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ROCK HILL, SC—For the second straight year, the Winthrop women's basketball team will face Radford in the opening round of the Advanced Auto Parts Big South Conference Women's Basketball Championship. Third-seeded Winthrop will face sixth-seeded Radford, Friday evening at 7:30 p.m. at the Millis Center in High Point, NC.

Winthrop finished the regular season with an 18-12 overall record and a 12-6 league mark. The 12 league wins are the most by any Eagle team in school history. The 18 wins are tied for the most in a season by a Winthrop team. The team is 8-2 in the last 10 games and has won 12 of its last 16 games.

"I think the first thing is we have tremendous momentum going into the tournament," said head coach Marlene Stollings, who has won more games than any other first-year head coach at Winthrop. Very solid endning to the season and I think we're peaking at just the right time in a lot of areas. Our skill set has improved drastically from the beginning of the year. That's something we as a staff pride ourselves on. There are a lot of positives as we head into the tournament."

In the 2010-11 conference tourney Winthrop upset second-seeded Radford, 59-38 as it was just the second time in school history the team had knocked off the Highlanders in the postseason.

This year Winthrop swept the regular season series for the first time in school history, one of four schools it took both games against this season; a school record for conference series sweeps in a season.

Despite sweeping the series, it will be a tough game for the Eagles as they held on for a 66-64 victory on the road in the first meeting and caught the Highlanders on the tail end of a road stretch of five out of seven games on the road. Winthrop won the second meeting at home, 67-56 following the upset win over Liberty two days earlier.

The Eagles had their best finish in the standings since 2008-09 when the team finished 9-7 and tied Radford for third place. Winthrop ended up as the four-seed that year. It ties the highest finish by any Eagle team in history, who have been seeded third just once before in 2007-08. That year Winthrop defeated Charleston Southern in the first round before falling to Radford in the semi-finals.

This season has been a memorable one for the team and its fans as the Eagles have set many records both as a team and individually.
The quest for more records and achievements continue on Friday when the Eagles look to make their sixth trip in seven years to the second round of the tournament.

"In terms of the season itself, it's just been one of good success for us," said Stollings. "Our sights and goals have been very high and we haven't wavered from that. We've stayed right in there. I think it gives us a tremendous amount of confidence going into tournament play on Friday."

Sophomore Dequesha McClanahan finished the regular season as the only Big South player to average 20-plus points overall (20.8) and in league games only (21.8). The 5-8 guard passed the 1,000 career point mark on Monday in the win over Coastal Carolina. She's the first ever Winthrop player and second Big South player to do so before their junior season. She is also leading the league and ranks 4^th nationally in assists per game (7.3). Her 220 assists on the season are a Winthrop and Big South single-season record. On Monday she also broke the record for most points in a season at Winthrop, but is tied for the best scoring average in school history.

Junior Diana Choibekova quickly became one of the all-time three-point threats in Winthrop and Big South history. The 5-11 guard opened her career as an Eagle with a game-high 22 points in the season-opening win over Troy on the road. Six days later, Choibekova set the school record for threes in a game with nine and eventually bettered that with a Big South record tying performance with 10 against Gardner-Webb. Choibekova has been a steady scorer for the team at 16.1 points and has 24 double-figure games and nine games with 20 or more points. Not only does she score, but Choibekova is the team's leading rebounder at 6.5. She has 196 on the year and is looking to becoming the first true guard in school history to finish the season as the leading rebounder. She finished the regular season with back-to-back double-doubles as she scored 14 points and had 10 rebounds against Charleston Southern before posting 16 points and 10 rebounds against Coastal Carolina. She currently has 119 threes on the year, which is seven shy of tying the NCAA record.

The emergence of red-shirt freshman Samiya Wright has really made the team more dangerous with a triple threat. Wright is coming off back-to-back games in which she set new career-highs in scoring. She posted a career-best 26 points in the win over Charleston Southern on Friday before going for 30 points in the win over Coastal Carolina on Monday. She is the third different Eagle to post 30 points on the year, which is the first time that's happened in school history. Wright is a threat to score inside and outside as she's already broke the Winthrop single-season mark for threes (63) and is now second all-time for most points by a freshman. The 5-8 guard missed all of last season with an injury and is not eligible for the All-Freshmen Team or the Big South Freshman of the Year. She's definitely posted all-conference numbers with a 13.4 scoring average while shooting 40 percent from the field and 40 percent behind the arc. She's also an 80 percent free throw shooter (68-83) and pulls in 3.8 rebounds per game.

Senior's Kaitlyn Rubino and TaQuoia Hammick seem to be playing with more urgency as of late as their careers wind down. Rubino came off the bench for eight rebounds (five offensive) against Charleston Southern on Friday and turned around on Monday to pull down eight rebounds again against Coastal Carolina. She had just 16 rebounds total in the six previous games. Hammick passed the 500 career points mark Monday and has also pulled down 16 rebounds the last two games (eight in each). She's also posted 15 points the last three games after scoring just 14 points in the previous six games. Rubino is shooting 61 percent from the field while Hammick is shooting 64 percent.

Another helping hand in the success is freshman Taylor Calvert. Since she became a starter 16 games ago, Winthrop 12-4 and Calvert has averaged 4.3 points, 7.6 rebounds and 1.6 steals in 28.4 minutes per game. She pulled down a career-high and Winthrop freshmen record 19 rebounds on Feb. 13 at UNC Asheville. Winthrop is outrebounding opponents 45.2 – 38.4 in that stretch. The team is also averaging nearly six more offensive boards per game.

Winthrop will face a Radford team that has been on a skid lately, having lost four of its last five games. However, it is a dangerous team that won seven straight including a 66-61 victory at High Point on Feb. 4, 2012. The Highlanders are coming off a tough road loss at league-leading Liberty, 72-66. The difference in the game came at the foul line where Radford was 8-for-12 and Liberty was 31-for-39. The Highlanders shot 50 percent from the field in the second half and outscored the Flames 46-42.

Junior Da'Naria Erwin Spencer drained a career-high five threes en route to a 27 point performance while Ashley Buckhannon, a junior guard, added 21 points, eight assists and three steals.

Erwin Spencer leads the team in scoring at 17.4 points per game and averaged a team-best 17.8 points per game in league play. She's shooting 45 percent from the floor and 76 percent from the line (103-for-135). She ranks fourth in the league in steals at 2.34. In the first two meetings against Winthrop this season, she's averaged 7.5 points, 3.5 assists and 2.5 steals while shooting 30 percent.

Buckhannon is second on the team at 14.8 points and is a 38 percent shooter while knocking down 61 threes on the year. She leads the team in steals (73) at 2.52, which ranks second in the Big South. She is also a solid free throw shooter at 77 percent (73-for-95). In her two games against Winthrop this season, she's averaging 10.5 points, 3.5 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.5 steals while shooting 22 percent.

Despite losing four of its last five (including an overtime loss), Radford has won eight of its last 11 games. The Highlanders lead the all-time series 50-14 and has a 6-3 mark against the Eagles in the conference  tournament. Winthrop has won three straight over Radford and five of the last six meetings.
In the history of the tournament, the three seed is 17-8 in their opening game and seven times the three seed has been to the championship game. There have been four championship games where the three seed won (most recently 2010-11).