Big Win For The Lady Dukes As They Upset the #1 Mid-Major Team

When a team comes together and fights for a victory, you have to love them for their effort and tenacity. That is what the JMU women's basketball team did tonight when they beat a very good Wisconsin-Green Bay team in a back and forth showdown in OT 89-86. It was the first of three games in the Cancun Challenge that featured game highs for several JMU players. In my pregame thoughts I really thought that if Angela Mickens (8 assist, 5 points) were to play the point more, it would allow Tarik to focus on the 2 spot, and she wouldn't disappoint. Tarik scored a career high 32 points in this contest, including the game tying 3-pointer that sent the game into Overtime. Both Gwathmey (13 points) and Ross (13 points) scored double digits, including Kirby Burkholder who hit the go ahead 3 pointer (16 points) at the end of OT. With 24 seconds left, Green Bay's Stephanie Sension had the opportunity to put her team ahead, but would miss twice, allowing a rebound by Tarik Hislop. Hislop would be fouled with 0.7 seconds to play in OT and she hit both free throws sealing the game.

If you want to know how evenly matched these two teams were, all you have to do is look at the box score. In the first half both teams scored 37 points. In the second half, both teams scored 42 points. In overtime JMU scored 10 points (the final points of the game were Kirby's go ahead 3-pointer and Tarik Hislop's two foul shots) and Wisconsin-Green Bay Scored 7 points. http://scores.espn.go.com/ncw/scoreboard?date=20121122&confId=45

Here is another interesting observation. JMU was up by 3 points before the half, Green Bay had 14 seconds to score before the half and with 2 seconds to go Green Bay's Sarah Eichler hit a game tying 3-pointer going into the half. At the end of regulation with about 4 seconds to go, Tarik Hislop hits the game tying 3-pointer to send it to overtime. How strange is that?

Tomorrow the team will play another tough team in the Minnesota Gophers who lost to our December 2nd foe Richmond by 12 points. If JMU can have another performance like they did tonight, there is no doubt in my mind that they will win this game.

Side note: Box score http://admin.xosn.com/fls/14400/stats/wbasketball/2013/jmu1122.htm?DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=14400

Also Newman fouled out with under 1 minute to play in regulation and Gwathmey fouled out in Overtime with about 3 minutes to play.