Ramming Speed
11/30/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Nov. 30, 2009
Gametracker | Live Audio
Complete Upstate Game Notes in PDF Format 
SPARTANBURG, S.C. - Out to a 4-2 start for the second straight season, the USC Upstate women's basketball team will look to hand head coach Tammy George her 50th win at Upstate on Tuesday when the team heads to Winston-Salem State for a 7 p.m. showdown.
Upstate, with a win, can get out to its best start in the D-I era and its best start since the 2002-03 squad started out 5-2. George is also looking to become just the third coach in school history to reach 50 wins on the sidelines at the Spartanburg school.
The Spartans have played well in victories over S.C. State and UNC Asheville, forcing 60 turnovers and averaging 83 points per game in the victories. Five Spartans, freshman Tee'Ara Copney, sophomore Kendra Wallace, juniors Sharniece Wadelington and Chelsea McMillan and senior Koko Richardson all averaged double figures in the wins.
Winston-Salem State enters the game with a 2-4 record after back-to-back losses to Morehead State and Furman.
Spartan Notables
• The Spartans are 6-6 all-time on Dec. 1, last falling at Georgia Southern, 81-66, in 2007.
• Upstate is 7-7 all-time against schools from the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, but it is 3-1 since moving to D-I in 2007.
• Head coach Tammy George is just one win shy of the third-best mark in school history of Tammy Holder, who won 50 games from 1988-91.
• Senior Courtney Hawkins is just two treys away from becoming the fifth player in school history to reach 100 in a career.
• Senior Courtney Hawkins is also just one steal away from tying Heather Abrams' seventh-best mark in school history of 161 steals set from 1993-97.
• Sophomore Kendra Wallace has hit a 3-pointer in a career-high 13 straight games, including in all six games of this season.
• Sophomore Lesley Daniel is averaging 5.3 assists per game in the last three games.
• Freshman Lauren McRoberts tied career highs with nine points and two steals and notched a career-high eight rebounds against UNC Asheville.
Scouting Winston-Salem State
Winston-Salem State enters the game with a 2-4 record after back-to-back losses to Morehead State and Furman.
The Lady Rams have had success against the A-Sun this year, though, beating Lipscomb, 76-63, on Nov. 20. The team also posted a 66-65 overtime win over Presbyterian on Nov. 21, whom the Spartans play on Dec. 30.
The Rams are led by Rene Rector, who is averaging 13.2 points and 2.3 assists per game and Vontisha Woods, who is averaging 9.5 points and 8.8 rebounds per game. Porsche Harrell leads the squad with 4.8 assists and 2.1 steals per game.
Winston-Salem State, now in its fourth year at the Division I level, will leave the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference at the end of the season and rejoin Division II and the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, renewing the 61-year relationship between the school and the conference.
Tammy's Totals
Head coach Tammy George, in her fifth year at USC Upstate, is moving up the school's career wins list. The sixth coach of 14 at Upstate to post three 10-win seasons, George moved ahead of Carmon Nelon (1995-99) and into fourth on Upstate's career coaching victories chart with the win over North Greenville on Nov. 13. Now George, who has 49 career wins, has her sights set on the third slot, currently held by Tammy Holder, who won 50 games from 1988-91. George, a 1993 graduate of UNC Charlotte, coached Brevard for two seasons, compiling a 43-21 record before moving to Upstate in 2005-06, when she led the team to the NCAA Division II Tournament for the first time since 1995.
The Downtown Train
The 2009-10 Spartans already have a pair of players in the all-time top 10 in career 3-pointers and each will look to become just the fifth and sixth players to reach 100 career 3-pointers in an Upstate uniform during the season. Senior Courtney Hawkins is currently fifth in school history with 98 threes, needing just two more to reach the mark. Sophomore Kendra Wallace, after hitting 72 as a freshman, is already seventh in school history, passing Shannon Pallardy's mark of 80 with her first of four treys against UNC Asheville. She needs 16 to reach 100 career trifectas.
Thefts A-Plenty
In a town internationally known for the A-Plenty from the Beacon Drive-In, the Spartans have been just as unwelcome to its opponents thanks to a pair of new thieves on the squad. Freshman Tee'Ara Copney and junior Sharniece Wadelington have terrorized their opponents this season, combining for 32 steals in six games, an average of 5.3 per game. Both players have also posted at least one steal in each game this season.
Copney enters the week third in the A-Sun in steals, thanks to 17 steals. The freshman guard pick-pocketed Longwood five times and she has multiple steals in five contests. The steals aren't the only remarkable part of Copney's game, as those steals have led to a lot of easy lay-ups, with Copney responsible for 16 of Upstate's 42 fastbreak points this year.
Wadelington is right behind Copney amongst the A-Sun leaders, entering the week fourth with 15 steals. The 5-7 guard has pick-pocketed four teams three times, and like Copney, she has multiple steals in five games.
Slump-Busted
Sophomore Kendra Wallace snapped out of a slump, for her anyway, when she canned four 3-pointers and scored 14 points against UNC Asheville on Nov. 28, marking her first double-figure scoring effort in four games, which tied for the longest stretch in her career. Ironically, even as the 3-point specialist struggled to find a rhythm, Wallace still averaged 6.5 points and 1.2 3-pointers per game.
The Streak
Sophomore Kendra Wallace extended her streak of consecutive games with a 3-pointer made to 13 games on Nov. 28 against UNC Asheville, breaking her previous career high of 12 set from Jan. 3-Feb. 2 of her freshman year. Wallace, who canned four 3-pointers against the Bulldogs, started the new streak just five days later on Feb. 7, when she dropped in four treys against Stetson. During the streak, Wallace has averaged 10.8 points, scoring 140 points, and hit 32.6 percent (30-for-92) of her 3-point attempts. The 5-9 West Virginian still has a way to go, though, before reaching the school record, set by Stephanie Feyes, who drilled a three in 24 straight games from Nov. 22, 2003-March 2, 2004.
Daniel's Dish
Sophomore Lesley Daniel has continued to develop as a point guard for the Spartans, as she enters Tuesday's game sixth in the A-Sun, averaging 4.33 assists per game. Amazingly, Daniel is just eight months removed from a knee injury that took her from the court for the last four games of her freshman year. The 5-5 southpaw has posted five four-assist games, including tying a career high with six assists at S.C. State on Nov. 28. Daniel is a gritty, hard-nosed ballhandler as a freshman that also has an ability to score in bunches, as she notched five 10-point games during 2008-09, although her season-high is nine this year.
Into The Fire
Head coach Tammy George has not been shy about playing freshmen during Upstate's first three years of Division I play. In fact, Upstate's three freshmen in 2008-09 averaged 23.6 minutes of court time per player during the season. Kendra Wallace led the way, playing 1,004 minutes, an average of 34.6 minutes per night. In 2007-08, the Spartans' five freshmen averaged 10.8 minutes per night, but three of them averaged more than 15.0 minutes per game. In the first six games of the 2009-10 season, the four Spartan freshmen have averaged 14.2 minutes, 4.6 points and 2.3 rebounds each per game.
The Magic Number
With the 78-60 win over UNC Asheville, USC Upstate once again proved its magic number remains 70. When the team scores more than 70 points for head coach Tammy George, the Spartans win more than 70 percent of the time in the D-I era. Upstate is 13-5 (.722) in games in which it reaches 70 points, including all four of its wins during the 2009-10 campaign. Upstate was 7-3 when scoring more than 70 points in 2008-09. The team has lost just once in the D-I era when scoring 80 or more points.
