Winthrop women head to Ohio for pair of games

The Winthrop women’s basketball team continues its road trek this weekend as it travels to northern Ohio for the Akron Classic.

The Eagles face the Akron Zips at 10:30 a.m. on Friday in an Education Day game before tackling Ohio University at 1 p.m. Saturday. Winthrop doesn’t play its first home game until after Thanksgiving.

Winthrop is still looking for its first win against these two schools. The Eagles are 0-1 against Akron, the only previous meeting a 74-65 loss on the road on Jan. 4, 2004. Winthrop is 0-3 against Ohio. They last met on Jan. 2, 2004 in Athens, with the Bobcats taking a 96-66 win.

Winthrop is coming off back-to-back road losses last weekend to then-No. 17 Oklahoma and No. 14 Duke.

Winthrop is led by 5-foot-10 junior forward Erica Williams, 6-foot-2 freshman center Arianne Whitaker, and 5-foot-8 junior guard Aliyah Kilpatrick.

Williams surpassed the 1,000-point mark in her career on Sunday when she scored 17 points at Duke. She comes into this game with 1,005 points and 518 rebounds.

Whitaker has gotten off to a strong start, winning the season’s first Big South Freshman of the Week award after averaging 11 points, 6.5 rebounds and 2.5 blocks and connecting on 61 percent of her shots last week. She had 14 points against Oklahoma in her college debut. Against Duke, she pulled down nine rebounds while scoring eight points.

Both games in Ohio can be heard on 104.1 The Bridge.

This story was originally published November 19, 2015 at 3:01 PM with the headline "Winthrop women head to Ohio for pair of games."