Women’s basketball wins two key games
Trinitonian | January 20th, 2012 - 1:08 pmThe Tigers had a successful weekend beating both of their opponents
by Brooke Sanchez
The women’s basketball team earned a SCAC sweep last weekend, defeating Oglethorpe 77-51 on Friday night and conquering Birmingham-Southern on Saturday, 70-65. This improves their record to 6-9 overall and 4-2 in the SCAC.
“It was a great weekend to build some confidence,” said head coach Amie Bradley. “We are now tied for second in the West of the conference, which is great because all of that will play into our seed for the conference tournament. So we are very excited to protect our home floor and come away with two wins.”
Friday night started out with Oglethorpe stretching a 9-0 lead, but the Tigers soon found their rhythm and were ahead 36-25 by halftime.
“We kept composed after they went on a couple runs,” said sophomore guard Murphy Burns. “That 9-0 lead had our team a little bit worried, but we ended up really running through our offense and ended up getting out on shooters during transition defense. So we caught up pretty quick and we were really able to get up the transition for our offense and found freshman Hannah Coley open for some threes.”
The Tigers were relentless in the second half, using their defense to help extend the lead.
“We pressed the entire second half just about, and our team really responded to that,” Bradley said. “I think they wanted to get off to a good start in the second half, and it showed. Our intensity was a lot better in that half.”
The intensity was evident in the Tigers’ performances, with Burns leading the pack with 24 points, a season-tying five steals, three assists and three rebounds. Coley followed with 17 points, six rebounds, four assists and two steals. Sophomore forward Libby Kruse led the game in rebounds, grabbing 12. She also tallied six points and three assists.
The solid performance drove the Tigers to a 26-point victory that would create further momentum for Saturday’s game against Birmingham-Southern.
“Hannah Coley just went off in the beginning,” Kruse said. “Then Murphy came up big with triple three pointers in a row. Their offense kind of sparked our defense and we were just playing with high energy.”
By halftime, the Tigers led the three-point shooting team 36-30.
“In the locker room we talked about really going out there and getting on a big run at the very beginning, which is what we did,” Burns said. “We got to the free throw line a little bit more and started making most of our free throws down the stretch, which enabled us to win the game.”
Burns’ 27 points and Coley’s season-high 25 points highlighted the high-powered performance, along with Kruse’s 13 rebounds and five points. The team will work to continue the success this weekend with two more conference games on the road: 6 p.m. tonight at Sewanee and tomorrow at 5 p.m. at Centre.
“This was definitely a turning point in our season,” Kruse said. “Those are two huge conference games that we really had to win. I think with these two games we came together and decided that this is our team. We’re definitely really excited about stepping it up even more for these next couple of games.”
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