Towson women’s basketball junior Pat Anumgba recently chatted with PressBox about her time at junior college powerhouse CCBC Essex, her work with the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee and more. The 5-foot-7 guard averaged 9.3 points and shot 41.8 percent from 3-point range for the Tigers in 2022-23. Anumgba is a native of Silver Spring, Md., and graduate of Paint Branch High School.
PressBox: How did you become interested in basketball?
Pat Anumgba: It was kind of the sport that I could play. Both of my brothers played football, and I grew up playing football with them. I was like, “There’s no way [my mother] is going to let me play football.” It was just like the secondary sport that I played in the neighborhood and I fell in love with it. … I just loved playing basketball. It was just what I wanted to do. I never really did it for anybody else. I just did it for my own enjoyment.
PB: Who was the biggest influence on your game growing up?
PA: I love Kobe Bryant. I loved watching him play. I loved his mentality, so I think that would be my biggest influence.
PB: You began your college career at UMBC in 2020-21, then went the junior college route at CCBC Essex in 2021-22. What was that journey like?
PA: Coming out of high school, I wasn’t really highly recruited. I had committed to UMBC under coach Johnetta Hayes. That was the year where COVID happened and everything, so our season was actually cut short. We only ended up playing [eight] games. So at the end of the season, I had a decision to make on whether or not I wanted to stay in that program or leave and search for something else. It was kind of a difficult decision because obviously [due to COVID], a lot of seniors were granted another year, so a lot of schools that I was in contact with, they really didn’t have any roster spots. It was an eye-opener. Do I stay or do I just take a chance on myself and go JUCO?
One of our assistant coaches [at Towson, Christie Rogers], was initially at UMBC, but she resigned the summer before I got there. We have a very close relationship and I had talked to her about what my first options would be if I were to enter the portal. She made it very clear to me that I may or may not get schools, and I was OK with that because I just wanted a better situation. Coach Mike Seney at CCBC, he ended up calling me. He told me he was a fan of my game. It took me a while to commit to him because I was so scared of just JUCO in general. Once I finally understood the whole process, I think I ended up committing maybe like two or three months after he called me.
PB: Why is Seney so successful at CCBC Essex?
PA: He’s very successful because he does a great job recruiting elite athletes, and then two, he’s also successful because he instills confidence in his players. It might be a little bit weird to say, but not a lot of Division I schools are instilling confidence in their players. You’ve kind of got to come in with that confidence on your own. The head coach is not telling you every day that you’re the best shooter in the gym, that you’re the best player in the gym. That’s what Coach Mike does. He just gives you a different type of confidence that just makes you believe you can play against anybody in the world. He put that confidence in me.
PB: Your team at CCBC Essex went 35-1 in 2021-22. What was that season like?
PA: For me, it was a lot of ups and downs, honestly. There were a lot of little, minor things. I had to get used to his coaching style because he was very hard on me because he wanted me to succeed. I just didn’t really have a coach like that in my life, so we bumped heads in the beginning until maybe like January. … Until January, we were kind of bumping heads because his play style is so different. I would kind of compare it to the NBA. You’re open, you better shoot it. You have the skill level to shoot it. I just wasn’t used to that, so in January I got in rhythm. We had a great run. We lost in the semifinals at JUCO nationals to [Morton College, which] was a great team, but they hit 18 threes. It was like a record-breaking amount of threes, and it just happened to be on us that they got hot. It was just one of those days where we couldn’t stop [them].
PB: Why did you choose Towson ahead of the 2022-23 season?
PA: Honestly, Towson came late. [Head coach Laura Harper] was recruiting me at Coppin when she was there. She had offered me at Coppin. Me and Coach Harper had made a pretty good relationship, but I just wanted different things from a school standpoint. I’m not going to say Coppin was my first option, but they were definitely still on my top-four list because of the relationship I have with Coach Harper.
After she made the [move] to Towson, she called me. It’s a funny story, but it just shows who Coach Harper is as a person and her character. She calls me. She’s like, “Yeah, I’m at Towson now. It’s the same deal. I still want you.” She was like, “If you want to come up on a visit, I’ll pull up.” She was at Boo Williams recruiting this weekend toward the end of the year, so there are really no students on campus or whatever. She was like, “If you want to see the school, I’ll leave recruiting and I’ll come to the gym and I’ll give you a tour.” It was like two, three days later. … She just dropped everything she was doing. She pulled up. She gave me a tour. We kind of talked. I was staying with my mom and my sister.
Another big thing for me was I had torn my labrum in my shoulder. I didn’t know it was torn fully until the day of surgery. I said, “There’s a possibility that I could be out for X amount of months. If they go in and they find out it’s fully torn and they need to repair it, you’re not going to have me until November.” She was like, “That doesn’t change anything. I still want you here.” I think that was a really, really strong reason to why I came here because it just showed how much she cared and that she was going to be there for me and she cared about my health first. She didn’t tell me to not get the surgery, because you can play with a torn labrum in your shoulder. She was all for it. She was like, “We still want you the same.” And obviously I’m from Maryland, so it would be great to play in my hometown.
PB: What’s your favorite memory from your college career so far?
PA: Probably dropping 35 on Monroe [for CCBC Essex]. I was locked in, crazy game. I was just locked in, crowd was talking trash. It was a very fun game.
PB: What’s your favorite thing about Towson University?
PA: I love SECU Arena. I think SECU Arena is beautiful. It’s a nice size for a nice mid-major. I think that’s my favorite thing, the facility.
PB: You shot 41.8 percent from 3-point range for Towson in 2022-23. Did anyone teach you how to shoot at any point?
PA: No, I think I’m self-taught, [but] I had surgery on my shooting shoulder. Coming back from my surgery, getting in the gym with [Tigers associate head coach Christie Rogers], getting those reps up and getting those reps up in game speed really helps me a lot. I still feel like I didn’t really shoot the ball that well when I first came back. I feel like I got my rhythm back toward conference play. Coach Rogers definitely helped me a lot.
PB: Who’s your best friend on the team and what’s a story that underscores your friendship?
PA: [Anasia Staton]. She was actually my teammate at CCBC Essex. She’s now here, but I came a year before her. She stayed to win a national championship and then got recruited by Towson. She’s super funny. We just bond over the same things. We love basketball. We’re always together. We’re roommates now. We share the same side of the apartment, so I would say Anasia is my best friend on the team.
PB: What advice would you give to younger players, especially those who might be looking at the JUCO route?
PA: What I would say to younger players, especially younger players who are like me and started basketball late — I didn’t start playing basketball until eighth grade, ninth grade, high school — [is] work wins. The work always wins. There may have been people more skilled than me at the moment, but as long as you just keep working, you’ll get to where you want to be or where you need to be. And to not compare — everybody’s journey is different. And then the JUCO route, JUCO is not a bad thing. I think people perceive it as, “Oh, you have to go JUCO because you don’t have good grades,” or, “You have to go JUCO because you weren’t the best player at whatever school you were at.” But sometimes, take a step down and humble yourself and regain that confidence and you’ll be straight. JUCO’s an experience, man. If you have the opportunity to go JUCO instead of being in a worse situation, then you should take it.
PB: What are your goals after basketball, whenever it ends?
PA: I do want to play pro overseas. I just want to experience that, depending on how my body feels after I’m done here at Towson. I don’t want to push anything that my body doesn’t want to do, but I do actually want to experience it. Other than that, I’m trying to be a data analyst for the NCAA. I’m currently on the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee. I just want to stay in the sports realm. My major is information systems/data analytics, so I just want to bring what I’m working on now into the sports realm.
PB: What do you do with the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee?
PA: Basically, I sit with the board members. I’ve met the president. They fly me out. We have meetings. We discuss new rules in women’s basketball. The last meeting I was at, I flew to Indiana. We discussed the transfer portal deadline or an end date. They felt like the transfer portal time for student-athletes to enter was too long or it was too short. We discussed stuff like that. We discussed the summer initiative of college basketball teams playing games in the summer. Most of the college coaches voted no, so it probably won’t happen. We just discussed new rules and topics that come into play. We vote on them and we pass them. It’s me and Olivia Summiel. She goes to Virginia Tech. We are the two [players] that represent women’s basketball in the whole country, so it’s pretty cool being a voice for women’s basketball at the collegiate level.
PB: How did you get involved?
PA: There was this one day I was in the office. Coach Harper had given me a paper and was like, “Fill this out, I think you would be great for this.” They just asked me a couple questions like why do I think I should be on the committee, what are my leadership skills, how would I help women’s basketball. I filled it out, Coach Harper sent it in and like a month or two later, they told me I was selected and that I was one of two in the whole country. Earlier this spring, they flew me out to the [Women’s] Final Four. We were part of a pilot group. It was a larger group at the Final Four. They had picked one student from each conference to go to the Final Four to experiment this pilot program that they had. They flew me out to the Final Four. I had that, and then occasionally we have meetings online and sometimes they fly me out in person and I’ll have meetings with the board and executives for women’s basketball for Division I.
PB: How often are you in meetings?
PA: I would say like once every two months, maybe once a month. It just really depends. Sometimes I can’t make meetings because obviously I have class, but I did go to the last in-person meeting [in Indiana in June].
Photo Credit: ENP Photography