Area girls impress In College

This area has both boys and girls college players through out the region in all sports.  Friday night the college basketball season started and three area girls shined for their teams.

Gardner Webb traveled to Chapel Hill to open the season against the Lady Tar Heels and former Big  East Player of the year Aluxus Hill sophomore from Northern Nash played 28 minutes and contributed 10 points including a free throw that gave the Running Bulldogs the lead at 63-62 with 58 seconds to go in the game.  GW scores a layup at the buzzer to stun Carolina 66-65.

Since Gardner Webb moved up to Division one basketball in 2000 it is their first victory ever over an ACC team.  Hill made four of her 10 shots on the night.  Hill dueled against Carolina guard Jamie Cherry who in her career at West Craven knocked Hill and Northern Nash along with Rocky  Mount out of the state playoffs during her high school career.

J'Kyra Brown the redshirt sophomore from Rocky Mount played her first game at the University of Virginia.  Brown coming off the bench saw the court for 17 minutes and scored 10 points in the third quarter as UVA open their season at Middle Tennessee State.  The big third quarter by Brown gave the Cavaliers cushion  that they needed to  hold off Middle Tennessee State 70-66.  You can go on the UVA women's web site and hear an interview with JB following Friday night's game.

Former Gryphon Carmen Richardson a Sophomore at Queens College played 39 of the 40 minutes leading Queens College to a 75-62 victory over Barton college. Richardson  had 20 points and six assists in the game.

Former Gryphon basketball player at Rocky Mount Dante Battle who transferred to N C Wesleyan broke his wrist the first week of practice and is out of action until at least November 30th when his next doctor visit is.  The Battling Bishops opened their season today at High Point University.


Friday was the first time that the women's college game started playing four ten minute quarters instead of two 20 minute halves.   It does make sense as it is the same amount of time.  It will be interesting to see how the flow is during TV games as the normal flow for TV time outs is the first dead ball after the clock goes under 16,12,8 and 4 minutes.  During NCAA tournament play the dead ball time outs are 15-10-5.

We have so many players both boys and girls playing college and professional sports that it is hard to keep up with all of them.    If you know of one please let me know if I need to pay attention to whom it may be.  These three that I covered today are easy to get their numbers off the internet but there are so many from the area it takes time to cover them all.

The Battling Bishops of North Carolina Wesleyan College finished their football season Saturday beating Ferrum 42-33. The Bishops started the season at 0-4 including the first three at home but won five of their last six games games to finish at 5-5 on the season.  It is the sixth time in the 12 year history of Battling Bishops football that they have won at least five games and the four game win streak is the second longest win streak in Bishops history behind only the seven in a row in 2007 which was their most wins in a season with 9.