Forward Jordyn Dawson leads University of Akron women's basketball team to Cleveland
The University of Akron women’s basketball team has two reasons to celebrate as the regular season ends.
The first is the Zips claiming one of the top four seeds for the Mid-American Conference Tournament. The second is knowing they have the conference’s potential player of the year Jordyn Dawson to lead them.
The first is a milestone for coach Melissa Jackson’s team. It’s the first time one of her teams will make the trek north to Cleveland to play in the tournament since she assumed the reins of the program after the departure of coach Jodi Kest.
The Zips are coming off a loss to Buffalo, the current No. 2 seed, and will face Miami University in the regular season finale Saturday in Rhodes Arena.
“I'm glad we're not in the mix of all the other teams vying for those last spots right now,” Jackson said during a recent Zoom interview.
If that sounds like a sense of relief, it is. There’s a definite scrum to claim seeds four through eight.
“This team has worked really hard. That's been our goal all season long, one of our goals,” Jackson said. “The other two were to get better daily and live our core values daily and I think this group really bought into that. I said the goal is to get to Cleveland and once we're in Cleveland anything can happen. That's the beauty of March.”
After two years of dealing with the pandemic, it would appear that hard work is finally yielding dividends. Jackson is a typical, no-excuses coach. Getting to this point has been an exercise in perseverance.
Zips deal with pandemic
After losing five seniors from her 2019-20 team, Jackson entered the following season with a young team and dealing with a pandemic.
“So we knew we were going to be young and inexperienced and then with the pandemic we really didn't have much of a preseason with that team,” she said. “We were supposed to go on a foreign trip to Italy that got canceled where we had 10 extra practices days and we never could get great conditioning last year.”
That lack of conditioning had its effect, Jackson said.
“We could never get in great shape,” she said. “We could never get in rhythm and you saw that with our schedule and games. We were in pretty much every game. Then the fourth quarter would hit and we just hit a wall.”
After analyzing the situation, she knew heading into this season she and her coaching staff would concentrate on that element of preparation.
Jordyn Dawson benefits
No one likely benefited more from that than Dawson, who missed significant conditioning time last year, which likely affected her play.
“Time away has definitely just made her focus on how much she needs to take care of her body,” Jackson said. “She leads that for us.”
In 21 games last season, Dawson, a senior forward, averaged 15.9 points 6.9 rebounds, and 3.9 assists per game. For most, that would be a good season.
“We all knew how talented she was, especially when we recruited her,” Jackson said. “Obviously, her first few years here we've seen glimpses of it.”
But it’s difficult not to look at her stats for this season with bulging eyes. Her numbers, which are in the Top 10 of each statistical category, include 22.3 points per game (third), 9.6 rebounds (fourth), 4.1 assists (sixth) and 3.0 steals (first) in the MAC.
“This year she's playing at a whole other level and I think it starts with her mental preparation,” Jackson said. “I think it starts with her leadership qualities. She has just been so poised for us all year.”
Dawson, whose brother Mikal is currently having success with the men’s team, credits patience for the improvement.
“Just getting in the gym and letting the game come to me, first and foremost, letting the game come to me. Just staying focused and being me, I guess,” she said.
She’s playing more relaxed and with good reason.
“I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders because I don't have to do as much because my team has stepped up and done a lot," she said.
She is by far the leading scorer on the team, but Dawson receives significant help from her teammates. Jackson likes her team to play up-tempo and relies on forwards Reagan Bass (11.6 points per game) and Lanasia Brewer, a former Archbishop Hoban standout who averages 7.8 points per game, to keep the Zips rolling.
Reach George M. Thomas at gthomas@thebeaconjournal.com or on Twitter @ByGeorgeThomas.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron Zips have ticket punched for women's MAC Tournament
