The nation’s longest winning streak in regular-season women’s basketball conference play belongs to the Green and Blue after Kansas defeated Baylor on Jan. 19. At 41 consecutive games won after the Eagles took down Mercer and Kennesaw State earlier this week, 69-57 and 69-55, respectively, FGCU’s women have the winning streak to beat.
A big contributing factor to all of these winning streaks is FGCU’s Stephanie Haas.
The 5-foot-8 sophomore from Avon Lake, Ohio, joined the team in the 2012-13 season and was voted Most Improved Player at the team’s end-of-year banquet. During that season, she appeared in 32 games and started in one of them.
While balancing athletics with her first year as a criminal justice major, the then-freshman averaged 35.3 percent behind the arc, 12 minutes and 3.9 points.
When asked about the transition from playing in high school to college, Haas said, “It takes time, so I think once I started to learn more and more about what we do, I started feeling more comfortable. Then I started playing more minutes and learned a lot in practices. I did whatever I could to contribute to the team.”
Fast forward to this season and one can see why her teammates voted Haas most improved the season before.
Haas has not only played in every game this season, but has also started each.
Averaging 26.9 minutes on the court, Haas also is in the top three team leaders of the following categories: scoring, scoring average, field goal percentage, field goal attempts, field goals made, free throw attempts, free throws made, defensive rebounds, assists and minutes played.
“Every year you lose some players and you get new ones, but you have to build the chemistry back up to deal with what you have. I think we have really good chemistry with the players that we have,” Haas said about the differences between the team last season and this season.
Jacksonville University visits the nest at 7 p.m. zx4Thursday in the battle of the unbeatens to see who will improve their A-Sun conference record to 6-0.
“We have improved a lot from last year and you can tell that they (Jacksonville University) have too since they are also undefeated, but I also feel like we are really well prepared. It is going to be a really good game and we are going to come out and fight hard,” Haas said