Rock Hill, S.C. - Junior guard Victoria McGowan (Inkster, Mich.) made the game-winning basket with less than five seconds to play to vault the Stetson women's basketball team (4-1) to a 74-72 win at Winthrop (3-2) Sunday at the Winthrop Coliseum. The Hatters took home the Winthrop Classic championship with a 3-0 record this weekend and McGowan earned Most Valuable Player honors after averaging 21 points, seven rebounds and 4.33 assists per game in the tournament.
The Hatters set school records for three-pointers made (12) and attempted (29) with junior guard Shanasa Sanders (Jacksonville, Fla.) making six of 11 from beyond the arc en route to a career-high 22 points to lead Stetson in scoring. McGowan finished with 15 points, four rebounds and five assists with three steals while freshman forward Jazmin Garcia (Peekskill, N.Y.) had her finest outing to date with 17 points and six rebounds.
Stetson shrugged off an early seven-point deficit to lead 36-33 at halftime; the primary motif of the second half was the Hatters extending that advantage several times only to see the Eagles continually pull back to within a point or two. A McGowan three-pointer with 6:58 to go gave Stetson a 64-56 lead, tying its largest of the day, but Winthrop came all the way back to tie and take its only lead of the second half (70-69) on a pair of Samiya Wright free throws with 1:10 to play.
Coming out of a timeout down by one with 14 seconds left, Stetson worked the ball inside to freshman forward Cherisse Burris (Blue Springs, Mo.), who got a basket to drop while being fouled by Winthrop's Taylor Calvert. She made the free throw for a two-point Hatter lead, but a foul on the Hatters right after the inbounds pass allowed Dequesha McClanahan to sink two free throws of her own for the last of her game-high 29 points and tie the game at 72 with 12 seconds left.
Head Coach Lynn Bria used a timeout to set up the final play; McGowan would drive all the way to the basket for a layup with 4.6 seconds on the clock and a 74-72 Hatters advantage. Stetson wasn't out of the woods yet as a foul with three seconds to go sent Winthrop sharpshooter Diana Choibekova to the line for a one-and-one; she missed the front end and Sanders corralled the rebound as time expired.
Burris finished with seven points and seven rebounds to assist the double-figure scoring efforts of Sanders, McGowan and Garcia; sophomore forward Sasha Sims (Fayetteville, Ga.) pulled down a team-high nine rebounds. Sanders, Sims and freshman guard Clarissa Coddington (Davie, Fla.) all had three assists for the Hatters, who are off to their best start to a season since opening up 9-1 in 2000-01.
McClanahan and 29 points and nine assists to lead four Eagles in double figures; Choibekova had 12 points with Wright and Katie Fitzgerald adding 10 each for Winthrop. Fitzgerald led her team in rebounds with seven.
The Hatters are back in action at 1:00 pm Friday when they host Miami (Ohio) at the Edmunds Center in a post-Thanksgiving matinee. Live Stats and Hatter Vision will be available at GoHatters.com.
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