A new coach and a new mentality have a lot of Southern Conference women’s basketball coaches readjusting their thinking concerning the UNC Greensboro team.
That was Trina Patterson’s goal from the start.
The Spartans, who had not won double-digit games in six years, are 10-11 this season with a 1-5 mark in league play entering Saturday’s game against Western Carolina. They had become an afterthought to most opponents, but with a core of able freshmen mixed in with some talented upperclassmen, the team feels good not only about this season but moving forward.
“I knew this team has been very competitive,” Patterson, who was the top assistant at Old Dominion prior to taking over at UNCG, said recently. “There are some really good skill sets, and we really just focus on the next play when we talk about huddling up. We didn’t want them to try to do anything tricky – just focus on the fundamentals.”
The Spartans were down 50-31 to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga late in the third quarter last Saturday but held the Mocs to four field goals in the final 14:18 and used a flurry of 3-pointers to rally, cutting the final margin to three and having a chance to tie the game in the final seconds.