ATLANTA — Aniya Gourdine ran to find her cell phone moments after the scoreboard lit up with triple zeroes as Southern defeated Alcorn State 64-44 to capture the Southwestern Athletic Conference tournament championship on Saturday at Gateway Center Arena.
While Gourdine’s mother watched her celebrate with her teammates after the championship win, the first person Gourdine called was her father, Jerome.
Before Saturday’s contest, Jerome told Gourdine that the Jaguars’ contest against the Braves was the moment — playing for a chance to compete in the women’s NCAA tournament — she had been waiting for her entire life.
“I’ve been dreaming of this [playing in March Madness] since I was a little girl,” Gourdine told HBCU GameDay.
When the All-SWAC women’s tournament selection dialed her father’s number, he answered the phone with a simple message. But for Gourdine, who finished the game with nine points, four rebounds, three assists and two steals in the victory, it was one that was much deeper than winning Saturday’s SWAC title game.
“I am so happy for you,” Gourdine recalled the statement from her dad. “It just meant everything. He was really the one who really worked me out, got me to play [basketball]. …It was only right that I called him [after Jaguars’ win].”
During the regular season, Alcorn defeated Southern 59-55 in overtime on Feb. 1 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Gourdine, who finished with 13 points, six rebounds and two assists in that contest, never forgot the feeling of losing the previous contest. Even more, a year ago, the Braves eliminated the Jaguars 59-52 in the quarterfinals of the 2024 SWAC Tournament.
But according to Gourdine, Southern didn’t view the game as a “rematch.”
“…We just locked in,” Gourdine said. “We didn’t want to take it personal and try to do too much. We treated it [the game] as a regular game and came out on top.
Gourdine, who transferred to Southern last season after two years at Temple, found a home in playing for Jaguars head coach Carlos Funchess. However, the process of Gourdine aiding Southern to win its second SWAC tourney title in the last three seasons and the program’s seventh since 2002 was not easy.
“A lot of people don’t see them [players] spending hours in the weight room in the summer or running suicides or line drills,” Funchess said in the postgame news conference. “Getting up 400 or 500 shots … getting in early in the morning, at 5:30 to get some extra shots in. People don’t see that. …They think you just throw a jersey on and go out and practice a few times and go win a game. …When you start doing this from June 3 until [now], it’s a lot of man hours that’s been put into this.”
With the Jaguars’ win, Gourdine fulfilled one of her goals this season to capture a SWAC tournament title. In the process, she captured her dream of earning a chance to feel the taste of March Madness in women’s basketball. The Baltimore native has never played nor attended a women’s NCAA tournament game.
On Sunday, Gourdine, along with her teammates, will find out which team Southern will face in the women’s NCAA tournament with the last four at-large teams — programs sitting at 65 through 68 — on March 19 and March 20 before the first round of the tournament begins on March 21. Gourdine has waited patiently to play on the national stage. However, the preparation for the bright lights on the hardwood started when she was 8 years old, competing against he two older sisters and her male cousins. She credits them for her toughness on the court
“That’s where the dog and the roughness come from,” Gourdine said.
That grit and determination has served Gourdine well. As of Saturday night, Southern is projected to play in a First Four matchup as the No. 16 seed in Region I Birmingham. If the Jaguars win that game, they will face the projected No. 1 seed South Carolina.
With the SWAC tourney behind her, the Jaguars leading scorer will seek to help Southern continue its trail of magic in March and earn a win in the NCAA tournament.