UNCW women’s basketball primed to take that next step

WILMINGTON, N.C. (WWAY) — Last year, they nearly tripled their win total.

Now, UNCW women’s basketball hopes to raise it even further.

Head Coach Nicole Woods says she has confidence in the team’s offensive potential, but needs to shore up on defense.

Practice makes perfect, but game action is how she can truly evaluate her program.

“I need to see us get punched in the nose and see what our mistake response is going to be after that,” Woods said. “Are we going to tank it? Are we going to quit or are we going to punch back? That’s sometimes the hard thing to be able to simulate in practice. When you look up and you see that score going up or going down, those are the things that I’m going to be watching for us. How we handle the mistake response.”

(Photo: Colton Emswiler/WWAY)

The Seahawks were led by seniors and graduate students, but they are now gone.

Sophomore point guard Tia Dobson got a lot of starting action in her first year and is being looked on as an even greater focal point for the team.

“I had a very much senior team last year,” Dobson said. “I had to lead because I was a point guard, but this year I have to kind of take my leadership to the next level. There’s so many new people and not many seniors here. That’d be my biggest goal, just making sure people are in the right position on the court. Just leading the team to the best abilities.”

(Photo: Colton Emswiler/WWAY)

The top four scorers from a year ago have moved on. Senior guard Kate Hollifield is the top returner in that category.

She is one of the more experienced players on a team that is now going to be led by committee rather than being so top heavy.

“We want to get one-percent better every day,” Hollifield said. “We want to be consistent and not be too high or too low. We want to be level and stay level-headed. We want to be player led, but that comes with a lot of responsibility. We do want to be pass first. We don’t want to be passive, but we want to play team basketball. We’re not looking to play individually, we’re looking to get everyone involved and win as a team.”

(Photo: Colton Emswiler/WWAY)

Their 14 wins a year ago could have been more. The Seahawks lost three one-score games. If they went the other way, it would have given UNCW their first winning season since 2018-19.

Those type of games is what Woods needs to see her team persevere through as they try to make the NCAA tournament for the first time ever.

“I want them to be confident,” Woods said. “Everything that we’re doing right now is trying to put them in different scenarios that they can actually be in in the game. What I want is us to be in a tied ball game and we being down one with five seconds to go and us being able to draw up something and knowing that we’re going to go out there and execute it. Your defense travels, your offense can be fickle. We want to be able to defend folks and then to be able to start our transition break by securing the defensive rebound.”

(Photo: Colton Emswiler/WWAY)

The women begin the season on Monday at East Carolina.

The men open the year at home against Mount Olive the same day.