With hand over heart, Cassie King recites the Lord's Prayer with her Lady Eagles' basketball teammates before the start of practice. Practice has made the team near perfect out of conference, with a 9-1 nonconference record. However, the team has lost three conference road games. But even so, NCCU is still off to its best start in school history.  
 Staff Photos by Shawn Rocco
 

By STANLEY B. CHAMBERS JR, Staff Writer

N.C. Central University's women's basketball team is off to their best start in school history.
They're currently ranked third regionally and picked to finish atop their conference standings.

But if you ask team captains Cassie King and Shante Collins, the best is yet to come.

"We're just like Duke, we're just like Carolina," King said. "We're just like these top schools you hear [about] every day. It's just they're at a different school. And being at a black school, a Division II school, we don't get exposure like that. We need to show everyone else that we're just like them."

The Lady Eagles (13-4, 4-3) began their season with a six-game winning streak and won five more games after a loss to Newberry College. Their current path isn't exactly reminiscent of the team's 25-6 and 24-7 campaigns during the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 seasons, respectively. 

Both teams, which reached the NCAA Division II tournament regional semifinals and regional finals, respectively, got off to slow starts, said head coach Joli Robinson.

But those squads had strong benches, whereas this year's team, while taller than in years past, is only deep in the shooting guard and post positions.

This year's progress is a strong improvement from the last two seasons, when NCCU went 14-14 in 2003-2004 and 16-13 in the 2004-2005 season.

Robinson, in her 10th year leading the Lady Eagles, wants her team to communicate better on the court, especially on defense, and know what to do in tough situations without being told. She's a bit surprised of the team's predicted ranking being that half the team is made up of newcomers, including five freshmen.

But her athletes have bought into what she's asking from them, a system that includes good grades, keeping personal matters off the court, getting proper rest and following team rules.

And they're also more experienced, with eight returning players, including three starters from last year.

"When you start out like that, it can cause your kids to say 'Hey, we got it made' " Robinson said.

"But we kept our kids humble to understand that hey, we don't have it made. I think they got an understanding (when it came to conference games) because we lost three good conference games."

Road games have yielded mixed results for the Lady Eagles, going 3-3 so far.

The three road losses came at the hands of conference opponents, including Tuesday's loss to Johnson C. Smith University. Robinson believes the adjustment from traveling and eating before games has affected performance on the court.

"When you're away, you tend to want to go to sleep [while travelling]," she said.

"And sometimes that can affect [how you play] because that causes your body to wake up again and start over mentally and physically."

But if you ask Collins, a senior center from Plymouth who leads the team in field goal percentage and blocks, it's about playing smart basketball. That includes hitting the open man, good ball movement, having sound judgment and knowing what's going on.

"We have so much talent, but we're not giving our all," King said. "The games we lost we put on ourselves.

"But when you talk about [the team's regional ranking], every team from here on out is going to come at us hard. It's not about the talent, it's about the heart and how we play."

King, a junior forward from Wendell, is the team's leading scorer for the second year in a row, averaging 18 points per game. She averaged about 22.9 points last year, including a 59-point performance during last year's CIAA tournament.

Losing in last year's CIAA semifinals is still fresh on the minds of the team's returning players.

"They want [a conference championship] now," Collins said.

"The team is definitely more hungry."
 

Stanley B. Chambers Jr. can be reached at 956-2426 stan.chambers@newsobserver.com.