Catawba sports information

ROCK HILL, S.C. — The two-time defending South Atlantic Conference regular season champion and NCAA Southeast Regional host Catawba College women’s basketball team has been picked to finish fifth in the league’s preseason coaches’ poll.

It’s a new era for Catawba with players such as Lyrik Thorne, Janiya Downs and Sara McIntosh no longer in uniform.

Nala Baker, Jada Porter and Mary Spry (Carson) have been named to the preseason SAC Players to Watch list.

Southeast Regional finalist Carson-Newman was named the preseason league favorite with four first-place votes. Anderson was picked second with two first-place votes, while Lenoir-Rhyne was tabbed third with four first-place votes. Conference tournament champion Wingate was fourth with two first-place votes and Catawba was voted fifth with one first-place vote.

Lincoln Memorial was picked behind Catawba in sixth, while Coker, Mars Hill, UVA Wise and Limestone rounded out the top 10. Emory & Henry, Newberry and Tusculum concluded the preseason coaches’ poll.

Baker, a senior from Pensacola, Fla., was named a SAC Player to Watch as the leading returning scorer from a Catawba squad that won the outright conference regular season title and earned the top seed in the NCAA Tournament. Baker 8.6 points per game with an impressive 43-percent mark from three-point range.

Porter, a senior from Grovetown, Ga., has logged 54 starts over the last two seasons in which Catawba Women’s Basketball reached new heights as a program, winning 53 games in those two years alone. Porter averaged five points per game, but exploded for a career-high 22 points off 6-for-6 shooting in the win over Wingate on Jan. 24.

Spry, a junior from Faith, looks to step up into a larger role in the backcourt with the graduation of now-assistant coach Sara McIntosh. Spry played in all of Catawba’s 30 games, chipping in 5.7 points per contest in nearly 13 minutes per game, shooting over 50 percent from the field with an average of over three rebounds a night.

Two-time reigning SAC Coach of the Year Terence McCutcheon leads the Catawba Indians into action next week, as the team travels to Tusculum University for a pair of non-conference games against 24th-ranked Columbus State and Lees-McRae on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 9 and 10. The team makes its season debut at Goodman Arena on Wednesday, Nov. 13, facing Johnson C. Smith.