Given the fact that this will be her final year suiting up for the UCR women’s basketball team, star point guard Tre’Shonti Nottingham decided that she wants her final season at Riverside to be a memorable one. As she put it, she wants to “amaze.”
With her recent scoring spree, it’s safe to say that Nottingham has been doing just that. At 23.6 points per game, Nottingham is currently one of the scoring leaders in the entire NCAA.
“It’s my last year and it’s like every time I step on the floor, I want to be able to play hard,” said Nottingham in an interview with the Highlander. “I don’t want to have any regrets… So every time I step on floor, I have that mentality like I need to be aggressive, I need to be a scorer and I need to get my team involved.”
Even by her standards, November has been quite an amazing month for Nottingham. From Nov. 12 through Nov. 18, she had three straight 29-point games in three consecutive victories. Nottingham then followed that up with a career-high 31 points in a close loss against Princeton. At one point in the season, she was even leading the NCAA in scoring, averaging as many as 27.6 points per game.
“It’s because of them I am the number one scorer in the nation,” said Nottingham when she held the top scoring spot. “If I get a three, it’s because somebody threw me the ball. Or if I get a layup, it’s because someone ditched me the ball. And I am honored to be number one in the nation, but I am honored because my team is up there and my team is getting recognized.”
In light of her scoring burst, her team has earned a 5-2 record to start this season. With that record, the team currently sits in second place in the Big West standings. According to Nottingham, a great deal of credit should be given to her teammates for their solid beginning and for her own recent success.
Nottingham went on to say that her teammates aren’t the only reason she has had such a great start to the season. According to her, Head Coach John Margaritis has also been an instrumental figure in her recent accomplishments. But as she told the Highlander, her relationship with her head coach has had its share of highs and lows.
“At times I felt like he wanted to change certain aspects of me,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Well you recruited me for this, why are you changing me for that?’ And then my junior year, that kind of like fell apart. We weren’t really close. My sophomore year, we were really, really close. I told him everything that’s been bothering me. He was like another dad.”
Nottingham continued, “Then my junior year, we just crashed heads all the time. The day that I got suspended, I think that we both let our emotions get the best of us. We both were angry… and we just let our anger get the most of us. And then we didn’t talk to each other.”
By the start of her senior year, however, Nottingham said her relationship with her coach had completely turned around.
“We talked,” she said. “We talked it out. As a player, it’s like frustrating when you’re losing and on top of that, you’re having your coach yelling at you.” But according to Nottingham, at a certain point, she talked to her coach in his office and told him, “You know what? I’m going to respect you. If you tell me what to do, I just have to learn to say okay and run with it. Even though I may not like it, I’m going to have to trust you.”
As Nottingham put it, their relationship is now as healthy as it has ever been in her four years at Riverside. “I call him Dad,” she concluded.
With off-the-court distractions now seemingly gone, Nottingham says she wants nothing more than to focus on her team this year.
“My expectation is for us to just amaze people,” she said. “Last year we didn’t go to the tournament. I feel like we can go to the tournament, and I know Coach Marg doesn’t want me to say this, but we can probably win. I think it’s going to be a promising year for us.”
Nottingham currently leads her team in points, free throws, three-pointers, assists and steals. For her outstanding feats in the month of November, Tre’Shonti Nottingham has earned the Highlander’s Athlete of the Month honor.
