“I’m quite humble,” Stephanie said. “I mean, I really try to look out for people, for real. If you just need to know something, I’ll be there.
“I’ll be there when nobody else is.”
‘I didn’t want to be there’
Stephanie Mavunga has always been dedicated to the things most important to her. That wasn’t always basketball.
Before the second grade she had never touched a ball. Her friends joined a church team and, despite hating sports, Stephanie would join them. Games were every other Saturday at 7 a.m., and in that first season, her team went undefeated.
“They’d just throw the ball in and I didn’t know what I was doing,” Mavunga said. “I’d just throw the ball up there and if it went in, it went in. Great.”
A year later, it was another bond — this time with her older brother Julian, who played collegiately for Miami of Ohio and now professionally in Europe — that brought Stephanie to the basketball courts. She wanted to play with her brother, she says, and since he played, she went along with it, too.
“Tryouts came and Julian called me — I forget where I was, but I remember I had corduroys on — and my dad said we couldn’t make it on time unless I went straight there like that,” Stephanie said.
“All the kids were just looking at me — I was the only African-American kid in there also — so I thought, ‘Man, they probably think I’m a fool,’ and everyone was laughing, and I didn’t want to be there.”
But the lanky kid in corduroys made the B team, where she languished and learned the rules of the game. She had a problem with traveling, she says, so parents on the team would yell at her to never even dribble, never move, in the first place.
“She was a work in progress for quite some time,” said her father, Phillip .
She had every reason to quit, but Julian wouldn’t let her.
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He’d tell her to stick it out, she says, and after a few years, she was finally promoted to the A team. She wore No. 3 for her favorite player, Allen Iverson.
From that day on, she worked on her game, the same set of dominant post moves that eventually earned her national recognition.
At church, on travel teams, even on her neighborhood basketball courts in Brownsburg, Indiana, Stephanie played and played — for herself, of course, but for others as well.
It was never about only the sport.
“I was just so competitive, it didn’t even matter if I didn’t actually like the game,” Stephanie says. “I don’t think I stopped to think, ‘Wow, I actually enjoy this.’ I just liked winning. I loved winning.”
But there was more.
“I loved my teammates.”
Picking up the slack
Fast forward to Dec. 21, 2014. Stephanie and UNC are in Myrtle Beach, S.C., for a matchup with Elon. It should be a ‘gimme’ sort of game for the Tar Heels, but nobody could have seen this coming.
Xylina McDaniel, Stephanie’s running mate at forward, injured her lower right leg. It’s not the news anyone wanted to hear: She’s likely out for the rest of the season.
At the time of the injury, the 6-foot-2 McDaniel was UNC’s third-leading scorer and rebounder. Stephanie — now UNC’s only de facto post option — had to pick up the slack.
And she has.
Stephanie averaged 14 points and 8.9 rebounds per game during the regular season, good enough for a spot on the All-ACC First Team.
“Her numbers would probably be better if Xylina was playing,” Coach Sylvia Hatchell said.
“If Xylina was out there, she wouldn’t get double-teamed like she is. I think she has to carry more of a load.”
Stephanie calls McDaniel her P.O.C. — her partner on the court. Playing without her, Stephanie says, is one of the hardest things she’s done in school. “Z” is the closest thing she has to an older sister.
But without her P.O.C., Stephanie has not only stepped up her game, she’s evolved into one of the most dominant post players in the country.
With big play comes big expectations.
“I don’t think she realizes how good she can be because she’s so strong and she’s very skilled around the basket,” Hatchell said.
“She can just dominate when she wants to.
“She can be All-American. I don’t think there’s any doubt.”
Her teammates see it, too.
“When I pass her the ball, I just think it’s buckets every time,” said Allisha Gray, Stephanie’s teammate and roommate at UNC.
“I find myself — it’s like I’m sitting in the stands watching her play, because I’ll be amazed.
“She could definitely get her jersey retired here. I know so.”
Foundation in faith
They say it’s the lip gloss always on hand, all shades and colors and shines. There’s one in every backpack she owns, her locker, her dorm — even during games, Assistant Coach Tracey Williams-Johnson holds a tube on the sidelines.
They say it’s her obsession with photos, or looking at herself in the locker room mirror. Even during timeouts, she runs back to perfect her ponytail.
These are things people see of Stephanie, the things they come to think of her as.
But it’s never been about materialism — that doesn’t matter to Stephanie.
What does matter is her faith. That’s why she writes two other things on her shoes — one is PFC: Playing for Christ. The other is G1TB1: God first to be first.
It’s why she wears No. 1 on her North Carolina jersey.
God, like the memory of Tatenda, is always in her thoughts.
“Whatever it is I want to be number one in, as long as I have God first, I’ll have faith that God will make a way out of no way,” Stephanie said.
And when something happens on the court that she can’t explain?
“God, you did that. Really you gave me this talent, I’m here to use it.”
She can’t put her faith in a photo on top of the microwave next to Tatenda — she doesn’t have to.
sports@dailytarheel.com
