Women’s Basketball: Dukes Find a Solution
March 13, 2009 • By Tim Chapman, The Breeze
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‘Give it to Dawn and get out of the way’’
HARRISONBURG — Friday probably wasn’t the best night for the JMU women’s basketball team to play its “worst half” of the season.
Thankfully for the Dukes, that half was the first — and coach Kenny Brooks had a simple remedy to a woeful start that saw Northeastern take a 19-18 lead into the break.
“We came out in the second half and developed this new offense, we called get the ball to [Dawn Evans] and get out of the way,” said Brooks, after JMU pulled out a 51-49 win to advance to Saturday’s 2:30 p.m. semifinal against Virginia Commonwealth.
JMU’s sophomore star listened to her coach and it appeared that Northeastern went along with the plan as Evans scored 21 of her 23 points in the second half.
Evans said it took the whole first half to get the butterflies out after an eight-day layoff following the Dukes’ last regular season game — a 9-point win at UNC Wilmington.
“I try not to get down on myself,” Evans said. “I know that some shots are gonna fall and some shots aren’t, but in my head I try to stay positive and keep my teammates up.”
The Dukes (22-8) go as their star goes and Evans’ shots were not falling in the first half. She shot 1-for-10 and the team shot 7-for-32 (22 percent) in the half.
The Huskies (12-19) didn’t exactly shoot the lights out either; they shot 21 percent in the half and would finish with 28 percent.
A major defensive lapse for JMU allowed NU to come storming back from a 16-4 deficit. Northeastern senior forward Kendra Walton nailed three 3-pointers to lead a 15-2 run to end the half.
“It was miscommunication, it really was,” Brooks said. “I think a lot of what happened was we got so frustrated on the offensive end that we started running down the court without a focus.”
Brooks explained that the Dukes were confused in the defensive transitions on picking up the lead post player and the trailing post player, which was Walton.
In the second half, Evans and company were able to weather a strong showing from the Huskies lead post player, junior Kim Carr. Carr scored nine of her 14 points in the half, but was called for traveling with 2:08 remaining in the game and her team still within striking distance at 48-43.
Two inconsequential 3-pointers from Northeastern freshman Kashaia Cannon made the final score a bit misleading.
“I think the difference in the game … was Dawn Evans,” Northeastern coach Daynia La-Force Mann said. “You know we didn’t have Dawn Evans and they did.”
Evans’ 3-pointer with 3:14 remaining proved to be the difference as the Dukes took a two-possession lead at 46-42.
VCU (26-5) beat JMU in both regular season matches and routed the Dukes 81-48 at the Convocation Center. In their quarterfinal game before JMU’s, the Rams handled William & Mary 72-52, behind senior center Quanitra Hollingsworth’s 20 points and 11 rebounds.
Brooks described her as a future WNBA player.
The team is “gonna take showers and they’re not even gonna leave the building,” Brooks said. “We’re gonna watch film — this is our hotel — and look for ways to try to exploit their defense and keep [Quanitra] at bay, so to speak.”
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