LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 19, 2023) – ETSU women’s basketball ends their best season in program history with a 96-49 win over Georgia Southern in the third-place game of the Women’s Basketball Invitational in Lexington, Ky., over the weekend. The team concluded their season with a (25-10) record.
Entering the 2022-23 season, the women’s basketball program had a new look at the head coaching position with the hire of Brenda Mock Brown. While hopes are always high when a coaching change takes place, there are questions that can only be answered in time.
Coach Mock answered those questions when she helped turn around a women’s basketball program that had not seen a winning season in five years. She went on to coach the biggest turnaround in NCAA D1 Women’s Basketball this season. The turn-around is the seventh largest in NCAA D1 women’s basketball history.
Coach Mock is not new to turning around programs as she did in 2015-16 with UNC-Ashville, where she coached the team from 9-22 to 26-7 the following year.
The 2017-18 season saw the Bucs go (20-13), almost capturing the SoCon title before falling to the No.1 seeded Mercer Bears. The Bucs would struggle for the next five seasons, compiling a combined record of (29-70) and seeing two different coaching changes before Coach Mock was hired in 2022.
In her first year at ETSU, Mock has already claimed the best record in program history at the school, and things are definitely looking up for a program that was struggling to win games.
The Bucs kicked off their 2022-23 season by surpassing the previous season’s win total with seven wins in the month of November alone, one more than they had in the entire 2021-22 season.
The Bucs would continue to win in strong fashion and even secure a 44-31 win against a Power 5 opponent in Vanderbilt at home in Brooks Gym on Dec. 1.
With their continued success, the Bucs would finish the season second place in SoCon standings with a (9-5) conference record. The Bucs were knocked out of the SoCon tournament by the eventual champions, No. 2 seed Chattanooga.
The Bucs were invited to participate in the Women’s Basketball Invitational, and they would win their first game of the tournament over Florida International 81-56 before getting knocked in the semifinals by New Mexico State 53-57.
This set the Bucs up for a battle against Georgia Southern for third place in the tournament.
The 96-49 victory gave the Bucs one last win on an already memorable season.
Led by freshman Journee McDaniel (New Bern, N.C.) and her 26 points and five rebounds, the Bucs were able to run away with a statement finish on their turn-around season.
Playing her final game in blue and gold, Jiselle Thomas (Norwalk, Ohio) added 23 points, nine rebounds and seven assists and also reach a milestone of 1,500 career points.
As the basketball season winds down, eyes are now set for 2023-24 and hopes are high that the Bucs will hit the court with the same level of play that we saw this year.
For more information on women’s basketball, visit ETSUBucs.com/wbasketball.
