people tend to forget, the ball is smaller with the girls," she said. "It would actually take me a few weeks to get acclimated to the ball. But those girls teams I played on were top level talent."

Lueders had about 50 Division I schools express interest in her. She eventually narrowed the field down to five -- Missouri, Colorado and Iowa State of the Big 12 Conference, Illinois of the Big Ten and Vanderbilt -- before selecting Vanderbilt because of its traditionally strong women's program and its elite academics.

Daniel contacted the Vanderbilt coaching staff following Lueders' freshman season after seeing the type of potential she had. He and Lueders also put together a video that they sent to Vanderbilt.

Commodores coach Melanie Balcomb was impressed enough to send staff members to some of Lueders' AAU games.

"She was the first player that we've recruited from a boys team," Balcomb recently told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "And she'll probably be the last. Women's and girls basketball have come so far that her situation is really rare."

After her solid freshman season, Lueders made eight starts and averaged 5.1 points as a sophomore. Last year she did not start a game while averaging career lows of 2.5 points and 7.8 minutes before breaking through with her best season as a senior.

"It's been such a great experience, the good and the bad," said Lueders, a part of Vanderbilt squads that have a combined 101-34 record the past four years while winning two SEC tournament titles and reaching the NCAA Sweet 16 the last two seasons. "I can just say I've matured so much as a person and a player."

Lueders thought she was making the right decision when she signed with Vanderbilt. Nothing that has happened the past four years has changed her mind.

"I've got two SEC title rings, I've played in the Sweet 16 twice," she said. "It's been a great experience. I wouldn't trade it for the world."

Lueders, in addition to having a successful basketball career, also has taken care of the classroom side of things at a university noted for its challenging academics. She is scheduled to graduate this May with a major in human and organizational development.

"Vandy doesn't have a business degree. This is kind of like that. You can take it a lot of directions," said Lueders, who added she hasn't decided what direction she wants to go with her degree but is thinking about attending graduate school.

In the meantime, Lueders hopes to end her college career with a bang in her final NCAA tournament. She believes Vanderbilt might surprise people.

"We just need to do the best we can, play to our potential," she said. "I think we're a little underrated because we're so small, but once we get out of the SEC, we're hard to scout because we have so many offensive weapons.

"I honestly think we can make a deep run to the Sweet 16, the Elite 8 or even further."