 The 2009-10 season has been nothing short of magical for Appalachian State women’s basketball.
The Mountaineers have turned around a bottom-of-the-conference program with no winning season in four years into a well-oiled, 18-11 machine that tied for second in the Southern Conference and earned a first round bye in the 2010 SoCon Tournament.
You might expect a squad with that kind of success to be led by seasoned veterans finally coming into their own, but you’d be wrong.
The Mountaineer drive is fueled in large part by players in their first year with the team, although head coach Darcie Vincent said they aren’t really freshmen.
“If you walk up and ask them, they’ll say, ‘no, we’re sophomores,’” Vincent said. “We told them [summer school] was their freshman year, and when they returned to campus in August they were sophomores.”
These fresh faces saw their SoCon Tournament debut in the quarterfinals Saturday against Furman.
A tie score at the half indicated the young Mountaineer mojo might be wearing off at the wrong time, but the Apps reminded everyone why they are not just typical first-year players with typical first-year jitters.
“When I said to them ‘guys, you lose this and you don’t have postseason play,’ all these freshmen/sophomores went out on a run,” Vincent said. “That’s when we started playing harder.”
The Mountaineers went on to dominate the second half, outscoring the Paladins 43-25.
“You would think it should be the other way around: they’re scared, they’re nervous, they’re going to be tight,” Vincent said. “No, they like challenges. We have a bunch of young kids here that thrive on that type of competitiveness, and they won’t buckle. They’re going to stay strong.”
By the final buzzer, three freshmen (or “sophomores”) were among Appalachian’s top four scorers, including Anna Freeman, who put up 14 points and 10 rebounds despite only playing 21 minutes due to early foul trouble in the first half.
“Anna does so much for you that you don’t see on the stat sheet,” Vincent said. “She just has a calming effect on the court.”
If Freeman acts like she’s been here before, it might be because she has.
“We joke about being the Cinderella story, but my high school was in the exact same situation. We didn’t have the best past and then we had a big turnaround,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to come to Appalachian. I wanted to be part of that group that got it turned around.”
Freeman’s noble enthusiasm is not lost on her teammates.
“She’s a big leader on the court. There hasn’t been a game all season where Anna hasn’t given it her all,” fellow freshman Ashlen Dewart said. “She’s definitely a big part of the heart behind this team, and we need her in this tournament.”
Freeman will lead the Mountaineers against Samford at 2:30 p.m. Sunday in the first SoCon semifinal the program has seen in a decade.
“We came up and watched Thursday and Friday, and we weren’t really a part of the tournament,” Freeman said. “Now it feels like we’re here and we’re actually doing our thing.”
The last semifinal appearance for the Mountaineers also marked their last SoCon Championship win.
“Well it’s time for another one,” Dewart said. “So we’re ready.”
Story by: LILES NEAL, Associate Editor for Production Operations |
