Lady Bears barely hold on, advance

By Keith Henry

WINSTON-SALEM, NC- Coming into this MEAC quarterfinal game, Morgan State head coach Donald Beasley was looking for some sort of consistency from his Lady Bears. It looked good for a while until they nearly unraveled in the second half. But the play of Theresa Davis and Brittany Dodson at the end were enough to overcome a late deficit and beat the #7 seeded Lady Hawks 43-39 at the LJVM this morning.

The UMES Lady Hawks had shut down the Delaware State offense in their first round win over the Lady Hornets the previous day.

Both teams started badly. But UMES was woeful in missing their first 17 shots of the game. Morgan State didn't take proper advantage of that situation as they were only ahead 12-2 at that time with 7:30 remaining until the Hawks' Shanyce Stewart converted a bucket in traffic in the paint. Morgan State (17-13) led 20-6 at the 4:16 mark of the game, which was their biggest lead of the game.

UMES head coach Fred Batchelor said about the drought, "I thought we came out a little flat. We missed a lot of open shots early. We went 0 for 10 from three point range early on, which dug us a hole."

UMES only converted four field goals in the first half out of 26 attempts. Most of those attempts were open shots.

Coach Beasley said about the first half defensive run, "We snuck another person in the paint. It's funny how you stick with the game plan in the first half and that's where you give up 12 points. In the second half, half the kids decided that they want to do something different. It's rough maintaining and keep doing what you're doing. The first two baskets they got were right in the middle of the lane."

Morgan led at the half 24-12.

UMES (12-19) mounted a serious run on their end to start the second half. Their defense limited Morgan to only four points in the first seven plus minutes of the second half. They eventually got things going inside the paint, where Morgan State's defense was staunch in stopping them in the first half.

The Lady Hawks pushed within 28-23 on a three from Caitlyn Dillard with 12:28 left. Then they pushed inside again for jumpers and lay-ups courtesy of Adobi Agbasi. Then A three from the corner by Casey Morton gave UMES a 33-32 lead, their first of the game with 6:37 left in regulation.

After Theresa Davis' lay-up gave the Lady Bears the lead back, the Lady Hawks made one more small push. Dillard stole the ball from Brittany Dodson and got fouled by Davis.

Dillard converted both free throws to give UMES the lead again at 35-34. Amber Cook then converted a tough lay-up in driving to the basket and she was fouled by Mahala Thomas with 5:02 remaining. Cook missed the free throw and the Lady Hawks were up 37-34.

Morgan State's defense shut down UMES after that. Their trap led to untimely UMES turnovers late and the Lady Hawks scored only one basket the rest of the way. Coach Batchelor said of the MSU defensive game plan, "I thought MSU had a great game plan in regard to forcing us to take perimeter shots and we didn't do a good enough job of reversing the ball and breaking down the defense. In order to do that, we tried to feed the posts early without any ball reversals where the help side defense was situated."

The Morgan defense led to the combination of Dodson and Davis converting on the offensive end. Coach Beasley kept insisting from the bench that they attack the paint on offense. That's what they did as Dodson fed Davis for buckets. Dodson also took a couple of drives to the hoop as well which led to critical free throws.

Dodson, who recorded 10 points and rebounds on the morning, made the last four free throws of the game, including the last two occuring with 20.1 seconds left in the game to seal the deal for Morgan State.

Both teams shot under 30% for the game. Morgan State shot 29.1% while UMES shot 26.8% from the field. Davis said about the defense, "Our main objective today was to play hard on defense. Since I was sitting out for a while. So at least I knew my offense was off. Because in the first half, I wasn't making any lay-ups. Defense was the key. Make sure we can get some stops and some big rebounds and hopefully some second chance shots."

Amber Cook led UMES with 12 points and five rebounds in the game. The Lady Bears take on the winner of tomorrow's Howard/N.C. A&T winner on Friday afternoon.