Box Score

ROCK HILL, SC--The Winthrop Lady Eagles opened the 2012-13 season with a 87-82 shootout win over Troy to close out Homecoming weekend and give new head coach Kevin Cook his first NCAA Div. I coaching victory.

Junior point guard Dequesha McClanahan battled early foul trouble to score a game-high 22 points and lead five Lady Eagles in double figures.  Sophomore Taylor Calvert grabbed a career-high 21 rebounds to go along with 11 points while 6-3 freshman center Schaquilla Nunn had a double-double in her first collegiate game with 18 points and 15 rebounds.  Senior Diana Choibekova finished with 16 points, including back-to-back 3-pointers in the final minutes, and freshman guard Aliyah Kilpatrick scored 12 off the bench.

"I think we would be hard-pressed to find a freshman who put up 18 points and 15 rebounds in her first college game," said Cook, referring to the performance of Nunn.  "Taylor Calvert, a bit undersized, just finds a way to get it done.  She was unbelievable on the boards, and Chobie's two threes were huge there at the end.  Every time she shoots it, she thinks it's a good shot and that's fine by me," said the Winthrop coach.

Cook found the tempo to his team's liking.  "We would like to score 87 points every night out, but I don't know if we can score that many.  We want to get it up and down the floor.  We want to play fast, but we also believe we can slow it down when we get into the half court and feed it in to our young post players," he said.  Troy, which was coming off a 2-25 season, showed the style of racehorse basketball they will play under new head coach Chanda Rigby.   The Trojans will never need to worry about the 30-second clock expiring as they like to rip it up and down the court as well. 

After trailing 39-36 at halftime, Winthrop came back out in the second half to go on a 13-0 run in the opening 3:19 to take a 49-39 lead. McClanahan, who saw just seven minutes of action in the first half after being whistled for two quick fouls, led the early charge in the final period.  She scored the first basket and that was followed by a trey by Choibekova to give Winthrop a 41-39 lead, its first since it led 5-3 in the game's early moments. Calvert closed out the run with a lay up after grabbing one of her 10 offensive rebounds.  

Winthrop took its largest lead of the game at 57-46 with 12:32 remaining on a 10-foot jumper in the lane by Kilpatrick, but over the next six minutes, Troy went on a 19-7 run to claim the lead at 65-64 when Kourtney Coleman connected on jumper.  The Trojans extended the lead to four at 75-71 following a 3-pointer by their leading scorer Ashley Beverly-Kelly with 4:03 left to play.  After Nunn tied the game for the sixth time at 77-77 with two free throws at the 2:28 mark, Choibekova hit two crucial 3-pointers over a span of 66 seconds to give the Lady Eagles a six-point cushion with 57 ticks left on the game clock.  Troy got a 3-pointer from Jasmine Pitts to cut the Winthrop lead to a single point at 83-82 with 39 seconds remaining, but the Lady Eagles sealed the deal with three straight free throws by McClanahan in the final 27 seconds.

Winthrop connected on 41.7 percent from the floor (30-72) and outrebounded the Trojans 58-54.  The lone negative hd to be in the turnover department where the Lady Eagles committed 29, including 18 in the first half. 

Next up for Winthrop will be a game at nationally ranked Ohio State this Saturday at 12 noon.  That game will be the first of six straight road contests for the Lady Eagles.  They will fly directly from Columbus, OH to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a three-game tournament appearance in the Hardwood Tournament of Hope, Nov. 20-22.  Winthrop will open against Mississippi State and will face either Oregon State or UC-Santa Barbara in the second game.