Joli Robinson’s women’s basketball team may have gotten its biggest win since North Carolina Central University left the CIAA on Saturday, when the Lady Eagles upset traditional Big South power Liberty 50-48 at McDougald-McLendon Gym.
As the win ended a seven-game losing streak for the Lady Eagles, perhaps nobody could really have seen it coming. Chalk it up to heart and hustle, a few timely baskets down the stretch, and the magic of the Eagles’ Nest.
NCCU has had its share of struggles in every sport since beginning to play NCAA Division I schedules in the fall of 2007 in preparation for the move to full Division I membership next season, but that hasn’t been the case in women’s basketball games at home.
The Lady Eagles are 19-8 at home over the span, but they have never hosted the kind of challenge they’ll see on Tuesday night at 6.
That’s when NCCU (2-8) will host West Virginia in the schools’ first meeting in Durham. And make no mistake here — this isn’t West Virginia Tech or ancient CIAA rival West Virginia State or even the former College of West Virginia that’s now Mountain State.
This is the big dog.
Mike Carey’s Big East Mountaineers are 11-0 and ranked No. 6 in the country, and when they visit NCCU it will be the Eagles’ first home game against a Top Ten-ranked Division I team in any sport.
“I think it’s great for the university to have a program like West Virginia’s that’s willing to come on our campus,” Robinson said. “It also gives our fans an opportunity to see a team like this play and see us compete against a team like this. It’s wonderful.
“We need for our fans to pack the house. This is big for our seniors to have the opportunity to play a big team like West Virginia. It will make the kids feel great if they’re really being supported by our fans.”
That’s right. NCCU not only needs to play at the absolute top of its game for 40 hard minutes, but it also needs a strong “sixth man” in the stands, a crowd that’s just as excited about playing the game as the team is.
Only 183 people got to see the Lady Eagles shock Liberty, and they’ll need many more than that in the house if they’re going to shock the women’s basketball world with an upset.
“We get a lot of love from the crowd here,” said sophomore forward Chasidy Williams, who had one of those games most people can only dream about when she went 6-for-6 from the field and 6-for-6 from the line in the upset of the Flames. “It’s so much different from playing on the road. I’m really excited about this game. This is a big opportunity. I’m excited, I’m ready to play, ready to go all out and show everybody what we’ve got, all of it. Everybody’s just got to play with heart and play strong.
“West Virginia is bigger and probably stronger than we are, but we’ve got to have heart and not give up or pout if something goes wrong. We have to go right at them. I watched on TV when the guys played at Oklahoma (a heartbreaking 71-63 overtime loss in Norman on Nov. 15), and if they can play a game like that, so can we.”
Now how did this home game come about? Because unlike most of the bigger schools the Eagles have played during the transition, WVU didn’t simply write a check and have NCCU come to Morgantown for a one-shot deal. The Mountaineers agreed to a “two-for-one” contract, meaning a three-game series in which WVU would have two of the games on its home court and one at NCCU. Robinson insisted on the middle game being in Durham.
WVU won the first meeting 70-31 in the season opener two seasons ago. Redshirt senior post Jori Nwachukwu, now the only player remaining from NCCU’s CIAA championship team in 2007, had 10 points and nine rebounds in that contest and was the Lady Eagles’ best player that night.
“I think we have to approach it as any other game,” Nwachukwu said. “They’re a basketball team just like we are. We play the team, not the school. We just take everything in stride, go in and prepare like we do for any game, and pray that we have another upset and another outcome like we did on Saturday.
“Our biggest thing, since we are undersized, is rebounding. We’re struggling a little bit in that area right now. We’re trying to find our niche. But once we get our rebounding together we can be dominant. That’s the only flaw that I can see. It’s just another thing we have to work on.”
Senior guard Shanise Blanks said she’s counting on the home-court advantage to help the Lady Eagles be competitive against the bigger opponent.
“We’re home and nobody wants to lose at home, so that’s just how we take it,” Blanks said. “It’s our court and they come to play us. We just know we don’t lose at home. Before a lot of us got here, that was just their motto. We’ll be ready. We’ll have our game plan ready. We just have to play that game like we’ve played every other game. We need to play the way we played against Liberty. We’re excited about it.”
Junior guard Blaire Houston said defending the home floor is something the Lady Eagles talk about before every game on campus.
“We just beat a big school and kind of showed everybody what we could do,” Houston said. “I think it was the biggest win we’ve had since I’ve been here. We don’t lose at home. That’s our motto and we make it our business to live up to it.”
NCCU Eagles Insider Mike Potter is an award-winning journalist with more than two decades of experience covering North Carolina Central University.
