The No. 1 High Point University women's basketball team fell to No. 8 Winthrop, 57-50, in game one of the 2007 Advance Auto Parts Women's Basketball Championship hosted by UNC Asheville. High Point won the regular season Big South title and earned an automatic bid to the WNIT. Seedings will be announced on Monday, March 12.

Leslie Cook led the team with 16 points while Ayonna Thompson added 13.

For the Eagles Ashley Fann knocked down 16 points while Ashley Haugtvedt added 15 in the win. Tiffany Rodd got into double figures with 12.

Winthrop led the entire first half, and limited High Point to eight points the first 14:17 minutes of the game.  The Eagles went up by as much as 11 points, leading 19-8 with 5:43 left after a Haugtvedt layup.  High Point then got back into the game behind a barrage of three-pointers, including two by Thompson.  Her second trey moved the Panthers back within three points at 19-16 with 3:50 remaining.  But Winthrop scored the next seven points to go back up by 10 points (26-16), and carried a 28-22 lead into intermission.

Fann led Winthrop with 10 points in the first half, while Winthrop was 11-of-26 from the field (42.3 percent).  The Lady Eagles also held the Panthers to just 8-of-27 from the floor (29.6 percent) in the first stanza, but six of those eight field goals were from beyond the arc.  Cook was HPU's top scorer at the half with nine points, all on three-pointers.

In the second-half, Winthrop maintained a five-point lead through the first four minutes and remained ahead by three at 36-33 with 13:36 left.  However, High Point used a 5-0 run over the next three minutes and grabbed its first lead at 10:38 when Katie Ralls nailed a three-pointer.  The Panthers went up by as much as three points at 42-39 with 8:39 remaining, but Winthrop re-took the lead for good when Haugtvedt hit a jumper at 7:31 to make the score 43-42.  High Point continued to challenge and got back within one point on two occasions, the last on Amber Manuel's free throws at 2:46.  Thompson's three-pointer from 25-feet kept HPU close at three points (53-50) with :39.9 seconds left, but Rodd's layup with :16.1 seconds left and two free throws with :07 seconds remaining sealed the win for Winthrop.

Fann also finished with a team-high eight rebounds and five steals.  Haugtvedt was 7-of-9 from the floor and added five boards.  Rodd was Winthrop's third player in double figures with 12 points.  Cook was High Point's top scorer at 16 points and hit four three-pointers.  Thompson added 13, and High Point totaled 10 of its 16 field goals from beyond the arc.   

With the win, Winthrop becomes the first No. 8 seed in the history of the Big South women's basketball tournament to defeat the No. 1 seed, and advances to the Semifinals for the second consecutive year.

Winthrop improves to 6-25 on the season, while High Point falls to 18-11.  
 

High Point Head Coach Tooey Loy:

"We never really got going early in the game. We missed some easy ones and were unable to really get going during the game. I thought that we played really hard. We took a few quick shots early that may have hurt us. We were fighting an uphill battle the whole game. I told her team that this game doesn't define the year. We earned a bid in the WNIT by finishing first in the regular season, so this isn't our last game."

Winthrop Head Coach Bud Childers: