Greg Todd figured he had a winner when he recruited Darianne Seward to play for the women's basketball team at Morehead State.
But this is ridiculous.
Since gaining eligibility at the semester break, Seward has played in seven games, including six starts. MSU has yet to lose.
The Eagles, who went 10-20 last season, are off to a 14-3 start and have won nine games in a row. They take a 4-0 league mark into Wednesday night's Ohio Valley Conference contest at Tennessee State.
"I think Darianne has become one of the big parts to our success," Todd said. "She is a great passer… and I feel like her offense will continue to get better once she gets more and more comfortable."
A 5-foot-4 sophomore point guard, Seward transferred to MSU after being named to the Horizon League All-Freshman team. She averaged 11.8 points, 3.9 rebounds and 2.7 assists for Detroit Mercy.
With MSU, she's at 8.6 points, 2.6 rebounds and 6.6 assists. She has twice as many assists (46) as turnovers (23). She says setting up her teammates is her favorite part of the game, followed by taking the ball away from opponents – she already has 12 steals.
She is the spark in an offense that features double-figure scorers Brianna McQueen (11.9), Eriel McKee (11.6) and Miranda Crockett (10.7).
Seward handles the ball primarily with her right hand. Anything outside of sports, such as writing, is done left-handed. She picked up the game as a child in Columbus, Ohio.
Her older brother, Shirocco, was coached by their father, Deryl.
"At halftime of the basketball games, I would be out there at the free-throw line," Darianne said. "I was really small, but I was throwing it up there. So I've been playing for a long time."
Darianne soon took her game to a boys-and-girls league at her local recreation center, eventually graduating to AAU ball and with schoolmates at Afrocentric High School. She topped 1,000 career points with Afrocentric, earning first-team all-state honors and being named a scholar-athlete award winner as a senior. Along the way, she helped her teams to a State High School championship and a runner-up finish, and an AAU national championship.
She credits her father Deryl for pushing her to get better and always bringing out the best in her. And Will Manning, the coach at Afrocentric, prepared her for the college ball with conditioning drills not unlike what she has experienced at Detroit and at MSU.
At Detroit, she liked being out of state. But there was a change in coaching staff after her freshman season, so she began to look elsewhere. Morehead State made a good pitch.
"When I came here, it just felt like home," she said. "Even when I came to some games over break and stuff – I hadn't even started school yet – even talking to my parents, it just felt like I've been here from the start of my college career. And I really enjoyed the girls. They made me feel very welcome."
Of course, she could not play last season because of NCAA transfer rules. But she did not waste that time.
She improved "my I.Q. and learning the game more, just sitting out a year and being able to watch again," she said. "I've gotten a lot smarter with the ball and just making better decisions than what I would have done as a freshman."
She also paid attention in the classroom. A health promotions major, she plans to pursue a graduate degree in business administration. One day, she'd like to be a hospital administrator, although she says she'd first like to pursue professional basketball if an overseas opportunity comes her way.
"She's a hard worker," Todd said. "Works maybe as hard, if not harder, in the classroom. Excellent student. We're thrilled with the future with Darianne being just a sophomore this year."
Seward has been working overtime on her three-point shot. For now, though, she says her best skills are "just being a floor general and pushing the tempo."
And all that, she says, "really starts at the defensive end."
Which is exactly what Todd and his staff have preached since last season. The Eagles are finding that defense breeds success.
"It's just as simple as that -- defense," Seward said. "Defensively, we have to … get stops, and that was one area that we really lacked in last season. So that was the really big focus for this year, was the defense. And defense wins games."
Before the season began, Todd said he thought "I think it would be an awesome achievement if we could have a winning season."
Both he and his players have been pleasantly surprised by how quickly things have turned around, but they are by no means settling for a mere winning season anymore.
Goals have been adjusted in mid-stream.
"I think the bar will be set high because we know what we can do," Seward said. "And, pretty much, we can do anything that we set our minds to, so why not raise that bar so we can actually reach our full potential this season?"
A preseason poll of league coaches didn't give the Eagles much respect – the were picked 10th – and that still fuels a fire in Seward's belly.
"Even though we are winning, we're still looked at as the underdogs, so we just use that as motivation for every game," she said. "I just feel like some teams still look at us as the underdog and that they still can come in here and beat us. But we're not the same team from last year. We've got a whole new mindset, a whole new thing going."
