WHEN: Friday, March 9 | 2:00 p.m.
WHERE: Vines Center | Lynchburg, Va.
RECORDS: High Point (16-13, 10-8), Presbyterian (12-17, 9-9)
SERIES RECORD: High Point leads 17-6
LAST MEETING: Presbyterian won 62-55 in the Templeton Center on Feb. 17, 2018
VIDEO: ESPN3
AUDIO: High Point Panthers Radio Network
LIVE STATS: StatBroadcast
Tickets: TicketReturn.Com
Championship Central: BigSouthSports.Com
GAME NOTES: HighPointPanthers.Com
 
HIGH POINT, N.C. – The No. 4-seeded High Point University women's basketball team begins its Big South Championship run versus No. 5 Presbyterian on Friday afternoon in Liberty's Vines Center. The quarterfinal game will tip at approximately 2:00 p.m. – 30 minutes after the conclusion of the first quarterfinal.
 
The Panthers (16-13, 10-8) return to Lynchburg, Va. after falling to the Flames on Saturday in the regular season finale. Meanwhile, the Blue Hose (12-17, 9-9) clinched the No. 5 spot with a dominant victory at Charleston Southern last weekend.
 
Quick Hitters
• Junior Emma Bockrath was selected to the All-Big South First Team for the second straight season. She is HPU's fourth player to repeat on the league's top team joining Katie O'Dell, Charlena Martin and Stacia Robertson.
 
• Junior Lindsey Edwards made the Big South All-Academic squad for the second consecutive season. She joins Gina Rosser, Emily Mills, Leslie Cook and Mackenzie Maier as the five Panthers to make the All-Academic team at least twice.
 
• High Point relies heavily on its depth of offensive weapons this season. The team is 14-4 when at least three players reach double figures.
 
• The Panthers are allowing nearly three fewer points per game this season than they did in 2016-17. However, the key is scoring 60 points on offense. The Purple & White haven't lost a conference game (8-0) this year when they reach 60 points but are 2-8 when held below that mark.
 
• Head coach DeUnna Hendrix ranks eighth all-time in Big South history with 74 conference wins. Meanwhile, her conference winning percentage is fourth among Big South coaches with 100 career games on the sideline (.650). During her tenure, only Liberty has a better league record than HPU.
 
• Hendrix led the Panthers to back-to-back Big South title games in 2013-14 and 2014-15. But Kat Harris is the only current Panther to participate in either of those games playing six minutes in the 74-64 setback to Liberty three seasons ago.
 
• HPU has won at least 10 Big South games each of the past seven years. That's the second longest streak in league history behind Liberty's current streak of 19 seasons with double-digit wins.
 
• The Purple & White are 36-of-42 (.857) from the charity stripe over the past three games and rank second in the conference behind PC overall this season. The team's five top scorers combined to hit 267 of their 332 attempts this year (80.4 percent).
 
• Sophomore Olivia VanSlooten came on in February shooting 64 percent from the floor and earned her first career start in the season finale against Liberty.
 
• High Point is outscoring Big South foes by 5.0 points per first half, but is losing the second half by 1.0 points per second half.
 
• With the win, High Point will advance to the semifinals on Saturday at 2:00 p.m. The opponent for that contest will be decided on Friday at noon as No. 1 Liberty will play the winner of the No. 8 versus No. 9 contest, which will be played Thursday.
 
All-Time Series with Presbyterian
The Panthers own a 17-6 edge in the previous 23 meetings between these two programs. After the Blue Hose's win last season in the quarterfinals, the teams are 1-1 against each other in the Big South Championship.
 
Season Series Against the Blue Hose
HPU claimed a dominant 81-55 victory over Presbyterian on Jan. 9 in the Millis Center. However, the Blue Hose evened the series with a 62-55 victory in the Templeton Center on Feb. 17. Bockrath has averaged 20.0 points and 8.0 rebounds in the two meetings this winter.
 
What to Watch
This contest is the only quarterfinal that matches up two All-Big South First Team selections as Bockrath faces off with PC's Cortney Storey. They are both do-it-all guards as Storey leads the conference in points and assists while Bockrath is the only player in the Big South averaging at least 13.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, 2.0 steals and 2.0 assists.
 
Big South Championship Notes
• HPU had been to the Big South Championship semifinals in seven of eight years before failing to reach that round in each of the past two seasons.
 
• Redshirting junior Haleigh Hatfield grabbed a Big South Championship record 23 rebounds in last year's quarterfinal setback to Presbyterian.
 
• The No. 4 seed has won the Big South Championship just one time (UNC Asheville in 2007). In total, 24 of the 31 titles wins have come from the tournament's top-two seeds.
 
Turning Up the Heat on Defense
• The Panthers defense under new associate head coach Heather Kearney has played a more in-your-face style of defense. That change in style has resulted in improvements in three-point defense (.310 to .285), steals per game (7.3 to 10.0) and turnovers forced per game (14.4 to 18.93).
 
• High Point is third in the Big South in three-point field goal percentage defense and ranks 33rd nationally allowing opponents to hit 28.5 percent from deep.
 
• Led by Bockrath, the league's top thief, six of the seven players in the team's standard rotation average at least 0.8 steals per game.
 
• The havoc caused by the defense has exploded in Big South action as the team is winning the turnover margin by 6.28 turnovers per game. HPU has parlayed those extra possessions into a 373-206 edge in points off turnovers.
 
• In league action, 34 percent of the Panthers' scoring has come off turnovers while their opponents score just 20 percent of their points off HPU's miscues.
 
1,000-Point Teammates
Bockrath and Kat Harris both eclipsed the 1,000-point plateau during the 2017-18 campaign. It's the first time since 2012-13 that HPU has had two players achieve the feat in the same season. That year it was Cheyenne Parker and Erin Reynolds who both reached that career mark.
 
Turning it Around
• From the beginning of the 2015-16 season to Jan. 24, 2017, HPU posted a 13-14 mark in league play. Since then the team has posted an 21-8 record against league foes.
 
• Overall, this year's junior class started its first 49 games with a 17-32 record. However, the squad is 26-15 over the last 41 outings including a nine-game winning streak this season and a six-game stretch last winter.
 
Pacing the League in Points
• During Hendrix's six seasons at the helm for the squad is averaging 68.3 points per game. That's two points per contest higher than second-place Liberty (66.3 ppg).
 
• After leading the conference with 68.3 points per game last season, High Point paced the league with 64.9 points per contest this year. The team has now led the Big South in scoring in four of Hendrix's six seasons. In the other two years HPU finished second and fourth in points per game.
 
• During that span High Point joins Liberty as the only two programs to win at least 10 Big South contests every year.
 
Bockrath's Record-Setting Pace
• Bockrath already owns HPU's D-I consecutive starts record with 90 is tied with Katie Ralls for fourth in career starts in HPU's Division I era with another season to play.
 
• She is already climbing the HPU career ranks sitting at fifth in free throw percentage, eighth in scoring, eighth in made field goals, ninth in rebounds and 10th in assists.
 
• Bockrath is two rebounds and 10 points from becoming HPU's seventh player overall and first guard to record at least 400 points and 200 rebounds in a season.
 
• The guard joins Robertson (2014-15) as the only Panthers to average at least 13.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, 2.0 steals and 2.0 assists in a Division I season.
 
Reserves Needed
• High Point is 13-4 when the bench outscores its opponent's reserves and 3-9 when that margin is reversed.
 
• HPU averages a 23.8-14.4 edge in its wins and a 18.8-13.1 deficit in losses. Harris has accounted for 92 of the 167 bench points in the team's 13 losses.
 
Reaching the Century Mark
Head coach DeUnna Hendrix became the third coach in High Point University women's basketball to reach 100 career coaching wins for the Purple & White. She joined Tooey Loy (163) and Joe Ellenburg (208) with the win at Longwood on Feb. 6.
 
Anyone Could Go Off
Five different members of the Purple & White have scored 20 points in a single game in 2017-18. In total, the team has 15 20-point performances this season.
 
Single-Season Top-10s
• Bockrath's 70 steals this season ties her for ninth in HPU's single-season rankings. She needs two more to catch Shamia Brown for eighth place.
 
• Brown has knocked down 55 three-pointers this season, which ties her for ninth along with Jurica Hargraves.
 
• Bockrath (fifth), Harris (ninth) and Edwards (10th) are all in the top-10 for single-season free throw percentage.
 
• As a team, HPU's 290 steals and 10.0 steals per game rank ninth and sixth, respectively in HPU's record books.
 
• If the season ended today, the team's .403 field goal percentage would rank seventh and the .734 free throw percentage would be third.
 
#GoHPU