November 24, 2006

BOX SCORE

GREENSBORO, N.C.—The Longwood women’s basketball team fell to the UNC Greensboro Spartans 81-50 in its opening game of the UNC Greensboro Thanksgiving Tournament. The loss puts Longwood 3-2 on the season while the Spartans improve to 3-1. The Lancers will face North Carolina A&T Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. in the consolation game.

The Spartans took a 16-4 run into the first media timeout, lead by Jasmine Byrd’s nine points. Out of the break, freshman Becky Fernandes/Fairfax (Bishop Ireton) stole the ball from UNC’s Irene Otamiri and dribbled down the floor finding senior Ashleigh Hollman/Centreville (Westfield) whose jumper brought the Lancer within 12.

Greensboro went up by as many as 29 points in the opening half, but senior Abigail Freese/West Liberty, Ohio (West Liberty-Salem) cut the Spartan lead to 25 on a free throw and three-pointer the next time down the floor. Greensboro countered back the following possession hitting one of its eight first half three pointers with twenty-three seconds to go in the half. The Spartans were hot from behind the arc in the opening half shooting 88.9%, lead by Gini Grimsley who went 3-3.

UNC-Greensboro came out of the halftime break hot, building a 52-18 lead with 16:46 to go in the game. Freese brought the deficit back down to 31 on a three-pointer on the Lancer’s next time up the floor. Freese heated up in the second half for Longwood, scoring ten of her team high 14 points in the second half.

After the Spartans built their lead back up to 38 with 6:05 to go in the game, Longwood was able to chip away at the lead on free throws from Anna Steg/Fairfax (George C. Marshall) and Fernandes and a three-pointer from Freese. That was as close as the Lancers would get as UNC-Greensboro remained strong down the stretch.

Also hitting double digit points was junior Keiva Small/Norfolk (Norview) who finished with ten and pulled down a team high eight rebounds. In 23 minutes of action, Steg contributed seven points and tallied five rebounds.