With four regular season games remaining, the ETSU women’s basketball team will begin its final home stand on Thursday as the Bucs host Wofford at 7 p.m. inside Brooks Gym.
Thursday’s game will pit two of the top teams in the Southern Conference against each other, as Wofford enters 17-7 overall and is tied atop the league standings with a 7-3 conference record. The Bucs are 19-7 overall and one game back at 6-4 in conference play.
ABOUT THE BUCS
- ETSU has a 19-7 overall record and are 6-4 in league play.
- The Bucs have won six of the last seven games, including a pair of wins last week at Samford and Mercer. The wins marked ETSU’s first-ever road swing sweep of the Bulldogs and Bears.
- Yesterday, sophomore Kendall Folley (Lebanon, Ohio) was named Southern Conference Player of the Week for the second time this season. Folley averaged 20.0 points over the two games last week, including a career-high 28 points at Samford.
- ETSU broke the school record last week for best win improvement from season-to-season, going from six wins last season to 19 already this season. The 13-win improvement broke the previous school record of 12 set in the 2014-15 season.
- ETSU is also four wins away from tying the all-time school record for single season wins, set in 2009-10 with a 23-9 record. That season is also tied with two others for the fewest losses in a season all-time (since expanding the schedule to over 15 games in 1974-75). There are four regular season games remaining.
- ETSU has enjoyed nation’s current best turnaround this season under first year Buccaneer head coach Brenda Mock Brown. Coach Mock also had one of the most storied turnarounds of all-time at UNC Asheville in 2016, improving by 16 games to rank fifth all-time in NCAA D1 Women’s Basketball history.
- ETSU’s 13-win improvement ranks atop the nation ahead of both Illinois and UIC at 12 games, followed by Virginia with a 10-win improvement. Last year’s most improved team was LSU with a 12 game improvement (17 more wins with 10 more opportunities).
- Since the start of the program in 1968, ETSU has never had a season that brought four separate four-game win streaks (or longer). ETSU enjoyed two four-game win streaks to start 8-2 overall, then had a five-game win streak to improve to 13-3. The most recent win streak of four brought ETSU’s record to 17-6. The last time ETSU had three such streaks was the 2014-15 season that produced a 21-12 overall record. Two wins this weekend would make it five such win streaks.
- For the last nine weeks, ETSU has either received votes or been ranked in the College Insider Women’s Mid-Major Top 25 Poll. This week, the Bucs were outside the Top 25 but received 21 votes to sit six spots out.
- The Bucs finished non-conference play with a 13-3 record — the best non-conference finish in modern era program history. That era began when the SoCon began sponsoring a women’s basketball championship in 1983-84 — the same season ETSU finished with 11 non-conference wins.
- The Bucs are averaging 62.8 points per game, while ranking 16th in the nation with just 54.7 points allowed per game. The Bucs also rank 20th in the nation in offensive rebounding with 14.7 per game.
- Graduate guard Jiselle Thomas (Norwalk, Ohio) leads the Bucs with 15.2 points per game to rank tied for fifth in the league. She has scored in double figures in 21 of her 26 games. She also has five games where she scored 20 or more points, and ETSU is 5-0 in those games.
- Sophomore Nevaeh Brown (Charlotte, N.C.) is averaging 11.1 PPG and has scored in double figures in 17 of her 23 appearances, including 12 in the last outing at Mercer.
- This season, ETSU in on track for its first winning campaign since 2018, where the team finished 20-13 overall, 11-3 in the SoCon and made an appearance in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament (WNIT). ETSU has made three NCAA tournament appearances all-time (2008, 2009, 2010) and four WNIT appearances (1995, 2006, 2015, 2018).
ABOUT THE TERRIERS
- Wofford enters with a 17-7 record and a 7-3 mark in league play.
- ETSU and Wofford are the only two teams in the SoCon with less than 10 overall losses.
- The Terriers have won four of the last five games since their last meeting with ETSU, including an 83-62 win over Western Carolina this past Saturday in Spartanburg.
- Wofford is 5-2 in games decided by five points or less and 6-3 in games decided by 10 or less.
- The Terriers have the highest scoring offense in the SoCon with 70.4 PPG, ahead of Samford at 67.5. Wofford gives up 65.0 PPG defensively for a +5.4 margin, ranking second behind ETSU’s +8.1 margin.
- Wofford also has the best assist-to-turnover ratio (1.1) and turnover margin (+5.88) in the SoCon.
- Rachael Rose leads the Terriers in every major category, including scoring (16.0 PPG), rebounding (5.8 RPG) and assists (4.2 APG). She is second in the league in scoring and assists while ranking 11th in rebounding.
- Jackie Carman is also a key player for Wofford with 15.2 PPG to rank fifth in the league — tied with ETSU’s Jiselle Thomas.
- The Terriers are led by Jimmy Garrity, who has a 101-99 record over seven seasons at Wofford. His 100th win came at Furman earlier this month.
SERIES HISTORY
- Thursday marks the 38th all-time meeting.
- ETSU has a 25-12 advantage in the series with 12 home wins and 13 road wins.
- ETSU won the last meeting inside Brooks Gym, 70-64, to snap an eight-game skid in games against Wofford.
- The Bucs dominated the last meeting in Spartanburg with a 75-58 win on Jan. 21.
