Winthrop women chugging through injury spate

Winthrop freshman JoJo Taylor would normally be found stretching her legs at Eagle Field as a member of the school’s women’s soccer team. Lately, though, she’s found herself on the hardwood inside Winthrop Coliseum dressing out with the women’s basketball team during practice and games, even traveling during road games.

She was one of only eight players to dress out on Friday as the snow subsided outside of the empty arena.

“The girls got down to six players and they needed an extra body for practice and a little bit of help,” said Taylor, “so my soccer coach actually texted me and said 'Would you be interested in helping out?' So I got a bit more information and decided why not help them out?”

A rash of injuries has hammered Kevin Cook’s team this season. The loss of production, experience and the ensuing depth problems are largely responsible for the team’s 3-19 record. Still, Cook believes that his team has fight left in it and that they can be competitive in the final stretch of conference play.

“We're still fighting every game,” he said before Friday’s practice. “We're still showing up and working hard. We've had two productive practices this week. We're still giving maximum effort.”

Fallen stars

The Winthrop women’s hexed luck started just six days before the first game back in November, when the school announced that post player Schaquilla Nunn would be redshirting this season due to a broken foot. The 6-foot-3 Big South all-conference selection averaged 32.3 minutes per game last year, and was a catalyst on both sides of the ball, scoring around 14 points per game and averaging 11 rebounds per contest. She is one of the top shot-blockers in the country.

Helpless to contribute on the floor, Nunn is doing her best to help the team.

“I'm always willing to teach what I've been taught, and I don't mind giving you the knowledge or whatever I have to give just to help someone out,” she said.

As the season went on the injury bug began to spread. Starting point guard Jimecheia Banks broke her ankle within the first four minutes of a game at Radford in early January.

Winthrop’s second all-conference selection, 5-foot-10 leading scorer Erica Williams, went down at the end of January with a broken foot, an almost exact break as Nunn’s, according to Cook.

Several other Eagles have been sidelined throughout the year, too. Redshirt junior Aliyah Kilpatrick, currently the senior-most member of the active roster, had a tender ankle that cost her a pair of games. She also knows what it’s like to go through season-ending injuries when she missed the 2013-14 season due to a torn Achilles tendon.

“Just try to stay positive,” she said regarding advice she’s given to injured players. She said it was “good to have my teammates around encouraging me” when she was out with her own injury.

Victims of circumstance

In all of Cook’s coaching career, which spans over three decades, he said he’s never seen a plethora of injuries quite like this.

“It's been hard on our players, and what people don't realize, it's hard to establish continuity and a chemistry because you have players in and out of the lineup,” he said.

Losing Nunn hampered the Eagles’ offensive plans considerably.

“One thing we've seen this year is that you have to be able to shoot the basketball, and like I said, we don't have that luxury of being able to drop it in,” he said.

The amount of injuries keeps the athletic training staff at Winthrop busy. Assistant athletic trainer Eby Krebs said that she’s never seen this many injuries with any team she’s worked with in six years, but that the recovery process is going well.

“The girls that are out right now with injuries, if they are capable of doing rehab, then you come in every single day to do it,” said Krebs. “So we have a couple of girls out that aren't allowed to do any rehab just yet, but once they get cleared through the doctor then they're going to be coming in every day doing rehab, treatment and everything they can to get back out on the court."

Assistant coach Carlotta Kloppenburg and graduate assistant Janko Popovic are active participants in practice so that the team can play five-on-five. And that includes Taylor, the soccer player.

She may not see as much time on the hardwood as she normally would on the pitch, but remains committed in her support.

“I wasn't recruited to play basketball here or anything so I'm here to help wherever they need me,” Taylor said after Friday’s practice. “I'm going to try my best and hopefully try to do as well as the other team so I can at least help our girls out."

Silver linings

Despite being so short-handed, Winthrop has remained competitive throughout the conference schedule. The team ran out of gas after keeping things close in their most recent loss at Gardner-Webb, and two of their other recent losses to Longwood and Charleston Southern have been by single-digits.

“It only takes getting hot one week, and we've been competitive with every team in this conference. So there's not reason we can't go to Asheville and get hot," Cook said.

The head coach also said that players like Naima Jackson (who put up 21 points in a recent loss to second-place UNC Asheville) and Ronata Rogers (who missed last year with a torn ACL) have stepped up in the absence of the team’s usual suspects. There’s also Whitaker, who has made 14 starts, is averaging eight points and eight rebounds per game and has been named Big South Freshman of the Week three times so far this season. All three have taken advantage of their increased playing time.

The ultimate light at the end of the tunnel is next season. It’s very possible that Winthrop would be one of the BigSouth’s preseason favorites. Williams and Kilpatrick return, along with Nunn and six newcomers that Cook said will “cause a lot of excitement.”

But there is still plenty of the 2015-16 season left. The Eagles host a Coastal Carolina team on Saturday that finds itself in a similar predicament in the Big South standings.

“It's just another opportunity for us to go out and compete and try to get a victory,” Cook said. “We're trying to get as many wins as we can going into the conference tournament.”

This story was originally published February 12, 2016 at 6:04 PM with the headline "Winthrop women chugging through injury spate."