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Notables
ACU women's basketball makes its Southland Conference Championship Tournament debut this week despite winning the previous two regular-season championships during their NCAA D1 mandated probationary period ... Those back-to-back titles earned the Wildcats invites to the WNIT, where they posted a 1-2 record vs. teams from UTEP (L, 62-66), Oklahoma State (W, 66-56) and SMU (L, 52-59) ... ACU qualified for 25 Lone Star Conference Tournaments between 1983 and 2013, posting an overall record of 26-20 (.565) ... The Wildcats haven't won a conference tournament game since 2008 when they beat Texas A&M-Commerce in the LSC quarterfinals, 88-82 ... ACU won the LSC Championship six times in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1996, 1998 and 1999.
ACU ended the conference regular season on a five-game losing streak; however, the Wildcats started on a six-game winning streak, averaging above 80.0 points per game vs. teams from New Orleans, Sam Houston, McNeese, Southeastern, Houston Baptist and Northwestern State ... From there they held off No. 5 seed Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, 61-59, at home, rallied from 13 points down to win 75-72 at Sam Houston State, and beat Incarnate Word at home courtesy of a buzzer-beating layup by
Sara Williamson ... The Wildcats have yet to record a losing season within Southland Conference play since entering the league in 2013-14, going 8-6 (7th), 9-9 (8th), 17-1 (1st), 16-2 (T1st) and 9-9 (7th).
ACU began its fifth season of Southland Conference competition and first as a NCAA postseason qualifier Dec. 28 with an 80-70 win home win vs. New Orleans ... The Wildcats climbed out of a 8-point hole with a 14-4 run to end the first quarter and pushed its lead to eight (38-30) at halftime ... The conference opener saw five Wildcats score in double figures ...
Dominique Golightly,
Breanna Wright and
Taudenciah Oluoch all scored 14 points ...
Sara Williamson dropped in 11 points ...
Josie Larson scored 13 points in 13 minutes coming off the bench ... Wright reached 300 career points ... Golightly contributed a then-career high 38 minutes, and with 12 rebounds, posted her third career double-double ... UNO tied a then-opponent season low with 29 rebounds.
Sophomore
Breanna Wright earned her first career postseason citation March 5 in being named Third Team All-Southland Conference ... This season she averaged 13.6 points and 3.7 rebounds in addition to dishing out 128 assists, blocking 19 shots and coming away with 42 steals ... Wright's 36.21 minutes per game ranked her third among all Southland players and 59th in NCAA D1 ... She additionally cracked the conference's top-10 rankings in assists, assists per game (3.6), assist/turnover ratio (1.33), and was a solid 3-point shooter, ranking fourth in field goal percentage (.331) and seventh with 2.04 3-point field goals per game ... Wright has played in all 60 games since joining the Wildcats, and saw increases in production this season in close to every category ... She went from averaging 5.5 points and 3.4 rebounds as a freshman to 13.6 and 3.7 as a sophomore ... Wright hit double digits in scoring 19 times and recorded her first 30-point game on Dec. 16 vs. Midwestern State, but her best week by far took place in late January / early February when she totaled 58 points in back-to-back road games at Lamar and Sam Houston State ... Wright buried 8-of-14 3-pointers in a six-point loss to the regular season champion Cardinals, and three days later she totaled 31 points in a 13-point comeback vs. the Bearkats, hitting seven triples to go along with an 8-for-8 performance at the free-throw line.
The Wildcats (337-460, .733) are led at the free-throw line by sophomore
Breanna Wright ... Her .888 percentage (95-107) is first in the league and 13th in the NCAA ... Wright only has missed seven of 73 free throws since the start of Southland Conference competition, which includes a 12-of-13 performance at McNeese ... Since then she is 50-for-56 at the line over the past 14 games.
ACU is one of the youngest teams in NCAA D1 basketball this season according to research compiled by the Elon Sports Information Office ... Elon and ACU have the sixth youngest team with each of their rosters composed of 75 percent freshmen and sophomores ... The only schools younger than the Wildcats and Phoenix in terms of first and second-year players are UNC Greensboro (87.7% of roster), Florida International (80) and San Jose State (80), Utah State (76.9) and Air Force (76.5) ... The seven schools that have more Fr. on the roster are FIU, SJSU, Air Force, Elon, Savannah State, Fordham and Kennesaw State ... Of the 12 eligible players on ACU's roster, five are freshmen and nine are either freshmen or sophomores ... Going into March Madness, ACU is one of only three of these aforementioned schools with a winning record ... Elon is 22-7 and Fordham is 22-9.
ACU's Feb. 10 win over Incarnate Word was the Wildcats' 15th victory in a 28-game regular-season, giving
Julie Goodenough and her team a winning record for a sixth-straight season in Abilene ... Goodenough has never experienced a losing season in the Key City ... She posted nine consecutive winning marks at Hardin-Simmons from 1993-02, and is working on a streak of seven-straight winning campaigns that began with her last Charleston Southern team in 2011-12 ... That team went 17-15 and qualified for the WBI ... Goodenough has registered 18 winning seasons in 24 years of coaching and has an all-time winning percentage of .596 (409-277).
