Women's Basketball | 3/8/2016 10:01:00 AM
Southland Conference Teams and Individual Award Winners ABILENE – Abilene Christian head women's basketball coach
Julie Goodenough Tuesday was voted Southland Conference Coach of the Year. In only their third year of NCAA DI basketball, the fourth-year head coach guided the Wildcats to a 26-3 record, regular-season championship and berth in the WNIT.
Although these accolades are plenty enough to get the attention of any voter, there was so much else this season for people to applaud as Goodenough and her team earned countless victories both on and off the court.
As evident by its 3.44 team grade-point average posted last fall, Goodenough's student-athletes proved they work just as hard in the classroom. Junior forward
Sydney Shelstead made the CoSIDA Academic All-District Team for the second year in the row as an engineering major with a 3.86 GPA. She was one of four Wildcats nominated for this award, while three other starters maintained GPAs well above a 3.0.
The Wildcats also are coached to care for their communities. So there they are as often as they can be serving their friends at Disability Resources, Inc., and in early February just days removed from their only conference loss at Lamar, ACU permanently welcomed Albany's
Hannah Snyder onto its roster.
The Wildcats were introduced to 14-year-old Hannah last fall through Team IMPACT, which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose mission is to improve the quality of life for children facing life-threatening and chronic illnesses through the power of team. Hannah has courageously battled cerebral palsy and epilepsy since birth, but was nothing but smiles when the team presented her with a jersey following her introductory press conference.
Goodenough's gang then took the opportunity to rally around one of its own in
Sara Williamson this past month. When the freshman guard from Rockwall learned last fall that her mother, Sue, was diagnosed with breast cancer, the team helped organize a GoFundMe.com site and raised $4,000 within one month to help cover the family's medical expenses.
Even with many other examples left unmentioned, it's safe to say this program under Goodenough's direction has truly lived up to its motto of 'Godly Women Striving For Excellence.' And because these young ladies are so well instructed to take care of themselves, their grades, neighbors and one another, finding success on the basketball court has become second nature.
The Wildcats were 4-1 at the end of November, and despite suffering a 31-point loss at Kansas State, ACU bounced back with a 19-point home win over UTSA followed by consecutive blowout wins of Southwest and Missouri Valley. ACU's win over the Roadrunners felt like a possible turning point, as it was the school's first win over UTSA in three seasons but the results from there only kept becoming more impressive.
ACU was on the road for almost all of December and started the month with a tough six-point loss at Texas Tech. The Wildcats trailed by as many as 14 points late in the third quarter but ran out of time in their comeback attempt during which they got to within two points twice in the fourth quarter.
That loss could have sent this team into a tailspin, but the Wildcats completely reversed course and took off on a program-altering 14-game winning streak that was one of the longest in all of college hoops. Their first two wins came at high altitude vs. Grand Canyon and Eastern Michigan while at the Air Force Classic. After final exams they made their first flight of the year and defeated both Eastern Washington and Idaho. The Vandals came into that game as one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the nation and were receiving votes in the AP Top-25 poll.
ACU never did crack either of the major national polls, but the head coaches who take part in the weekly
CollegeInsider.com Mid Major Top-25 poll certainly began to take notice of the Wildcats just prior to the start of the New Year. The Wildcats received their first votes on December 27 and reached a season-high No. 17 ranking five weeks later.
ACU also saw a dramatic rise in their RPI, going from 53rd to a season-best 12th from December 1 to January 5.
The Wildcats' conference season started Jan. 2, and ironically enough it began against a Central Arkansas team that would be chasing the Wildcats for first place all season after losing the league lid-lifter, 61-49. After that win, it felt like ACU purposefully plotted a revenge tour of the Southland, beating up all the teams that humiliated them a season ago.
The defending tournament champions from Northwestern State lost 67-46 to the Wildcats, and then the Nicholls team that limited ACU to 39 points last January, lost on their home court, 71-68. The Wildcats once again drubbed another preseason favorite in McNeese, 79-62, and put a fourth-quarter whipping on the defending regular-season champions from Stephen F. Austin en route to an 85-70 win.
ACU then continued its run of success against teams from Sam Houston State, Incarnate Word and Houston Baptist, setting up its back-to-back series with Lamar, which was 3-0 vs. the Wildcats with three comeback victories.
The Cardinals had no answers for the Wildcats in game one, losing 90-62, at Moody Coliseum, but they got back in the win column five days later in Beaumont, handing ACU a 63-54 defeat and surviving a 30-point night from
Alexis Mason.
The Wildcats remained on the road after losing to the Cardinals and two days later clobbered Southeastern with a convincing 88-72 victory in Hammond, La. On Feb. 10 the Wildcats were back at home and reclaimed sole possession of first place as their season sweep of Sam Houston State was coupled with a UCA loss to Northwestern State.
The league's crown was now for ACU's taking. And no Southland team with the exception of the Sugar Bears was playing anywhere near the level of the Wildcats, who with six games left on the schedule, were slated to play the second weakest strength of schedule in the nation. This stretch included two games vs. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, rematches vs. Southeastern, Houston Baptist, and Incarnate Word, plus a home game vs. New Orleans.
But just as things were at their brightest for ACU, junior forward
Lizzy Dimba suffered a season-ending injury on Valentine's Day right in the middle of a bye weekend. The team feared the worst as soon as it happened during a non-contact practice drill but didn't get the official word from doctors until they were well on their way to Corpus Christi.
What hurt most was that Lizzy had started to return to form as one of the league' preeminent rebounders. She had 14 boards in the loss at Lamar and then had a 23-point / 11-rebound double-double vs. Southeastern followed by 13 points vs. Sam Houston State. In addition to losing one of their top rebounders and scorers, the Wildcats were now without someone who could grind out 30.0 minutes per game.
With only three days to figure how to replace Lizzy, Goodenough and her coaches opted to go small with 5-foot-4 senior point guard
Paris Webb. This move allowed
Suzzy Dimba to move back into the No. 4 position, while Mason transitioned into the role of a No. 3.
The games were closer without Lizzy in the lineup, but the confidence up-and-down the bench never waned. In her six starts to close the regular season, Webb averaged 30.0 minutes a game with 3.7 assists, and Suzzy reached double figures in scoring for each of those games, including a season-high 25 points vs. the Islanders. Suzzy also had double-doubles vs. Southeastern and Incarnate Word.
Mason didn't miss a beat offensively and recorded three 20-point games while shooting 50 percent from the field, and Swinford averaged 10.7 points a game. Shelstead also thrived in averaging 14.7 points and 7.8 rebounds per game with double-doubles vs. Corpus Christi and Southeastern.
This level of talent and resiliency on display every night by the Wildcats ultimately led to a perfect ending of the regular season. An emotional Senior Day recognition ceremony was held in honor of Webb and Swinford prior to the game, and after another 40-minute war with the Islanders, they returned to center court with their teammates and coaches to celebrate their winning of the conference title.
ACU's overall win total is the fourth largest in program history, trailing only a pair of 31-win seasons in 1980-81 and 1995-96, and a 27-win team from 1987-88. The Wildcats' 17 conference victories, however, are a program best and the most by any Southland Conference team vs. its league since 2003 when UT-Arlington won 17 games.
As for Goodenough – a 22-year coaching veteran – this has been her winningest season since leading Hardin-Simmons to a 26-2 record and the NCAA DIII Sweet 16 in 2001-02. Her highest season win total of 27 came during the 1999-00 campaign as she led the Cowgirls to the Elite 8.
The upcoming postseason appearance will be the 10th of Goodenough's career, but first in the WNIT. She led Charleston Southern twice to the WBI and made it to the NCAA DII regionals with the Wildcats in 2013 following their share of the Lone Star Conference Championship with Midwestern State.
Goodenough was voted Lone Star Coach of the Year in 2013 and won six coaching awards during her impeccable nine-year tenure at Hardin-Simmons from 1993-02.
ACU has only known six head coaches in its 45-year history and all but the first – Dr. Joyce Curtis – has won at least one Coach of the Year award. Burl McCoy won the LSC's trophy in 1985 and 1986. Suzanne Fox and Wayne Williams won theirs in 1996 and 1998, and Shawna Lavender received the league's top coaching honor in 2008.
ACU completed the regular season ranked No. 1 in the Southland Conference in seven categories most notably scoring (75.6 ppg), rebounding (40.9 rpg), assists (13.8 apg) and blocks (4.4). The Wildcats also had the top scoring margin of +14.3, and posted the best 3-point defense (.279), while making the most 3-pointers per game (7.9).
Under Goodenough's watch Swinford will leave ACU as its all-time leader in 3-point attempts (700) and earlier this season Mason broke the school's season records for most 3-pointers made and attempted with 87 and 242.
Within the national rankings, ACU was consistently ranked among the top-25 schools in scoring, margin of victory, 3-pointers made per game and steals (10.5 spg).
The Wildcats are off from competition all this week as they wait to hear who their opponent will be for the upcoming WNIT. Selection Night is Monday, March 14 and first-round games are scheduled from March 16 to 18.
