NSU women’s team has a connection that goes back 29 years
LeAnn Freeland had big hair … and a big game.
It was 1995. Freeland, a 6-foot-1 sophomore forward, and Daria Terrell, her 5-6 junior point guard, led the University of Southern Indiana basketball team to the Division II NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history.
Freeland went on to become a three-time, first-team All-American, setting Southern Indiana’s career records for points and rebounds.
She did all of that, apparently, with great looking hair.
“LeAnn was always the last one to get on our team bus,” Terrell said. “She carried around a pink makeup kit, and her philosophy was that if she looked good, she would play good.
“And LeAnn always looked good.”
Fast forward 29 years, and the connection between these two women is still strong. LeAnn now goes by her married name of Freeland-Curry, and she’s the highly successful coach of NCAA DivisionII powerhouse Nova Southeastern University.
Terrell, meanwhile, has become a huge NSU Sharks fan this season. That’s because her daughter, Kailyn Terrell, is starting for Freeland-Curry as a true freshman point guard.
“Since I played with her mom, I know Kailyn’s DNA,” Freeland-Curry said. “Kailyn is fearless, strong and tough. She’s in fantastic shape.”
Terrell, listed at 5-6 just like her mom, ranks sixth on her team in scoring (8.1), third in assists (47) and third in steals (29).
And even though Terrell is the only freshman on the team, she’s one of just two NSU players who has started every game so far this season for the 21stranked Sharks.
NSU (20-3) leads the Sunshine State Conference with a 15-1 record, and the Sharks are on a program-record 18-game winning streak.
Next up for NSU is Wednesday’s game against visiting Barry University at 5:30 p.m.
As for NSU’s win streak, the Sharks have played three games that went to overtime — including one that required two extra sessions — and they also had a two-point win that was settled in regulation.
The Sharks were just 4-3 went they parted ways with Madison Frederick, who led the Sharks last season in scoring (17.1) and rebounds (7.9), making first-team All-SSC.
NSU’s slow start also coincided with the absence of 6-3 post Morgan Kane, who missed the Sharks’ first 12 games due to a broken right pinky finger suffered during a scrimmage.
Without Frederick and Kane — both of them former Iowa State players — standouts such as Nicole Scales and Terrell rose up to meet the challenge. Scales, the only player besides Terrell to start all 23 games, is averaging
14.2 points and a teamhigh 3.3 assists.
Which brings us back to Terrell, who had been a four-year starter at Brownsburg High in Indiana.
Terrell got at least some of her toughness from her brother, Preston, a 6-3 wide receiver who just finished an injury-plagued career at Purdue.
“Since we were in middle school, we would always fight,” Kailyn Terrell said of her brother. “He would just tackle me.
“Once we got to high school, we started getting along. He challenged me and made me tougher. I’m grateful.”
As Kailyn Terrell’s prep career progressed, her parents — Daria and Sam — joked about her playing for NSU so that they could move from frigid Indiana to the Sunshine State.
Jokes aside, Daria never even mentioned her daughter to FreelandCurry.
“LeAnn and I would always touch base two or three times a year,” Daria said. “But I didn’t push Kailyn on LeAnn. I wanted my daughter to pave her own way.”
As fate would have it, Freeland-Curry texted Kailyn in the summer before her senior season.
Terrell had twice visited Gannon University, a Division II school in Pennsylvania. But once she visited NSU, it was over.
“I fell in love with the school, the program and everything else about NSU,” Terrell said, “including our style of play.”
The irony of the TerrellFreeland family saga is that Southern Indiana never got past the second round of the NCAA Tournament while Daria was there.
But, in the season after she graduated, Freeland led the Screaming Eagles to within one win of a national championship, losing 94-78 to host North Dakota. Freeland had a game-high 27 points in that game, along with team-highs in rebounds (eight) and assists (five).
Decades later, Freeland is still chasing a national title. She has gotten to the national title game twice — as a player and then as an assistant at Florida Gulf Coast in 2007. And, as a head coach, she led NSU to the Final Four in 2014.
Could this be the year she finally wins it all?
Freeland-Curry won’t allow her mind or her team to think that far ahead.
But perhaps the secret can be found in what Daria Terrell noticed about her friend all those years ago:
“Her philosophy was that if she looked good, she would play good.
“And LeAnn always looked good.”