Dukes Beat The Big Dogs

January 14, 2010 • By Emmie Cleveland,
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After a 16-point first-half deficit, the JMU women’s basketball put away Big East’s Georgetown with a last-minute comeback in its season opener. The game has epitomized the team’s season thus far — playing great halves but not full games and racking wins over big names.

“I think we come out of the block strong, playing well against some of the bigger teams,” JMU coach Kenny Brooks said. “We’ve also got little things we need to work on. Running our plays a little better, being more patient on offense, putting together a complete 40 minutes.”

Madison has also conquered Va. Tech and Virginia this season. The victories gained the team a place in the national top-25 polls, where it stayed for three consecutive weeks before falling off after its second loss.

“We’ve got some very good wins along the way,” JMU coach Kenny Brooks said. “But I don’t feel we are as good as we can be yet. We have a lot of room to improve.”

JMU (12-2 overall, 2-1 in the Colonial Athletic Association) dropped off the top-25 Jan. 4 after its 68-67 conference-opening loss to Drexel, but is still receiving votes. The Dragons were predicted to win the conference again in the preseason projections, followed by JMU.

“I thought they played as good as they could play and we didn’t step up to the challenge,” Brooks said. “… It was a matter of making a couple plays and we would have been sitting here undefeated in the conference.”

JMU’s only other loss came two weeks prior against No. 7 Duke. In that game junior guard Dawn Evans had 31 points, one of three games this season she has scored 30 or more. Evans currently leads the nation averaging 26.8 points.

The WNBA has contacted the program repeatedly asking for tapes of Evans, according to Brooks.

“Coming into college I didn’t really have the dream of going into the WNBA, but now I see that my love of basketball has grown and I can’t see my life without basketball,” Evans said. “I do hope to play professionally either here or definitely overseas.”

Right now, Evans stands ninth on JMU’s all-time scoring list as a junior with 1,392.

“She is on pace to break a lot of records as long as she stays healthy,” Brooks said. “Playing the way she is playing she could be the all-time leading scorer, not only in JMU history but CAA history.”

That record belongs to JMU grad Tamera Young (’08), who scored 2,121 points and now plays for the WNBA’s Chicago Sky.

In Evans’ shadow is freshman Tarik Hislop. Her 11.5 points-per-game average makes her JMU’s second-leading scorer. She has started every game for the Dukes this year.

Hislop is “doing a very good job,” Brooks said. “We threw her into the fire. She’s had some very good moments and moments where she looked like a freshman… She will continue to improve, and she wants to improve, and I think she is going to be very helpful to us.”

Besides a consistent second-scorer, which the team has generally found in Hislop, Brooks was also looking to improve consistency down low. He has a better chance for that with the return of center Lauren Jimenez.

The 6-foot-4-inch junior was out almost 11 months with an ACL injury. In the five games she’s appeared in since she’s been back, she has averaged 10.6 points behind Evans and Hislop. She is averaging just more than 17 minutes of play and has also started in place of junior Nichelle Glover in the two most recent games.

“I missed 22 games, so I was kind of expecting to die on the court,” Jimenez said. “But I am doing a lot better. So expectation-wise I have pretty much passed what I thought I was going to be at.”

Also recovering from an ACL injury is guard Courtney Hamner. The junior has played in 10 games averaging 12 minutes.

“Courtney is still trying to find her groove,” Brooks said. “It’s sort of harder for guards to come back from a knee injury because they do a lot more cutting and running than a post player does.”

The return of Jimenez and Hamner presents the possibility for improvement in the future, but not before a somewhat awkward adjusting period for the team.

“In the immediate time it kind of throws you off a bit because kids get used to their roles a bit, and then all of the sudden you’re putting another person into the rotation, and then they have to adjust,” Brooks said.

“It’s always going to have some chemistry issues when you add a new piece to the puzzle, but I think they’ve adapted very well.”

As the Dukes look forward to the rest of conference play, they will focus on playing their best for the full 40 minutes.

“I am pleased to see, though, when times get hard, we push through,” Jimenez said. “But we should do that consistently, we shouldn’t just wait for times to get hard to do that.”

Colleen Hayes of The Breeze contributed to the reporting of this story.

contact Emmie Cleveland at breezesports2@gmail.com

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