Tesia Thompson wins OVC Freshman of the Year

Freshman guard Tesia Thompson became the first Redhawk in program history to earn Ohio Valley Conference Freshman of the Year when the announcement was made before the start of the conference tournament.

Along with that honor, she was also named to the All-OVC Second Team and the All-Newcomer Team. Thompson earned accolades during the season as well, being named OVC Freshman of the Week three times.

“Anytime you can have a first ever, I think that’s a pretty big deal, because there’s been a lot of good players play their careers here starting with their freshman year,” Southeast coach Rekha Patterson said. “I’m proud of how she developed over the year and how she didn’t play like a freshman. I’m happy she was able to be rewarded because there’s a lot of times you can be a really good player but not get that type of accolade.”

Thompson, in her first season, was the top scorer on the Redhawks with 12.8 points per game, and led the team with 22 games of double-digit scoring, including a stretch of 14 consecutive games with at least 10 points.

She managed to do this despite battling through an ankle injury in the middle of the season. While Thompson never missed a game, she was forced to have her minutes limited and come off of the bench for eight games. The limitations affected her preparation for upcoming games.

“It was hard, it was a lot of work managing time,” Thompson said. “I still had to go to classes, make time to go to treatment so I could get well and be with the team, then make practices with an injury. It was all really hard.”

Thompson provided some much-needed scoring for the Redhawks after the team lost its top-three scorers from the previous season. Thompson’s emergence as the team’s top scorer in her first season did not garner the attention of opposing defenses immediately, but as conference play continued she was keyed in on.

“I think in non-conference I was still new, so there wasn’t a focus on me,” Thompson said. “But when we started conference, then played a few games and they saw, like, “Well, she’s really good’. So after that they started to watch film and focus on what I do and they realized I was our leading scorer so they focused in to stop me, so I had to adjust and change some things.”

While her first season impressed Patterson, she doesn’t want Thompson to become complacent with winning the award. Patterson is looking for Thompson to improve in several areas, including her defense and cutting down on turnovers, but also adjust her approach heading into her second year.

“Just continuing to add to her game, but then her mentality has to change from year one to year two,” Patterson said. “Yes, she was the focal point and led us in scoring, but she has that honor of now being the (OVC) Freshman of the Year, so what now? What are you going to do? You have to always become a better student of the game, continue to have her patent moves that she knows will be successful for her.”