The Winthrop women’s basketball team defeated UNC Asheville on Saturday, marking the team’s first victory over a Big South opponent this season.
Prior to Saturday’s 75-54 blowout win, the Eagles were 0-6 versus conference opponents and 2-15 overall.
“We’ve hit a lot of adversity this season and I know doubt sometimes creeps in you when things are not going well,” said head coach Semeka Randall Lay.
“Just to watch our players come out and really have fun and compete and fight for one another — it really started with Leonor (Paisana) and Myra (Strickland) stepping up big and J’Mani (Ingram) being who she is — I’m really, really proud of what they did, and it was really a total team effort,” she said.
The Eagles opened the season on a four-game road stretch (including games at Duke and Kentucky) before returning home for a five-game homestand, which was capped off with consecutive wins against Western Carolina and Claflin. Saturday’s win marked the most points Winthrop has scored in a game this season, and the second-fewest points the team has given up.
“I thought we were patient,” Randall Lay said. “We let some things develop for us in our offense. Our posts have a hard job in terms of spreading out and setting a ton of screens for us.
“Starting with Caroline (De Klauman) on down to Sierra (Hunter) [and] to Sydney (Hunter), being able to do that consistently for our team, it really helped. We rewarded them by throwing it inside, and they literally at times shot layups. That gives us good balance, and then it opens up shots for our guards to knock down those threes.”
Winthrop shot 6-of-13 from deep compared to UNC Asheville’s 5-of-31. All five of Asheville’s three-pointers were made by junior Kai Carter, who went 5-of-15 from behind the arc and 7-of-21 from the field for 19 points.
Fifth-year senior Nadiria Evans also contributed 18 points for the Bulldogs. Randall Lay said Winthrop specifically gameplanned for Evans’ and Carter’s mid-range scoring ability.
“We wanted to take away where they’re known to get points at, and that’s in the middle of the key, and so it forced them to take a lot of threes. That’s kind of a little bit out of their comfort zone, so credit to our defense — us being able to play our zone defense — and make them take those tough shots and then force the rebounds out of it.”
This was the first win for the Eagles since the team dealt with COVID-19 related issues at the beginning of the new year, resulting in five conference games being postponed. The team didn’t play for over two weeks, and prior to Saturday, was 0-5 since being ‘on pause.’
“Players had a players meeting and wanted to get things back in order, and they challenged one another and they really put things together and went out and won a game,” Randall Lay said.
Winthrop has already played four of the top five teams in the league — three of which were on the road. With Saturday’s strong showing, Randall Lay said she is hopeful that Winthrop can find its rhythm as it gets ready to face some teams that are lower in the conference standings.
“We’ve shown spurts, but tonight we actually put everything together. It was overall a great performance, offensively and defensively,” Randall Lay said.
