The North Carolina women’s basketball team has strung together a three-game winning streak with their latest game against a struggling Iona College team. With the win, the Tar Heels are now 3-2 overall after outpacing the Gaels for a 64-52 win.

The highlight of Saturday afternoon’s game in Carmichael Arena was freshman guard Destinee Walker. Walker, a 5’10” Orlando, Florida, native, once again led the team in points, and is making a name for herself, after impressively contributing 32 points earlier in the week against Florida A&M.

“We’re learning and we’re working on progress. We do some good things at times and I love my freshmen, even though sometimes we make some not real smart decisions out there. But those two can really light it up when they get going. And I think they’re two of the best; I’d put them up against any two freshmen in the country,” said UNC Head Coach Sylvia Hatchell regarding Walker and freshman Stephanie Watts.

Shooting 10 -13 from the field, Walker was additionally almost perfect in her field-goal attempts, completing five of six shots. Senior guard N’Dea Bryant contributed double figures for the second game in a row, with 10 points, and Watts added 11, despite temporarily leaving the game with an ankle problem.

“Coming in at other schools freshmen don’t get that many minutes. I knew I would play a big role on the team, I knew I fit in and I knew the chemistry would be great, but of course I didn’t know I would start and play all these minutes,” Walker said.

Carolina went into Saturday’s contest coming off of a big win over Fairleigh Dickinson on Friday night.

The game featured no ties and no lead changes, as Carolina has begun to find a rhythm in a team that now has senior Xylina McDaniel back in action. UNC’s largest lead came in the fourth period with 2:39 left in the game in which the Tar Heels had a 19-point advantage.

McDaniel said watching the team from the bench for a majority of last season and early this year was a hard experience for her, but overall she was able to learn how to better contribute to team camaraderie.

“Being out has been very hard, but at the same time I learned a lot from sitting on the bench and watching them play, seeing what I need to do as a player and a leader to help the team get better and grow. So, it hurt me and the team a little bit, but at the same time it helped us because now I’m able to tell them more and do more because I saw so much more from sitting on the bench,” McDaniel said.

Sophomore guard Jamie Cherry scored seven points, all from free throws, as she completed 7 – 8 attempts. In a frightening scene in Friday night’s game, Cherry suffered a broken nose in the fourth period, in which the crowd saw Cherry lying face down on the floor, writhing in pain. On Saturday she wore a full face mask, though Hatchell is not certain Cherry will continue to wear it in further games.

“She was shooting 41% from the three before tonight. She was missing that and also her driving. She’s really good, she’s been getting to the foul line a lot because she’s been driving and she couldn’t, wasn’t able to drive. She was fumbling the ball around because she couldn’t see. Knowing Jamie, she’ll probably end up taking that mask off. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

The Tar Heels are back in action Sunday afternoon for their third and final game in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Challenge against Yale.

“I think we’re a pretty good team now. I told them in the locker room just a few minutes ago, I said, for our potential, on a scale of 1-10, we’re probably about a 6 right now, so we’re going to keep getting a lot, lot better. We can get up there to a 9, 10 and we can give anybody a game,” Hatchell said.