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UNM Women's Basketball: Lobos breeze past Georgia Southern 64-43 in The Pit
Lobos' sloppy play in blowout irks coach
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The way Lobos coach Don Flanagan scowled, you would have thought his team was on the wrong side of a blowout.
Despite sloppy play, the University of New Mexico women’s basketball team emerged with a 64-43 win over Georgia Southern Friday night in The Pit during the Lobos’ Thanksgiving tournament.
UNM improved to 3-2, while the Eagles fell to 1-5.
The Lobos face Siena (1-3) at 8 p.m. Saturday night in The Pit for the tournament championship. The Saints defeated Western Illinois 82-65 in the early tournament game Friday night.
Flanagan was irked by a slew of UNM mistakes – poor free-throw shooting, weak rebounding and double-digit turnovers.
The Lobos were 21-of-34 from the free-throw line, good for 61.8 percent.
During an 18-second span in the first half when Georgia Southern improbably fouled the Lobos four times, UNM went three-of-eight from the line.
“That inexcusable,” Flanagan said.
He added the Lobos practice free throws often and hit their shots from the line during practice. Flanagan chalks up the slump to a mental block.
“What cures that usually is early morning free-throw shooting,” Flanagan said. “People get a lot better when you’re shooting early morning free throws.”
UNM also had 19 turnovers and was out-rebounded 18-13 by Georgia Southern on the offensive boards.
The Lobos were sluggish early on offense but managed to amass a 29-21 halftime lead.
Georgia Southern countered with one 10-0 second-half run, but the Lobos iced the game with an 18-1 run that began with 8:52 left in the game and ended at the 4:01 mark. It gave UNM a 25-point lead, their biggest advantage of the night.
When UNM’s shots weren’t falling, the Lobos relied on strong defense to maintain a comfortable advantage.
The Lobos held Georgia Southern to 25 percent shooting from the field and forced 25 turnovers.
The Eagles were coming off a near-upset of No. 8 Georgia, falling 75-71 at home earlier this week. Georgia Southern relied on hot 3-point shooting against the Bulldogs but only shot 29 percent from beyond the arc against UNM.
“If we continue to play defense like that, I’ll be happy with the defense,” Flanagan said.
Junior forward Dionne Marsh led the Lobos with 22 points and added seven rebounds. Senior guard Julie Briody and freshman guard Amy Beggin added 14 points apiece, while junior guard Brandi Kimble made up for a rough shooting night by grabbing a game-high 12 rebounds.
Marsh is now 10 points away from scoring 1,000 career points, making her the 14th player in school history to reach the 1,000-point plateau.
Georgia Southern was led by guard Tiffany Brown, who scored 12 points.
The Eagles lost their composure during UNM’s big second-half run.
Guard Ashley Rivens didn’t run down the court to chase the ball when she disagreed with an official who called her for traveling with 5:55 left in the game. The official told her to get the ball and bring it to him. Georgia Southern coach Rusty Cram stepped in front of his team' bench and tossed the ball to Rivens. Rather than handing it to the official, Rivens tossed it behind her in the general direction of another ref. She was then slapped with the technical foul.
“You could tell we were definitely getting to them when we went on that run,” Beggin said. “They were really frustrated.”
