ROCK HILL, SC– Head women’s basketball coach Bud Childers has announced a 30-game schedule for the 2007-08 season as the Lady Eagles will play 14 home games and 16 away.
“As always we challenge ourselves in the pre-conference part of the schedule as we try to discover who we are and what we need to work on before the Big South schedule begins,” said Childers, who will be entering his fourth season with the Lady Eagles. “This year’s schedule is certainly going to be a stiff challenge for sure.”
The season will begin Nov. 9 as the Lady Eagles will host the Winthrop Classic that includes Rice, Navy and North Texas. Winthrop opens the Classic against North Texas on Nov. 9 at 7 p.m. and will face Navy on Nov. 10 and Rice on Nov. 11 with both game times set for 3 p.m. The other three schools will face each other as well.
“It’s exciting to host for the first time a season opening tournament with teams from the SunBelt, Conference USA and the Patriot League,” said Childers.
The remainder of the home schedule includes non-conference games against Johnson C. Smith (Dec. 9), Georgia State (Dec. 17), Converse College (Jan. 12), USC Upstate (Jan. 16) and Presbyterian (Jan. 19). Winthrop Birmingham-Southern leaving the conference, there will only be six home games in the Big South and a total of 12. The Lady Eagles first home game in the Big South will be Jan. 26 vs. Charleston Southern.
” With loss of Birmingham Southern this year and the addition of Gardner Webb next year this leaves the start of Big South play very late in the year so that will be different, plus there will be only 12 conference games this year,“ said Childers. “We open with defending regular season champs High Point on the road which should be a really good game. From there league play varies quite a bit this year as compared to the past three seasons which will be refreshing for a change. We know Radford and Liberty return a lot of experience from a year ago. UNC-Asheville hosts the tournament again which means they will be a real threat again. Charleston southern has 10 new players so we know they will be excite and improved. Coastal lost a great player but has lots of youth ready to replace her. High Point is always tough, but must replace three veteran guards. It should be an exciting "shoot-out" type conference race this year as we sprint to the finish with only a 12 game slate going into the tournament in March. We love the tournament format we adopted last year & hope this year will be a magic year for the Eagles which culminates with a league championship in Asheville in March!"
The road schedule includes 16 games and begins on Nov. 14 at South Carolina State. That will start a streak of six consecutive games away from the Winthrop Coliseum. Winthrop will face Tulane on Nov. 18 and then head to East Carolina Nov. 23-24 for a Thanksgiving Tournament that will include East Carolina, Massachusetts, and Jacksonville. The schedule for this tournament has not been set yet. The remainder of the road trip will include games at Norfolk State (Nov. 26) and Davidson (Dec. 1). The remaining non-conference road games are Wichita State (Dec. 20), George Mason (Dec. 30), Charlotte (Jan. 5) and Longwood (Jan. 9).
“All in all, the pre-conference schedule is balanced with some very good teams which means we are going to have to ready to play every night out for sure,” said Childers. “It would be nice to have built some confidence and momentum heading into league play.”
Season tickets for the 14 home games are on sale now for $45. A family pack is also available for $130, which includes four season tickets and 20 items from the concession stand. Fans interested in purchasing regular season tickets should telephone 323-2129, ext. 2345, or visit the athletic website at www.winthropeagles.com to find the order form.
The 2007-08 squad will have nine returning players to go along with five newcomers that will try and build on the momentum it gained at the end of last year. Last season ended with a semi-final loss in the conference tournament to UNC Asheville after upsetting top-seeded High Point.
Click here to see the entire schedule.
