Bulldogs Struggle At East Carolina
December 16, 2008 | Women's Basketball
GREENVILLE, N.C. – Cold shooting after a long layoff hampered the Gardner-Webb women's basketball team Tuesday evening as the squad suffered an 81-54 loss at East Carolina in a non-conference match-up.
The Bulldogs fall to 5-3 on the season while the Pirates improve to 6-3.
Rookie Teonika Webb torched the nets for a career-high 14 points on six-of-eight shooting. Her scoring tally marked the eighth GWU student-athlete to record double figures on the season out of the 11 Bulldog players.
Junior Margaret Roundtree had a solid second half and finished up with 12 points, just off her season average. Roundtree connected on five-of-10 shots from the floor. Sophomore Courtney Epps also reached double figures as she had 12 points. Epps also tallied a career-high five steals in the game.
Redshirt-juniors Sherika Montgomery and Laura Povilonyte each pulled down a team-best five boards. Povilonyte, who was leading the Big South in scoring, was held without a point, marking just the second time in two seasons she has not found the bottom of the net. The last time she didn't score was against IUPUI a year ago, but she was nursing an injury and played just three minutes in that contest.
After taking an early 4-2 lead and holding close in the first few minutes, cold shooting played a major role in ECU taking an insurmountable lead into halftime. The Bulldogs made just seven buckets in the first stanza out of 28 attempts while the Pirates drained 17-of-35 shots for a 48.6 percent clip.
Fourteen first-half turnovers plagued GWU as they converted into 12 ECU points. However, the biggest first-half difference came in the paint as the home squad outscored GWU 22-8 in the lane.
In the second frame, the Bulldogs played virtually equal to the Pirates as head coach Rick Reeves' team was outscored by just two – with the ECU starters in the game for virtually the entire game.
For the game, GWU was out-rebounded by 23 (54-31), but connected on 75 percent of its charity tosses (9-12). Both teams sank five three-point baskets. After the slow start, the Bulldogs sank 13 shots in the final 20 minutes of play to finish with a 32.8 shooting percentage. ECU hit 28-of-65 on the night for 43.1 percent from the field.
"East Carolina is a very good team," Reeves said. "We played well in the second half, but came out scared. It's disappointing the way we played in the first half, but we have to build on how we played in the second half.
The Bulldogs return to action Dec. 19 when they play at
Georgetown in a 7 p.m., contest. The Hoyas won last year's game in
Paul Porter Arena 72-63.
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