From a Familiar Cloth: Kennedy Fauntleroy for Player of the Year
February 17, 2026 | Women's Basketball
Prior to March 18, 2019, no East Carolina women's basketball player had ever won a conference Defensive Player of the Year award. Across stints in the CAA, CUSA and the American Conference, the Pirates had their share of great players and great teams, but it wasn't until after a young coach by way of Hartford was tapped to be the 10th head coach in ECU women's basketball history that any individual broke through. Under Kim McNeill, the program has had four American Defensive Players of the Year in just six full seasons—2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024.
Defense has long been McNeill's calling card, but it takes two to tango, and it takes a whole team to play great defense. And in the years when this ECU defense has been its most successful, there has been a player who can be pointed at to lead, to extend the dance metaphor. Twice it was Lashonda Monk. Twice it was Danae McNeal. Twice there were aberrations in which ECU did not win the award, but each time, the missed season was followed up with even greater successes.
It seems almost impossible for a program to continue to sign and develop defensive stalwarts on end and produce more and more Defensive Players of the Year, but to think that would be foolhardy. For the naysayers: look away. Because the Pirates have another player poised to make a run at the trophy.
Kennedy Fauntleroy is on a tear. She's been good for a lot of the season. Since the beginning of American Conference play, she's been great. She's the team leader in scoring. She's the team leader in assists, dishing out more than any ECU player in nearly a decade and on track to threaten the top 10 in program history in the category. She's fast and smart and can on any given night put up 20 on a team, or dish out eight assists, or both, which she's done on several occasions.
Kennedy's also a defensive stopper. She's top 25 in the NCAA in steals this season, already with 70, and in league play, she's cranked it up a notch or two. Kennedy leads the league in takeaways in conference games at a clip of nearly three per game. She's put herself at the top of scouting reports and with good reason, but for ECU fans, there might be something more intangible about her game that takes great notice. Though in a different position, she's cut from the same cloth as Lashonda Monk and Danae McNeal.
All of these players took on similar roles with similar styles for their team. All three are undersized but highly athletic players with game-breaking capabilities on both ends of the court. All three were their team's leading scorers. All three put up gaudy steals numbers.
In fact, of those four previous Defensive Player of the Year campaigns only in the abbreviated 2020-21 season and in 2022-23 did the player winning the award fall short of 100 steals, and in the latter season Danae finished with 97 while leading an historically great defense. That defense, which powered the Pirates to a conference title, was arguably the best in program history and one of the best in American Conference history as well.
However, in each of those four previous seasons, only 2023-24 Danae McNeal made a real challenge for the overall American Conference Player of the Year award. Danae, who, but for an historic campaign from the Tulsa Golden Hurricane that season, probably would have won that award, was sensational that season. She put up over 20 points per game with her 107 steals. It was a remarkable season, and while Kennedy doesn't quite have the scoring numbers that Danae did, it's not for lack of capability.
Since entering league play, Kennedy is averaging north of 15 points per game. All five of her 20-point outings have come against conference competition. She's led the team in scoring in six of 12 conference contests. She can score at that level, but she has something around her that Danae didn't: a whole host of teammates who can pour it on too.
ECU this season is on track to have four players, possibly five, scoring in double figures for the season. Having four players in double figures has only happened in six previous seasons, most recently in 1992-93. Two of those six seasons came before the NCAA even sponsored women's basketball as a varsity sport. To say that this Pirates squad has depth in scoring greater than we've become accustomed to in Minges Coliseum would be to say the least.
The Pirates have had six players score 15 or more points in a game. Six players have led ECU in scoring. At the center of it all: Kennedy Fauntleroy, the point guard who has made this team tick.
With Kennedy's 134 field goals and 117 assists, she's had a role in nearly 40 percent of the team's made buckets this year. The team has by and large, gone as she's gone. ECU is 14-2 when she shoots better than 40 percent from the field, 9-2 when she scores 15-or-more points, 10-1 when she has five-or-more assists and 10-2 when she has three-or-more steals. Put generally, if Kennedy has a really good game, the Pirates are probably winning.
And win they have. For a team picked to finish seventh in the conference, the Pirates have exceeded all expectations. After a shaky 2-4 start, the team has won 17 of its last 20, 15 of its last 17, and gone 11-2 in American Conference play.
Sitting at 19 wins in the regular season, the Pirates have a chance to put up one of the highest win totals in program history by year's end. They are just one win away from the program record for conference wins set back in 1991-92 when ECU went 12-2 in league play. But as much as the comparison has been made statistically to that 1992 team of late, the groups have a couple of critical differences.
That 1991-92 team was projected to win the CAA that season. And they did win the regular season and Pat Pierson was named CAA Coach of the Year before falling in a close game to Old Dominion in the conference title game. That team had known commodities as Tonya Hargrove entered that year as the reigning CAA Player of the Year. Hargrove was later named to the CAA All-Decade Team and the ECU Hall of Fame.
Outside of Hargrove, the Pirates returned three starters in 1991-92 in Mechelle Jones, Connie Small and future Hall of Famer Gaynor O'Donnell. Of those players, Gaynor O'Donnell was also the only one who was not a senior that season.
The eyes of history were not so much upon this season's ECU squad. Jayla Hearp and Anzhané Hutton were returning starters, sure. But the team returned only 27 percent of its minutes from last season. It returned no All-Conference performers. Heck, no ECU players were even named to the All-American Conference Preseason Team.
To say that this team didn't have grand expectations would be a fair assessment. It brought in 10 new players and a lot of unknowns. But it's worked. Those 10 newcomers have combined for an average of 52.5 points, 21.9 rebounds, 10.6 assists, 7.6 steals and 3.2 blocks per game this season. They are massively productive, and for the first time in a while, the Pirates have a bona fide point guard running Kim McNeill's offense—as well as her signature, vaunted matchup defense.
So, with five games left in the regular season, maybe this ECU squad doesn't run the table. Maybe they don't win the league and return to the big dance. But maybe they do, and certainly they've got us talking, and despite the gauntlet being thrown her way, Kennedy Fauntleroy is certainly making her case and dotting the i's and crossing the t's on her resume to be, not just the Defensive Player of the Year, but the 2026 American Conference Player of the Year.
