University of North Carolina Athletics
Previewing The 2015-16 Season
November 13, 2015 | Women's Basketball
In what will be her 41st year as a collegiate head coach, the three-time national championship coach has compiled a 961-340 record in an illustrious career. She is the active wins leader in the sport and trails only former Tennessee head coach Pat Summitt in all-time victories among women's basketball coaches.
Hatchell is the anchor of a coaching staff that boasts 163 combined years of service to the game of basketball.
SENIOR LADEN TEAM
The roster is made up of eight student-athletes that are seniors academically at North Carolina, giving the coaching staff a very mature group to work with in 2015-16. The leader of the pack is Xylina McDaniel, a senior forward from Columbia, S.C. The 2013 Atlantic Coast Conference Rookie of the Year is back after missing the latter two-thirds of last season with a leg injury that saw her miss 23 games. McDaniel brings stability to the post where she owns career averages of 11.3 points and 6.5 rebounds a game, and will likely go over 1,000 career points at some point in November.
N'Dea Bryant, a prototypical Hatchell player - long, lean and athletic - will also be counted on to lead the Tar Heels this season. The Goose Creek, S.C., native averaged a career-best 5.2 points and 3.0 rebounds per game as a junior, and was even better down the stretch last year putting up over nine points per outing in the final nine games of 2014-15.
Three other post players - red-shirt senior Erika Johnson and red-shirt juniors Hillary Fuller and Hillary Summers - offer additional experience in the post. All three have played primarily as reserves in their collegiate careers, but have shown the ability to play through the rigors of the ACC, the best women's basketball conference in the nation.
Johnson, who returns from a hip injury that forced her to miss the entire 2014-15 campaign, transferred to Carolina from the University of California back in 2012-13. The Seattle, Wash., native is the only player on the roster from west of the Mississippi River.
Fuller, from Jacksonville, Fla., and Summers, from Fayetteville, N.C., will be counted on to play larger roles in their fourth season in the program. Fuller has played in 47 career games in the post. Meanwhile, Summers has played 69 games in the last two years. She played a brilliant game last season in the victory over seventh-ranked Florida State, setting career highs in points (9), field goals (4), field goal attempts (5) and minutes (25).
With limited scholarship players at their disposal, Hatchell and her staff were forced to add a handful of walk-on players to the roster this season. Three of them are seniors Anne Corrigan, Rachel McGirt and Marissa Riley. Corrigan, from Vienna, Va., played four years of basketball at Holton-Arms School back in high school and was competing with the Carolina club soccer team before joining the Tar Heel women's basketball team.
McGirt, a local native of Durham, N.C., and Riley, who is also an in-state native of Mooresville, both have prior Division I basketball playing experience at UNC Asheville. McGirt played two seasons for the Bulldogs, before transferring to North Carolina and competing on the Tar Heel rowing team last season. In addition, Riley played one year at UNCA.
YOUNG BUT TALENTED BACK COURT
The tradition of outstanding guards in Chapel Hill continues with addition of two McDonald's All-Americans this season in the likes of Destinee Walker and Stephanie Watts, the transfer of Paris Kea from Vanderbilt and the return of sophomore Jamie Cherry, who became a SportsCenter Top10 regular as a rookie.
Cherry always dreamed of being the next Ivory Latta, the former Carolina All-America and current WNBA All-Star with the Washington Mystics, while growing up in Cove City, a small town in the eastern part of North Carolina. She will be given the reigns as the starting point guard in her second season in Chapel Hill. She averaged a modest 6.4 points and 2.2 assists in 35 games last year, but in the late stages of a ball game, Hatchell and all UNC fans quickly learned to get Cherry the ball.
Cherry knocked down a last second shot against Ohio State in the NCAA Tournament, drained a 40-footer at the regulation buzzer against Louisville in the ACC Tournament and converted two free throws in the final 1.7 seconds to secure a victory at Miami - all those heroics coming in a span of seven games.
Kea, from Tarboro, N.C., is back home after played one season at Vanderbilt, but will sit out the 2015-16 season due to NCAA rules. She played in all 31 games, made eight starts, and averaged 6.9 points for the Commodores.
Walker and Watts gave Carolina another top-ranked recruiting class after enjoying outstanding prep careers. Walker hails from Orlando, Fla., while Watts comes from Wesley Chapel, N.C., a small town just outside Charlotte. Both are five-star prospects ranked in the top-15 in their class that earned Naismith and McDonald's All-America plaudits and competed in the McDonald's All-America game and the Jordan Brand Classic. Walker was the Florida 4A Player of the Year, while Watts was the North Carolina Gatorade Player of the Year last season.
And rounding out the back court is freshman Hadiya Bembry, a walk-on from Edenton, N.C., who was a four-year player at Holmes High School and scored over 1,000 points in her career.
